PANTHEATRE

Definitions
Enrique Pardo
Linda Wise
Liza Mayer
Collaborators
James Hillman
Roy Hart

Linda Wise

Actress. Theatre director. Voice teacher.

See her Voice Teaching Founding Letter - below

Linda Wise was born in Kenya and trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. She worked with Roy Hart from 1969 until his death in 1975. Member of the original Roy Hart Theatre and founder member of the Roy Hart Centre in the South of France. She directs Pantheatre with Enrique Pardo, founded in 1981 and based in Paris and at the Roy Hart Centre (Southern France).

Linda is invited to direct, teach and act throughout the world. She won the 1988 French Jean Vilar Prize for her direction of Melville's "Moby Dick", and performed Nedda in the OBIE award winning adaptation of Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci". In recent years she has directed, among other things, a series of solos for women performers, and a Jazz Opera co-produced by Boreas Teater and the Oslo National Theatre.

Passionately concerned with a vision of the voice that engages the widest possible perspective on each person's individuality, she incorporates into her practice a range of vocal approaches, from Roy Hart's extended range techniques, to bel canto, to Feldenkreis. She has taught voice in the National Theatre Schools of Copenhagen, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and Scotland and is a visiting teacher at the Limoges and Strasbourg French National Theatre Schools. She collaborates with an international circle of artists and thinkers in the field of therapy, archetypal psychology and mythology.

See article Voice and Soul.

Linda Wise’s 1998 Founding Letter

Not so many years ago, voice training addressed principally the performing arts. Now, the voice and the capacity to "voice oneself" is acknowledged as an essential aspect of personal development and communication skills, in the corporate world, politics, therapy, education, medicine. For professional artists there are also greater demands for flexibility in vocal skills, as performers are required to move easily from classical theatre, to musicals, to dance-theatre, to film and television and to new forms of singing, from rock to contemporary opera.
My teaching stems from a wish to synthesize and transmit my experience as an actress, voice teacher and theatre director, with the recognition that one of the deepest creative sources of my work is the voice. Throughout my career, I have continued to give voice lessons to a wide variety of individuals ranging from opera singers, actors, dancers, adolescents, corporate managers, to people who say they 'have no voice', or, sing 'out of tune'.
My approach to the voice is rooted in my work with Roy Hart and the Roy Hart Theatre in the 70s and 80s, relativized and enlarged by the experience and insight of other teachers and disciplines. The explosion of interest in and knowledge about the voice in the last years has also shifted viewpoints and provoked a re-evaluation of methods and philosophies. It is my wish to create a training that addresses these questions, that encourages a spirit of enquiry, and where the priority is the individual, not the method.

The pioneering research on the extended voice begun by Alfred Wolfsohn and passed on to Roy Hart and the Roy Hart Theatre has a rich and varied history and, at times, the nostalgia for this legendary past can obscure the depth of current work and new developments. It often seems as if the history is 'the method', and philosophy enough. Neither Alfred Wolfsohn, nor Roy Hart established a methodology, and chose to pass on their views and experience within an initiatory model, very much in the spirit of the 60s and 70s. Now, as we move into the 21st century, over 30 years have passed since the creation of the Roy Hart Theatre and almost 25 years since the tragic death of its founder. Members of the Roy Hart Theatre have settled throughout the world. This has brought diversity and divisions, as well as a large number of teachers using the label "Roy Hart", inspired more or less directly by the original experience. Only the integrity of the individual teachers acts as warranty for the 'method'. The Roy Hart Theatre as a performing company and as an artistic label was officially dissolved in 1989. My own artistic projects go under the identity and responsibility of Pantheatre, a company founded in 1981, which I co-direct with Enrique Pardo. My teaching is also linked with other training programmes by teachers of the original Roy Hart Theatre, as well as with the Roy Hart International Artistic Centre at Château de Malérargues, of which I am an active member.
Paris, September 25, 1998