Pantheatre Master Classes & the ‘Roy Hart’ Certification
Enrique Pardo
Response to a colleague friend, actor, teacher and voice theatre director at a high-ranking US University - and experienced in Roy Hart voice work, privately, workshops and performance directed by a Roy Hart colleague. She would like to obtain the Roy Hart teacher certification.
Paris, March 19, 2023
The question
“… do you have a video of your canonical lesson master class to share w me? Before I film lessons with my individual student, I want to be clear on parameters…”
My Answer :
On your question re
Canonical (Singing) Lesson (‘after’ Roy Hart).
The answer is in the literature on the Pantheatre website.
Especially on
This is a summary for you (as part of the master classes cycle and of my ‘mentor-
ship’: a
casuistic way of navigating - a professional
ship.)
- There is no such thing as a Canonical Singing Lesson, except as a deontological anchor, once you have understood it in terms of « the spirit of singing » after (according to) Roy Hart.
- Nevertheless, I consider that there is a referential model, and, for me, it is psychoanalytical, of the Freudian kind : ideally (i.e. canonically) without intervention (induction, suggestion, seduction, imposition, showing examples, etc.) from the teacher, EXCEPT through the piano, and then, carefully played-down, mostly.
Alfred Wolfsohn set this model up on the basis of his World War One terrible experiences, a post-war (and post-trauma) period of musical ‘self-therapy’ in Italy, and influenced by the period’s psychosomatic theories (early 20th c.), and he did so, in my view, by assembling two models :
-
- The classical opera singing teacher/lesson, with all its prestige and pres-tics (fetish attitudes i.e. tics). And with the piano as ultimate (colonial) monument (again, fetish) of high musical operatic European culture.
- Freud’s model of the one-hour session, silent, seated behind the patient who lies on a couch describes an analyst-teacher not wanting to influence the pupil-patient with his own emotional tics and twitches. The divan setting with oriental carpets, Greek archeological statuettes, etc. is Turkish Viennese; Xavier Papaïs says that sessions are one hour long because that is the time it took Freud to smoke a cigar! Papaïs is a free Lacanian; Lacan is famous for his three-minutes sessions: « The unconscious has been constellated, enough. » This is no joke IF its authority (and charisma) is deeply understood - here we are talking Depth Psychology (and Shamanism) - and, for me, this is should be the “advanced” training.
- Roy Hart practiced Wolfsohn’s model in his own theatre-inclined early private lessons (I have this from Kaya who worked with both). Roy met Wolfsohn in the late 1950’s, and became his pupil, and later putative inheritor. (He was not the only one.) Wolfsohn died in 1962. Around 1970, I heard Roy declare formally that the work had now been passed to him. He said this on the basis of a dream he had.
The master classes series and the videos are Linda’s and my way to set up dialogical and critical reflections on the practice and on the theories involved. The point, for me, certainly, is
casuistic : how does the putative teacher (that adjective again) adapt psychologically to each case (i.e. casuistically) - in the spirit of Roy Hart? These are ‘floating’ parameters. And there will be a moment when casuistics will demand anti-canonical moves. And, in training, this requires careful dialogues (also of the psychoanalytical kind - like talking about dreams. I will soon develop what I consider, today; to be the links between dreams-work and performance-work, and their implications in voice pedagogy ‘after’ Roy Hart.)
I will also develop other subjects (remind me of them...):
- On the use of the "psychoanalytic model" and its legitimacy..
- On the use and importance of Mimesis (imitation of a master and/or a model. For example, Alcibiades loved the master (Socrates) but not so much the model - the Socratic method called maieutics: midwifery and (re)birth.
- Why the Freudian model, when, being Hillmanian (or even Hillmaniac), the model should be rather Jungian? Good question.
