Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Manhattan: The Voice After Artaud and Grotowski

A Free Lecture and Demonstration. March 21st @ 7pm

During a lecture presentation you will understand why the voice seems so complex and uncontrollable. Why it is so personal and emotional; its function as a mirror of our personality, not simply as a passive picture of who we think we are.


Primitive voice intends to change the relation between directors, actors, and their craft. It aims to provide a set of tools based on awakening, taking support, taking risk... in one word, listening. A different way of listening. Through this way of listening, finding new sources of inspiration, other than the repetitive sources all around us, becomes possible.

In this work, staring at the stage as a mirror of society, the parallel with the voice as a mirror of the human psyche emerges. And, it offers another approach to psychology, physicality and aesthetics.

Some of the themes Jean-Rene Toussaint will explore include the different families of voices. The vertical voice vs. the horizontal voice. The use of horizontal voice onstage, which has created a socio-cultural corruption where performers are busy providing answers, repeating and judging. This creates an environment where the public is able to hide their needs and is not invested or moved. In contrast, there is the use of the vertical voice. A voice which is rooted in physical nature, time, anscestry. It is the creative, natural voice. How can that voice become readily available to artists?

Theater doesn't have to aim to be political... It already is and has always been. Stemwerk/Primitive Voice has for 30 years being proposing themes, concepts and tools that have been present in subversive theories of the last century (Appia, Craig, Artaud, Grotowski.) Those voices are still alive ... Let's listen to them...

Jean-Rene Toussaint has been inspired by the life and work of Antonin Artaud and by director Jerzy Grotowski, both artists who found in the voice a particular sort of material to fuel the theater. In the 80's Toussaint met some members of The Roy Hart International Theater and this meeting confirmed his interest in his double direction: theater and voice. Around the same time he was offered the opportunity to work with deaf children where he concretely discovered what are the main parts of his particular art of voicing - the primitive voice. The place of the body, the importance of listening, and several voices in a group building the complexity of an individual human being are some of the integral contributions of primitive voice to the theater, voice teachings and therapy.

There will be a demonstration on extraordinary voices (4 tunes at the same time, mongolian voices, tibetan voices and more) and the freedom of a body which breathes as freely as he is voicing. Actors, singers and performers in general will be amazed, but also therapists will recognize the power of intuition, empathy and other 'energies' in this work.

To RSVP, or for info on group workshops in April, contact: primitivevoice@gmail.com / 646-641-7353

Date: March 21st (Wednesday)

Time: 7pm

Location: Theaterlab, 137 West 14th St. New York, NY 10011

Cost: Free

http://www.primitivevoice.com

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