Welcome to
Theatre company born from the tradition of the Roy Hart Theatre at Malérargues, it exists to carry out research and to produce performances in the field of the 'human voice' without limit.
Because theatre is the future.
About
Compagnie imagi_nation is an offspring of Roy Hart Theatre. Our essential creative inspiration continues to be the vocal research, originated over 100 years ago by Alfred Wolfsohn in Berlin and is based on a belief that our voices are very much bigger than we think, certainly bigger than we normally use, and that there is a profound connection between our voice and our self, which is in turn very much bigger than we realise or normally admit to. . At that time and perhaps still, the principle idea about the voice was that sounds were produced by the larynx and resonated in the head - mainly. To a large extent this is probably true, but the expression, the beauty and the quality that makes us want to listen comes from the body, the heart, the stomach, the genitals, even the knees, and from the soul. “The voice is the muscle of the soul”.
An actor’s instrument is himself/psyche and it must be investigated and lived to the full, which creates a strong and necessary bond between therapy and theatre. Because of this connection our work has psychological as well as artistic implications. Our objective is theatre - given that psychology is the study of forces within and shaping the psyche, and that theatre is the disciplined expression of these forces in an artistic form. The most important underlying question of all psychology is, “How to live one’s life as it demands to be lived?” thus our insistence on searching for those rare moments when one is genuinely touched by one’s own life. We are convinced that when the actor or singer manages to touch/meet himself, an audience will also be touched.
Performances
ZAUBER
The Magic Flute
Mozart’s opera through the prism of Roy Hart Theatre
Die Zauberflöte has been an integral part of the Roy Hart Theatre's research ever since Alfred Wolfsohn first inspiration of the extended "human voice" a hundred years ago. He insisted that everyone is capable of singing all the archetypal roles it contains, from the highest pitch of the Queen of the Night to the lowest classical note of Sarastro; that in each of us there is a lover, a victim, a hero, a madman, a sage, a dictator, a witch, an evil slave and more. Is there a way for the opinions of our archetypes to be fully lived and to coexist with those of others?
Direction: Ian Magilton Musical direction: Sašo Vollmaier, Orly Asody, Stephen Rivers-Moore With: Caroline Boersma, Jean-Luc Vareille. Emma Pannell, Anita Roksvåg, Rosa Lanati, Orly Asody, Stephan Koch, Ivan Midderigh and interns: Nicole Oskar, Xavier Michaud
Reviews
Linda Wise co-director of Panthéâtre
even the lightness of Papageno dressed with cupid’s arrow, could not deviate …from the “gravity” of the conflict Sarastro/Queen of the Night….perhaps the most motherly of Queens of the night looses her rage in the chaos of alcohol and Sarastro plunges each melody deeper into the caverns of his bass which was both simultaneously round and detached. An underworld beyond empathy.
The gorgeous little underworld gnomes in their T-shirts singing the chorus which up until now I have always found so irritating.
And Pamina – the beautiful silhouette that shows all her passion and despair in the magic circle – the anima figure almost silent until towards the end – caught and released in one beautiful aria where the musicians simply console, enabling us to appreciate the beauty of Mozart.
It took five years and Covid to find this essence but maybe that is the alchemy of time necessary to distill gold…..
Enrique Pardo co-director of Panthéâtre
extract from his blog, read the full version here.
…I found all the performers’ ultra-generosity, remarkably sustained, mature and never pandering to the audience (a feat with Mozart!), achieving expression of the richest level, especially vocal.
I did find two of the performers exceptional - and surprisingly, given their relatively recent involvement with performance. I thought Anglo Italian Rosa Lanati was going to steal the show - she did, the prelude - given the quality of her authority and humor; she, and her ‘forbidding’ voice had Amadeus (the immature brat according to Miloš Forman’s film) fully under control. Anita Roksvåg, was exceptional in an almost opposite manner. I told her, after the performance, that, given her Norwegian origins and Protestant iconoclasm, she succeeded in being sober and ‘true’ (neither Mozartian virtues), thanks to first-class complex acting. She drew out my emotionally hoarse “brava!”.
These remarks, which apply to the whole cast, call for unquestionable compliments to the director and his mise en scène : elegant, intelligent, perfect economical choices of presence and placing, and getting excellent vocal results from all the cast. Worthy of the best Poor Theatre, with a pinch of lighting luxuries. He was backed by four outstanding musicians.
Sašo Vollmaier(one of the outstanding musicians).
Dear Ian,
I send you my deep respect to do such a work you did and I am proud being there with you and the cast.
Ian’s Window
It is not a performance, nor a concert; It’s personal. it is me working on my voice and on my life, in the way I do most evenings. I work with songs rather than vocal exercises and try to discover them, to make sense of them and follow their story as I sing - The story is never the same.
I will try to ignore your presence... if you are there. Feel free to come and go,
Projects
Acis&Galatea
A professional production of Händel’s baroque opera in the spirit of Roy Hart Theatre.
Co-direction by Ian Magilton, Stephen Rivers-Moore and Saso Vollmaiel
on June 25 2024 we produced this:
Then on November 1 2024
A complete video is available on demand
An emotional journey, a story of pleasure, desire, love and murder, from which springs eternal hope - an archetypal synthesis of good and evil.
A very eclectic team, bringing together musicians of experimental jazz and baroque music, actors of physical and masked theatre, opera singers and dancers. Our aim is to use the tools of theatre and opera to create a sensory, sensual and electric experience...
From the outset, the Roy Hart Theater's work has focused on the unconscious through the prism of the voice. This work has been strongly influenced by the psychoanalyst C.G. Jung, who spent his life writing about the links between archetypal myths, the collective imagination and the unconscious. It is within this same line of thought that we wish to approach this work: an archetypal story that speaks to our unconscious.
To achieve this, the voice will be our main tool, using the work of sixty years of vocal research to bring out more of the shadow already present in Handel's at first sight very luminous work.
‘There is no light without shadow and no psychic totality without imperfection. To flourish, life requires not perfection but fullness. Without imperfection, there can be no progression, no ascent’. C.G. Jung
Because theatre is the future
this show must tour!
Book
The origin, philosophy and work of Roy Hart Theatre is profound, in particular its research into the extended ‘human voice’, and it has been the subject of many books and serious dissertations. Yet the story of Roy Hart Theatre at Malérargues has been equally dramatic, tragic, comic, touching, thrilling and entertaining as anything they have ever done on stage.
In 1974 forty-seven members of Roy Hart Theatre began their move from the gentile Hampstead suburb of London to a huge bankrupt ruin of a chateau in the south of France, filled with wild ideas and an idealistic passion for theatre and life. You can imagine what happened - actually, you can’t, it’s almost unimaginable, you’ll just have to read about it.
Ian Magilton, one of the founders of Malérargues, who has perhaps loved it more than anyone, tells the story personally. He aims for a book worth reading by anyone, not just by students of theatre and voice, or lovers of Malérargues.
Oh say, can you see
By the day’s dying light
How our freedoms are taken
As we fade out of sight
With our rights disappearing
And division enforced
They call it protection
When they silence our voice
And the power they claim
As they scare and control
It’s to keep us all safe
In the land that they stole
Oh say, does that banner
Still wave in the air?
As a symbol of freedom
That is no longer there.
Blog
unSocial Media
19 November 2024 !an Magilton
I have opinions about everything. But I try to keep them to myself, because I don’t have enough vanity to think that someone else might be interested in them. There is something particularly vain in social media: Twitter/X, TikTok, Telegram, Instagram and all the other grams and things - even websites and blogs!. Facebook gives it away with its Like/Dislike axis?
and besides as Dylan said, “propaganda all is phoney “
BUT then, there is this…
LISTEN TO THIS:
Who could believe that our little Mariana, daughter of Rosemary and Jonathan and beloved child of so many Malérargues summers could be so powerful, so direct!
I am proud of her