NOAH PIKES
NOW IN A NEW SECOND EDITION
George Steiner called him a genius. Harold Pinter saw an enormous creative intelligence, Peter Brook a unique theatre researcher. Composers Maxwell Davies, Henze and Stockhausen were all inspired by his six octave voice, and R. D. Laing, founder of "anti-psychiatry," refused to hop, step and jump for him. His name was Roy Hart. He also created an artistic community from fifty diverse and disaffected individuals that strove to bring art into daily living through a unique use of the voice that broke barriers. That group became Roy Hart Theatre and Pikes was a founding member of it. Largely rejected by Britain's cultural establishment, Hart's work and group were admired in Spain and France. DARK VOICES shows that the current interest in voice - its origins, its potential for extension, for healing and personal development - began with the pioneering work of Hart and his teacher Alfred Wolfsohn. A German Jew from Berlin, Wolfsohn nearly died in the trenches of W.W.I, suffered from "war neurosis," then found a cure through his own voice. Passing on his discoveries to others, Wolfsohn inspired the now celebrated paintings of Charlotte Salomon (exhibited at London's Royal Academy in Autumn 1999). He escaped to London in 1939 and continued working there. DARK VOICES quotes both from interviews and Wolfsohn's own unpublished writings to present his vision of "the voice of the future" and its central place in our human identity. DARK VOICES tells Wolfsohn's and Hart's remarkable stories, their ideas, practices and achievements, as well as of Pikes' own journey through a dark night of the soul. Born in traumatic circumstances to a schizophrenic working-class mother in war-torn London Pikes' tells the story of his wannabe-beatnik 60s adolescence in search of personal meaning and identity. On the brink of suicide, the I-Ching tells him he is in "the Abyss beyond the Abyss." Hart leads Pikes to realise that his long sought means of expression lies literally under his nose - his voice. With it Pikes creatively harnesses the energy of his suppressed anger and reconnects to lost aspects of himself. The first volume of DARK VOICES ends in 1975 when the group sells everything and moves into a half-ruined chateau in a remote part of southern France, and shortly after tragedy strikes the group. A second volume will relate how they survived this tragedy and became an internationally acclaimed theatre company also valued for their teaching; the aspect of their work that continues into the present day.
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