pascale ben

my work

I was born in 1947. My life's path changed completely the day in 1969 that I met the Roy Hart Theatre, an avant-garde company based then in London. I saw people full of energy, who used their voices in an incredible way, with freedom and a deep sense of listening and working together. Some months later, I was invited to witness rehearsals and meetings in the presence of Roy Hart. Soon after that I joined the company in London. I had just turned twenty-one; the age one became, at that time, officially an adult.

I became very interested in the long discussions we had, sometimes about a dream, or about a question like the one Roy asked us all to answer after reading Janov's book The Primal Scream:  “Why is it no use to go and scream our pent-up frustrations in the street?”

There were more than fifty essays written on the subject, and we read them all together in our work studio, day after day.

Roy felt that to “scream in the street” did not bring about any understanding of why one screams in the first place and there was therein no possibility of evolution. Like a child who has a good cry and forgets, it will necessarily happen again and without changing anything whatsoever.

We sincerely believed we could push the frontiers of our being and become more human that way.

I still believe it.

Pascale is a voice teacher, actor, singer, and storyteller. She lives in France and speaks French and English.