THEATRE AT CHATEAU D'AIX
7 August - 15 August
A Play in a Week
It’s quite special when the craft shifts you and you are held in it by such loving people like you all. It’s been deeply moving to share this week with each of you and your art Selena Bouri, theatre participant 2024
In 2024, running parallel with the piano course, we launched a theatre project, A Play in a Week. We created the conditions in which actors and musicians, knowing little of each other's craft, could witness a different mode of performance from their own, and hence recognize the fundamentals which they share.
The project replicated the practice of repertory theatre: intensive rehearsal building to a public performance. The play chosen was Harold Pinter's The Lover, directed by Oliver Bennett and Florence Roberts, with a cast of actors from all over the world: Greece, Spain, Lebanon, South Africa, Hungary and the UK.
Actor, Performer, Pianist
Music & Theatre at Chateau d'Aix is a unique venture in cross-arts collaboration. The close proximity of actors and musicians reveals the common ground between two different art forms and enables insights into the nature of performance.
The project is an exciting opportunity for young actors and musicians entering the profession to broaden their skills in a secluded environment which is at once challenging and enabling.
The Musicality of Acting - rhythm, tone, pitch
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it, trippingly on the tongue – Hamlet
Just as a pianist can parallel the role of actor – music as speech, musical structure as narrative – so an actor can experience the musicality of language, the vitality of meaning imparted by rhythm and timbre. In intensive daily workshops for actors, and master classes for pianists, these fundamentals of craft and artistry are explored in the moment.
If you just let a play speak, it may not make a sound. If what you wish is for a play to be heard, then you must conjure its sounds from it – Peter Brook
Application and Auditions
Applicants should provide a full cv, detailing training and experience. This can be uploaded onto the booking form in pdf format or sent with a covering letter via email: Theatre.Chateau.Daix@gmail.com
The first series of auditions will be via Zoom in April. Full details of the audition requirements will be sent on application, along with details of the play to be performed.
Further details can be found on the Courses page.
Tutors
A Play in a Week 2025 will be led by a team with long experience of directing, acting and teaching in the world of European theatre and include classes on mask work, rhythm, pure movement, and the craft of acting.
I just want to say how truly affected I have been by the work, space and people that make Chateau d'Aix a reality for artists. Thanks for curating such a week for musicians and actors! Emma Zadow, actor participant, UK 2024
Under certain circumstances music may be something that is not music, but speech – Friedrich Nietzsche
Paul Roberts, the artistic director at Chateau d'Aix, has led numerous workshops in Europe and America on the theme Pianist as Actor (explored most recently in his new book Reading Franz Liszt, Revealing the Poetry Behind the Music). Over a number of years he has invited theatre colleagues to contribute cross-arts classes at his piano summer school in France: notably Wendy Allnutt, actor and former Head of Movement at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, has given classes on movement, dance and mask work. The experience for pianists, in both the amateur and advanced classes, has proved revelatory.
Wendy Allnutt will be joined at Chateau d'Aix 2025 by acclaimed writer and director Oliver Bennett, and actors Florence Roberts and Grace Andrews (see Tutors, below).
Music & Theatre at Chateau d’Aix is the logical outcome of a process begun by Paul Roberts several decades ago in this sublime corner of rural France.
Practicing theatre surrounded by nature was magical, and the stunning scenery, delicious food and hospitality were unforgettable. I left completely refreshed and truly enriched in my craft – it was an inspiring and transformative experience. Iris Papatheodorou, theatre participant 2024, Greece
TUTORS
Wendy Allnutt
Wendy trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama. She held the post of Head of Movement at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama for 25 years and is a founder member of L’Oltrarno Acting School in Florence. Other teaching credits include: Colorado College USA, Conservatoire Stratford Ontario, Canada, Penn State summer schools, Laboratorio Internationale Teatro Degli Astrussi in Montalcino/St Mineato, l’Accademia Silviov D’Amico, Rome, LAMDA, Colby London Programme, BESG and BADA.
Wendy has worked extensively as an actress, including West End, RSC, repertory theatre and tours across the USA, UK and Sweden. Her film credits include: Oh What a Lovely War, When Eight Bells Toll, Tales from Beyond the Grave, All Coppers Are, Priest of Love, Wuthering Heights, and Il Rosario. She is best known as Jennifer, Ronnie Corbett’s fiancé in Sorry, and Wendy, the ex-wife in Dear John. Other TV includes The Regiment, Rough Justice, Juliet Bravo, The Bill and many others.
Wendy was Master of Movement at Shakespeare’s Globe 1st season in London and more recently for Henry V1 parts 1, 2 and 3. She is currently movement tutor at Fontainebleau School of Acting.
Oliver Bennett
Oliver, writer, actor and director, received his training at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in London. He has worked in film, theatre and television for many years. His first full-length play Europe After the Rain was winner of the Mercury Playwright Award and shortlisted for Out Of Joint’s WiT Award and the Papatango Playwright Award. It was produced at the Mercury Theatre in April 2018 and described as a “feverish, fiercely relevant satire...a highly promising debut” and “a darkly surreal, highly theatrical exploration of the world we live in now” (The Stage). It has since been translated into Russian, and in 2020 was performed at the Goethe Institute.
In 2018, with director Vladimir Shcherban, Oliver set up HUNCHtheatre with the aim of mixing European and British theatre aesthetics and practices. Their celebrated production of Mikhail Lermontov’s novel A Hero of Our Time was performed at the Edinburgh Festival, London's Arcola, and at theatres in St Petersburg, Cologne and Mogliev. The play was listed as one of the best pieces of theatre of 2018 by Broadway World, hailed as “a vision of what theatre should be” (The Spectator), and “a blistering feat of storytelling” (The Stage). Oliver's acclaimed one man show Pass the Hat played in London's West End in 2022 and again in 2024.
Oliver recently ran a six-week playwriting course in London with The Base Creates.
Florence Roberts
Florence trained as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. She has since worked in theatre, screen and radio. Notable theatre credits include critically-acclaimed The Forsyte Saga, which premiered at The Park Theatre in London Autumn 2024, Losing Venice & French Without Tears at the Orange Tree Theatre, BU21 at Trafalgar Studios and Shakespeare In Love at the Noel Coward Theatre. She was nominated in the Off-West-End Awards for Best Female Performance for her role in Punts at Theatre 503. In 2019, she travelled from Soho to St. Petersburg and Cologne with HUNCHtheatre in their acclaimed production of A Hero Of Our Time.
TV & film credits include Miss Scarlet & The Duke (PBS/Alibi); Holby City (BBC); Dan? (Winner of the Shorts at Raindance Film Festival); short film The Lost Scot and the independent feature Silent Night.
As a writer Florence’s first short film Getting To Know You, in which she also stars, was recently selected by NoBudge film festival for emerging filmmakers in Los Angeles.
In 2023 she guest-featured for In A Landscape: Classical Music in the Wild in Oregon, U.S., reading poetry and prose alongside pianist Hunter Noack. She has also read for Words & Music and Free Thinking on BBC Radio 3.
Florence recently completed a Masters degree in Classical Civilisation with distinction.
Grace Andrews
Grace Andrews trained as an actor at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. Acting credits include: The Forbidden Zone (Schaubühne), Peer Gynt (LSO), Tomorrow I Was Always a Lion (Belarus Free Theatre), The Winter’s Tale (Cheek by Jowl), Hamlet and Romeo & Juliet (Actors from the London Stage), and Macbeth (Sophie Fiennes/Cheek by Jowl). Her international teaching includes work at Fontainebleau School of Acting (Paris), Ensatt L’École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théatre (Lyon), and Prima del Teatro (Pisa).
Her international teaching includes work at Fontainebleau School of Acting (where she is currently Head of Programmes and Practice), Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Mountview, Ensatt L’École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théatre (Lyon), and Prima del Teatro (Pisa). As an Acting Tutor she holds an MA in Actor Training and Coaching from The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Her research investigates the tension between safe space and identity in effective actor training.
Grace Andrews at Fontainebleau School of Acting
Reviews
Some of my bravest, most honest, and raw work happened with Grace Andrew's guidance Faith Alibi, student (Guildhall School of Music & Drama)
Florence Roberts is as engaging as the naive June Forsyte in the first part as she is as the unrepentantly straying Annette in the second The Forsyte Saga, October 2024 (The Times)
Florence Roberts has an unmistakeable sprinkle of stardust about her BU21 (London Evening Standard)
A compelling story, created by a mesmerising performer Oliver Bennett as writer/performer in Pass the Hat (Reviews Hub)
The finest of story-telling, full of humour and insight, Pass the Hat proves to be quietly profound (Once a Week Theatre)