The ELYSIUM THEATER
Alex Rose, Artistic Director
Elysium Laboratories, the brainchild of the Welch inventor-composer Phelix Lamark, was inaugurated in the Spring of 1864. The building was converted from a dilapidated storehouse in northern Paris into a full-service production and development studio. With a high-ceilinged shop in back and a 250-odd seat oratorium in front, the space was perfectly suited for the manufacture and demonstration of Lamark’s prolific output of sonic devices, experiments and ideas.
Elysium was crude in its accommodations. Creaky, wooden chairs sat on cold stone floors, sparsely covered by worn and porous throw rugs. There were no rooms as such; the many partitions had become so moldy that Lamark chose to tear down all but the bearing walls, leaving the cross beams and plumbing chase exposed. What dividers remained held tarnished, gilt-framed mirrors, large anatomical diagrams and faded mechanical schematics.
It is worth noting that none of Lamark’s creations were meant to belong in any canon or repertoire, as they were one-of-a-kind events. Rather, those receptive to his theatrical stagings simply found the experience pleasant, either for its puzzling ambiguity or its dream-like otherness.
The brief fame enjoyed by Elysium was cut short, however, when news of an epileptic child who’d attended an exhibition and asphyxiated as a result of an unaided seizure made the front page of La Fraternite. The audience, apparently hypnotized by Lamark’s spectacle, had failed to notice the convulsions and suffocated whimpers of the 9-year-old boy, and he died tragically the following evening.
That same night, a throng of wrathful zealots proceeded to picket Elysium Laboratories. They marched through the cobblestone streets, carrying torches and chanting oaths of vengeance. They shattered the theater’s windows, overturned the seats and smashed everything in sight. Shortly thereafter, what was left of Elysium was barricaded shut, and Lamark embarked on a journey back north, never to return.
In an effort to preserve the fading legacy of Elysium, the keepers of Hotel St. George, in collaboration with Lamark's biographer, Alex Rose, the composer David T. Little and sound designer James Sizemore, have endeavored to recreate a few of the sonic events an attendee might have heard there.
1. Whispers
2. Mechanical Butterflies
3. Temple of Music
4. Lamark's Workshop
5. Theme from "The Musical Illusionist"
More information on Phelix Lamark can be found in Alex Rose's collection of hypothetical histories, The Musical Illusionist.