Globe-trotter Storyteller: Jean-Pierre Armand
Introduction
Jean-Pierre Armand began his career as a storyteller in the ‘90s, after many long years spent riding the waves as a sailor aboard an oil tanker. In the meantime he has lost none of his interest for the faraway, and today he brings these experiences into the stories he tells.
His tales beckon to us and let us travel through our imagination toward a past immemorial, filled with magic and poetry. After those years of rambling to the four corners of the world, Jean-Pierre Armand first took up theater and comedy before writing his own work. Then he chose an original, as much as a time-honored, way to convey it to his audience: the tale. It’s in this way that he’s able to construct an intimate universe during each performance on a stage with a Spartan décor. This has enabled him to establish a special rapport with the audience. “It’s a profession that differs from that of an actor. You don’t have the same rapport with the audience. At first, you’re alone and there’s no lighting effects, the house is smaller, the contact with the audience is more direct. It’s necessary to maintain a visual contact between the audience and the storyteller. The audience has to be able to see the storyteller, feel him breathe. Jean-Pierre Armand is able to hold on to the attention of an audience, young and old alike, in that way for more than an hour. Because his stories appeal to both children and adults and that, really, is the magic of storytelling: It allows him to entertain all by suggesting a certain form of literature, and does this by going beyond its limits.
JeanPierre Armand has appeared numerous times as part of French cultural programming abroad. He was able, in this same way, to share his stories in Mali, Senegal, Egypt, China, Hong Kong, Poland, and Hungary. All of these countries are also sources of material for his stories. At every stop on these different tours he has found a way to win over and seduce different audiences, but always ones in love with the French language. Here he is for the first time on this side of the Atlantic and with the same ardent desire to have his audience and his stories travel along with the current of his imagination.
From the press
Over the course of his travels he distilled his tales, but he also meets with diverse audiences and shares intense moments with them.
La Tribune Le Progrès, 14/03/2003
An hour and a half of poetry, with humor here and there, comical facial expressions, new developments that are just hinted at, shivers of delight, and an unavoidable final fall . . .” “Thank you, Monsieur Armand, for having found a simple, uncomplicated way of immersing us again in dream.
Passage from the LFI newspaper, Hong Kong
Tour program
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