Pier Mayer-Dantec

Who am I ?

Actor, director, musician and writer

After fighting my way into music as early as my teenage years, in order to get a living - and not to lose my strength and purity in an occupation which “pays”, yet is an insult to creativity, gnaws at the heart and soul, and altogether stifles sensitivity - I came back to the stage.
In my early youth, I was literally engulfed in studies which I put an end to after five years of gruelling labours, barely in time to avoid plunging into madness and decrepitude, and in order to devote myself to music. From then on, my family stopped providing for me. I did one odd job after another, and had my share of cold and hunger, which, in one’s fearless youth can form you without deforming you, better than many a school would. Independence has a heavy price and you have to pay for it, sooner or later, with your very flesh and blood. The sooner the better.

Theater

I did my classes in the Théâtre Incarnat, a theatrical company run by Lucette Mouline, a writer, playwright, director, and a professor of Literature and Performing Arts at the University of Bordeaux III. At the same time, I studied Literature (Lettres Modernes) and went as far as the Maîtrise. In the 1980s I played in a number of shows in Bordeaux, notably in “Barbe-Bleue”, a creation by Lucette Mouline, adapted from Perrault.

I left the company, urged on by a wild love for Brittany, for its poets and its beaches, its unforgettable fragrances and its music, and its language, too, which I learned and eventually taught. In short, I desired to absorb the spirit of magic that dwells in that country inhabited by legends, to breathe in the mystical fragrance of the infinite, such as it is exhaled by Taliesin and Xavier Grall, among others, while I drank in the melodies of Dan Ar Braz.
But I was yet to bow to necessity, and to know hunger, and to teach French for a living. In my classrooms, the rostrum became a stage and the students novice poets. How could it be otherwise, knowing that these students, driven by the unshakable spirit of their youth, were eager to set free the world of their thoughts in deflagrations, that their eyes were hankering for dazzling, infectious lights. Later on, in Morlaix,

I did some street theatre, performed for children and, in particular, did a one-hour one-man show entitled “Le Cabaret du Bleu Silence”. It is a poem some 680 lines long, provided with a soundtrack, which I wrote and in which I played all six parts in turn.

“Céline, Voyage au long de la Mort, à Crédit” was another show of mine. Based on the first two novels of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, “Voyage au bout de la nuit” and “Mort à crédit”, it lasted one hour and a half and was staged in Morlaix.

I am currently working on a new one-man show. I did some dubbing, too, and have worked for TV Breizh, providing the Breton version of motion pictures.

I can dub in English, Breton, German, Spanish, Italian, and play roles written in those languages. I love imitating a variety of accents, and every kind of original sound as well – which is partly a hangover from the time when I sang the Blues, and particularly the result of my stage training with Lucette Mouline. The range of my voice covers three octaves.
Beside dramatic art, I trained as a folk musician. In fact I was a musician before going on the stage : a Folk and Blues singer, mouth-organ player and guitarist. I did courses in guitar with Soig Siberil, and in Gwerz and Kan-Ha-Diskan (Breton musical styles) with Erik Marchand in the 1990s.

I was a dancer, too, with the Korollerien Montroulez. So far, I have written a number of plays, tales, short-stories, poems, haikus, essays, film reviews and various texts on musicians – some of which are in Breton and published in the magazine Al Liamm. The breath of life, imagination, novelty, magic, improvisation, poetry made alive in man and in the world ; the art of giving and being true – to oneself and to those whom our heart has chosen – these are the vital things for me.

Films

Lately played Konomor in “Prosez Konomor”(“The trial of Konomor”) part of a Breton serial SAGA BRITTIA. Konomor, King of Brittany, was considered as some Breton Blue-Beard, and accused of the murder of his six wives.

Having noticed the lack of roles in North Brittany, France, Pier is now living near Nantes. He just played in this famous big city the leading part of the movie "Photoshop", and recently turned two other short films and a middle length movie, which are to go out pretty soon, and a new audio fiction “The factory of dreams”. He also can be seen in a full-length film of SF, "Hector avwakening", by Franck Jouneau, in which he embodies the character of a revolutionary professor who tries to knock down a crazy and disembodied civilization. Pier will also shoot three other features, in which a comedy, for the same director, the eclectic Franck Jouneau, during the years to come.

Writer

In close collaboration with the pianist/composer/arranger Giuseppe Adamo, Pier Mayer-Dantec is now working on the scenario of a musical, an original work giving an acute look on our current society while valuing the courage and the solar choice of the singing.

The detailed script will be delivered in September, 2013 for presentation to the authorities of the town of St Étienne, where the entertainment will be shown for the first time. To have written the scenario, Pier will also play in this musical.

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