Weaving magic with words

Martine Quentric-Seguy brings life and soul
to every tale, embellishing it with elaborate expressions and sweeping gestures.

SHALINI UMACHANDRAN

CLASSICAL STORYTELLER:
never tells the same story in the same way

Photo M. KARUNAKARAN

"The audience is most important to story-telling, because without an audience, I'd have to tell the stories to myself and that would be no fun at all," says Martine Quentric-Seguy, a French professional story-teller and painter.
"Fun" is a word she uses often to describe what she does for a living. And fun is what she seems to be having when she tells her stories, embellishing them with elaborate expressions and sweeping gestures.
"Most stories have a thread running through them," she says. "I pull out the stories from here," she says with a hand on her heart, "but they're more fun to tell if you can link one to another. So one nice, big story, is really a collection of many, many stories."
Timeless
Martine is a classical storyteller, which means she never tells the same story in the same way. "I know nothing by heart. I just need to remember certain words," she says unrolling a scroll on which she has written down key words to lead her from one story to the next. She believes all stories are timeless, and being a classical storyteller gives her the advantage of being able to adapt any story to any audience. "The same story can be relevant to an older or a younger audience. I just have to change the words to suit their age," she says.
"A storyteller is one who brings life, soul and experience to the tale," says Martine, who first visited India in 1969 and has been living in Pondicherry for the past three years. She's travelled the world telling and collecting tales but says 75 per cent of her stories are from India. "I choose a story because it speaks to me. If I do not like a story, I cannot tell it."
Martine has been listening to and telling stories for as long as she can remember. "I remember being punished as a little girl because I told the class a story when the teacher went out." In Brittany, France, she says everyone told stories. "If I asked a simple question like 'why do I have to wash my hands before dinner?' there would be story to explain it. Every question was answered with a story or a song. I cannot remember stories not being part of life."
Educational tool
But Martine, a psychotherapist, decided to become a full-time raconteur on stage only about ten years ago. "I would use stories to draw patients out so that they would talk to me. Being a psycho-therapist has helped me understand emotions better - because I rely heavily on emotion as a storyteller, both my own and other's."
She explains that stories are, and have always been, great educational tools. Apart from the moral the story imparts, storytelling can be used to teach language and speaking skills, build confidence and express emotion.
"People telling stories are expressing something of themselves. So it can help children understand and express emotions better. A story doesn't have to be real or logical, anything can happen. And this gives them endless possibilities. It is the best way to teach them that they can achieve anything they dream of".
Storytelling, to her, is about sharing experiences rather than getting a message across.
"If people just enjoy my stories, that's okay. If they take something with them: good. Sometimes, the story will come back to them later on; sometimes they will forget all about it. The important thing is: they have been given a seed that could help them later on. Story-telling is about telling true life in disguise."