Vardan Petrosyan & His Biography | Armenian Actor in France

Vardan Petrosyan is a well-known Armenian actor not only in Armenia but also in France, whose one-man shows, performances and movies always leave the audience satisfied and entertained.

Nowadays there are not many actors whose theatrical performances have a huge request and are highly expected.

Vardan Petrosyan is one of the outstanding representatives of such actors in Armenia.

Aside from being an outstanding actor, he is also known a brilliant scriptwriter, and parodist. Entertaining and comedy performances, dramatic shows, classical dramas, contemporary plays; this is just the small portion of his creative life.

Vardan Petrosyan is justly considered as an excellent Armenian actor with rich biography and remarkable career path.

Things You Need to Know About Vardan Petrosyan

As a real actor, the art for Vardan Petrosyan is displayed in its various branches. It is not a coincidence that he has not only rich and captivating biography, but also impressive career path as well.

However, his biography is filled with ups and downs and probably some people have ambiguous and mixed fillings about him. But that doesn’t keep Vardan’ Petrosyan’s permanent audience to continue to love and admire his professionalism.

Now let’s take a look to some of the most interesting and notable facts about Vardan Petrosyan’s biography and carrier.

Early Years of Vardan Petrsoyan’s Career

To start with, let’s mention that the actor graduated from the Terlemezian State College of fine arts in 1983. Unfortunately, he was only 22 years old when his father passed away. After this he served in the Soviet Army for two years.

When Vardan Petrosyan returned from the Army in 1985 he immediately initiated a theatrical troupe which was called “The Young Hedgehogs”.

He established it by the help of his friends, and especially along with Vahram Sahakian, a prominent Armenian dramatist, actor and film director.

Their initiative obtained the official status in Armenia in 1988 and is known as “Vozniner” (which means “hedgehogs” in Armenian) private theatre studio.

During the beginning of the 1990s, Vardan Petrosyan wrote and staged over half a dozen of performances that boomed the theatrical life of Armenia by their political forwardness.

Overall, this actor has several performances that address to such serious issues as the Armenian Genocide, foreign affairs and the problems and challenges of the political life of Armenia.

Vardan Petrosyan’s Life in France

The next stage in Vardan Petrosyan’s biography is devoted to his life and career in France. It was back in 1990 when he first toured in France, Paris with his “Hedgehog” troupe.

Because of the bad economic condition that was in Armenia in the beginning of 1990s, Vardan Petrosyan moved to France.

Now he holds a dual citizenship, both Armenian and French. What happened in France was extremely surprising even for him.

There, he attained a huge success and managed not to vanish in a city that had so many theatres that was just not possible to imagine in Armenia.

The most important thing was that his life in France was not just a survival but, in fact, he found his unique place in Paris. He participated in French director Robert Osein’s performances as a very successful actor. Now he is also one of the close friends of Osein.

Armenian beloved singer, songwriter and actor Charles Aznavour once visited one of his performances in France.

Vardan Petrosyan’s greatest virtue is that you can laugh at himself.Charles Aznavour

However, Vardan Petrosyan’s life in France was not as easy as you can imagine. For him, leaving Armenia, his friends and family was quite harsh and difficult. Once, on this occasion he said:

The feelings of guilt were torturing me because I was separated from my family, being a Christian believer, moreover, quite fanatical believer.

It was the stage that really saved him during that period.

Tragic Accident that Turned Vardan Petrosyan’s Life Upside Down

On 20^th of October in 2013, a tragic car accident happened with Vardan Petrosyan on Yeghvard-Yerevan road.

As it is said Vardan Petrosyan in his BMW crushed with a VAZ 2121-model vehicle. As a result, four survivors were seriously injured along with the well-known actor Vardan Petrosyan. Unfortunately, two sixteen-year-old boys Edgar and Eduard died in the result of the car crash.

Afterwards Petrosyan was sentenced to five years imprisonment on manslaughter charges by a lower court in the Kotayk province. Nevertheless, he claimed his innocence pointing that he did not violate any of the traffic laws.

He also noted that the driver of the other car just gave him no chance to change his direction.

However, Petrosyan covered the expenses of burial and memorial services of two children and paid for some of the medical needs of the injured as well. The decision to keep him in prison aroused various topics of conversations.

Numerous supporters of Vardan Petrosyan signed a petition for his release as they thought it was a retribution for his political satire.

In the list of his supporters there were not only his fans and activists on Facebook, but also some famous public figures and celebrities.

Even the prominent chansonnier Charles Aznavour joined the petition and made a note in his Facebook profile asking to help Vardan Petrosyan and sign the petition. Likewise, Charles Aznavour’s daughter Seda Aznavour sent a letter to the President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan asking to release Petrosyan.

On September 2, 2015, he was released from the jail and continues to receive the rest of his punishment outside the borders of the prison.

Interesting and Fun Facts about Vardan Petrosyan

Vardan Petrosyan’s son Hayk Petrosyan is also a well-known public figure in Armenia. He followed his father’s footsteps in art and is a singer, actor, songwriter and producer as well. In 2009 he participated in “The Armenian Superstar” show.

By the way, that year Vardan Petrosyan was one of the jury members of the show. But many people didn’t even suspect that Hayk was his son.

Vardan also had no idea that his son auditioned for the show. After his son’s audition Petrosyan publicly announced that he will leave that show.

He found that it would be disrespectful and unfair to the rest of the contestants. But within the framework of the show Hayk proved himself as a very talented artist.

In 2010 he presented to the audience his “Haykastres” (Hayk’s stress) stand up show. As a deserved son of his father he likes to note that “My biggest anti-stresses are the stage and the performances.” He also staged some other performances, such as “If I were a dad” and some others.

Returning back to Vardan Petrosyan we should also note one more interesting fact about his biography and interests. As a really talented artist and actor he is involved in various spheres of the art.

He plays many musical instruments: piano, guitar, bass, trumpet, harmonica, and flute. Aside from all these he is also a painter and a singer. A medley of arts combined in one man, this is Vardan Petrosyan.

Theatrical Plays and Movies of Vardan Petrosyan

Those who admire Vardan Petrosyan’s works and unique style confirm that his performances are like mirrors of present days.

You can find the grotesque and absurd things that you are even scared to confess yourself. Here are some of his most important and noteworthy plays and movies that are well worth watching.

Vardan Pertosyan’s Play “Ladies and gentlemen, 50/50”

Vardan Petrosyan’s performances are not only always in time, but also have a unique ability to make some predictions that soon become a reality. This kind of a brilliant example is “Ladies and gentlemen, 50/50” that was held in Hakob Paronyan Musical Comedy Theater since 2012.

The performance was as always about nowadays life, which had entirely new quality and new representation. It is in the genre of political satire and is composed of two parts, 50 and 50 minutes.

After his comments and interpretations, you look at the internal political situations of Armenia with a sense of humor. And this is the best variant of psychological therapy for the audience and society.

All his performances in general and particularly this one brought a new spirit and quality not only in his creative life, but also in the Armenian theatre.

This is not an exaggeration as numerous renowned actors and theater critics have already praised his game, his human type and versatility.

Vardan Petrosyan during the play Ladies and Gentleman 5050

Vardan Petrosyan’s Play “Sex Horror”

In 2011 Vardan Petrosyan presented to the audience his new performance called “Sex Horror” that was devoted to the complexes and problems of the modern youth. By the way, he had other variants of the title for the performance, such as “Don’t be afraid”, “Jesus is with us” but he found that the most proper title is “Sex Horror”.

Overall, it is about self-deception and human relations. His goal in this work was not to educate the public, but to help achieve the self-acknowledgement. The performance is really very sharp, but at the same time it is fun as well.

It is a story of two classmates, a businessman and a prostitute, who have an unexpected meeting. In this performance, he compares the prostitute-client relationship with the relationship between the government and the people.

According to the plot, the exciting and dramatic meeting between these two people, who loved each other during the school years, suddenly turns into a government-society relationship.

Vardan Petrosyan’s Play “Rise”

As soon as the “Rise” was staged, it was evaluated as one of the sharpest, influential and compelling performances of the time by almost all critics. It is dedicated to the Armenian Genocide. As he once said, it was extremely hard to make jokes with this tragic topic, but he knew that it was kind of a medicine.

It is both tragic and entertaining performance. You will ask yourself if it makes any sense. But the combination of these two incompatible genres is quite reasonable, because, as he considers, one can’t hear about the tragedy more than for 10-15 minutes.

Therefore, he thought that this heavy material should be given little by little, so that the audience will be able to adopt and understand. It seemed impossible to present such a serious topic of genocide through the humor.

However, the positive feedbacks and reactions of the audience and media showed that there are no closed or impossible topics for a talented man.

Vardan Petrosyan’s Movie “The Line”, 2016

The film “The line” tells about 1990s Yerevan and Artsakh war period combined with the life drama of the youth. In general, it highlights the importance of the human values, friendship, love and patriotism.

The heroes of this film are four close friends. Two of them take part in Artsakh liberation war, risking their lives for the motherland and its peace.

The film brings some contradictory parallels between love and war.This is a love story that enlivens, encourages and gives strength and power in difficult times.

Father and son Petrosyans are also featured in this film. Hayk Petrosyan is one of the leading heroes, while Vardan Petrosyan has a supporting role.

This is, actually, his first public work after the fatal car accident.