Maybe it's because of Saroyan, the American literary son of Armenia, that Americans discovering Armenian literature have a feeling of deja-vu. Or maybe it's because Steinbeck's books were largely based on the Armenian immigrants of California's San Joaquin Valley, who tilled the fig trees and almond groves through blistering summers with no shade. Americans know the Armenian soul in their guts. So it's a little surprising that "Sojourn at Ararat" (www.sojournatararat.org), the world stage's leading performance of Armenian poetry in English, has taken so long to reach New York. The work, performed by the international actors who created it, Nora Armani and Gerald Papasian, will be presented for one night only, January 18, by Joe's Pub at the special invitation of NY Shakespeare Festival's Artistic Director, Oskar Eustis.
The play originally premiered at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival in 1986. Since then it has toured four continents and more than 25 cities worldwide, receiving accolades and awards, with both its original cast and subsequent casts directed by its authors. The Joe's Pub performance will be a reunion of Armani and Papasian in their original roles.
The show evokes identity, homeland and love while illuminating the soul of the Armenian people through its poetry, literature and legends. The Armenian people are personified as a man and a woman, played by Papasian and Armani. Forty classic poems from Armenian writers, from pre-Christian to modern times, make up the text and many of the translations are by the performers. Spoken sections are intertwined with songs and vocal underscores. Underlying it all is a haunting score, sometimes modern and sometimes folk. The effect is an evening of epic proportions, revealing the spirit of a people and a nation. Music is by Armenian composers Gomidas and Sayat Nova. Additional compositions are by Jean-Jacques Lemetre of Theatre de Soleil of Paris (Ariane Mnouchkine's company).
The absurdity of conflicts and war is depicted with scathingly humorous and poignantly nostalgic moments of sublime literature. The fulcrum of the show is an epic piece, "One Drop of Honey," written by Hovhannes Toumanyan, considered to be one of the greatest Armenian poets and writers (this year is the 140th anniversary of his birth), where the absurdity of war and human conflict is depicted in a highly humorous fashion, as one drop of honey becomes the cause of universal war and massacres. The couple meets and falls in love as romantic era poems are used in a lyrical way during beginning tableaux. In relatively more dramatic sections, the horrors of the 1915 Genocide are narrated through a powerful eyewitness account of the dance of 20 innocent virgins who were doused in kerosene and torched to death.
The performance relies on the charisma of the two performers and their masterful command of spoken language, movement and song. Beside them, the stage has only two chairs, two stacks of marigold sheets of paper and an Armenian drum. The actors narrate the story of a people's journey through simple yet very effective staging and minimal effects. Costumes become props. The marigold paper takes different shapes as it is crumpled and thrown on the floor throughout the play. It suggests heaps of lentils, a corpse, blazing fires, and finally becomes the remnants of a culture. At the end, it is carefully gathered and re-assembled into the same two stacks, in a symbolic act of regeneration.
The piece has toured internationally in English and French, but has never been done in New York, mainly because since its North American premiere in 1987 (at Ensemble Studio Theatre, Hollywood), its creators have lived and worked primarily in Paris and L.A. It was Pick of the Week in LA Weekly and received eight Drama Logue Critics' Awards in 1988 and 1989. It also received multiple awards in Armenia in 1991.
Nora Armani (www.noraarmani.com) is a film and theater actress who was born in Egypt to Armenian parents and was trained at RADA, UCLA and Ariane Mnouchkine's Theatre de Soleil. She has a BA in Directing from the American University in Cairo and an M.Sc. from the University of London (LSE). She has appeared internationally in plays by Pinter, Shaw and Shakespeare among others, and in a self-penned solo show, "On the Couch with Nora Armani." She is well-known in Armenia, having starred in four feature films there and received a'Best Actress'award for the feature film Labyrinth by Mikayen Dovlatyan. She was recently invited to participate in the InterNational Theatre initiative there by the President of the Republic, Serzh Sargsyan, and Minister of Culture, Hasmik Poghosyan. She has represented the Ministry of Culture of Armenia in Cinema (from 1991-93) and organizes major film events with International Film festivals as a guest curator, promoting Armenian Cinema wordwide. She appears prolifically in French, British, American and Egyptian TV and film and is also a director. Her poems, short stories and essays are published in anthologies and literary journals and her plays have been broadcast on radio in France and in Armenia. She currently divides her time between NYC and Paris.
