If only there were two more like Aram Kouyoumdjian. Just two more working in Los Angeles, so that the theater of the largest Armenian community outside Armenia could have a whole lot more to show for
Critics’ Forum: Matenadaran’s Restoration Department: Preserving Life and Culture
I spent part of this summer in Armenia – mesmerized by the free flight of “tsitsernakner,” birds purported to return to their original homes (much like I believe I was doing with a visit to my homeland)
Critics’ Forum: Armenian Theater by the Young and the Experience-Less
Armenian theater in Los Angeles offered stunningly little over the past year that was authentically new. Several pieces passed off as “new” by the community’s long-established theater artists were actually iterations of their typical output.
Critics’ Forum: Theater’s Dirty Word
A few weeks ago, an Armenian theater artist/producer in Los Angeles posted on Facebook that she was selling her collection of art from Armenia in order to fund her future theater projects.
Bourj Hammoud As A Palimpsest Of Culture In Ara Madzounian’s ‘Birds’ Nest’
Ara Madzounian’s “Birds’ Nest: A Photographic Essay of Bourj Hammoud” captures the almost mythical regard with which Bourj Hammoud is revered
‘Happy Armenians’ and a Post-Centennial Paradigm for Armenian Drama
“Happy Armenians” unfolds in an alternate version of history in which the Kingdom of Cilicia did not meet its end in 1375
Beyond Istanbul: When Superheroes Rule Our World Christian Batikian’s ‘Captain America’
Christian Batikian’s “Captain America” is a short story – in the style of a bildungsroman -composed in Western Armenian about a young “hero” named Sako who seeks to find adventure, solitude, and acceptance
A Deconstruction Of Connected Histories In Aline Ohanesian’s ‘Orhan’s Inheritance’
I must admit, picking up a book with a narrative already too familiar is a tall order. The task is made even more difficult when the narrative is one that speaks to my ethnic and communal sense of belonging. The room for disappointment is wide since so much is at stake.
CRITICS’ FORUM: On Movies That Move Us: An Interview with Gariné Torossian
BY KAREN JALLATYAN Gariné Torossian is a Lebanese-born Canadian-Armenian filmmaker who for more than two decades has been making numerous audio-visual works of art of astonishing complexity. She has graciously agreed to answer a few questions regarding her practice and specifically her first feature-length film “Stone Time Touch” (2007). After the film premiered in the…
From Constantinople to LA: Three Centuries of Western Armenian Theater
BY ARAM KOUYOUMDJIAN This past fall, at a conference on “Armenian Art and Culture in the Ottoman Empire Before 1915,” I presented a paper entitled “Arrested Development: Western Armenian Theater in the Nineteenth Century.” The paper examined the emergence of Western Armenian theater in Constantinople – or “Bolis” – amidst a period of national awakening…