Aram Kouyoumdjian
“Finally!”
Of all the compliments that audience members kindly shared with me
after seeing my latest play, “Happy Armenians,” this single but
altogether-loaded word somehow penetrated deeper and resonated with me
longer. The speaker, a longtime friend of mine, practically sighed it,
as if the utterance were allowing him a cathartic release – an escape
from some crushing weight. I understood the emotion behind the sentiment
because the play I’d written was about Armenian history, but it wasn’t a
story of suffering or lamentation. It was an unapologetic –
revisionist, really – reimagining of that history as one of victory and
domination.
