'Happy Armenians' and a Post-Centennial Paradigm for Armenian Drama

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.

From Constantinople to LA: Three Centuries of Western Armenian Theater

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 known as “Zartonk” and of linguistic transition from classical to vernacular Armenian.

As I delved into my research, I could not help contemplating that in all of Los Angeles there had been two – just two – productions in Western Armenian the whole year, and that both of them had direct links to 19th-century Constantinople: the Krikor Satamian Theater Company’s rendition of “Shoghokort” (The Flatterer) by Hagop Baronian was written in that time and place, while my own revival of “Hin Asdvadzner” (Ancient Gods) adapted an iconic work by Levon Shant, who was born in Bolis and spent formative years there prior to the Genocide.

The 100 Years, 100 Facts Project

On the threshold of the centennial of the Armenian Genocide, The 100 Years, 100 Facts Project will commemorate the genocide by publishing facts about Armenians twice a week, starting April 24, 2014 and culminating on April 24, 2015. These facts are being published on 100years100facts.com – linked through its social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google+.

The Turkish-Hating Poison Continues to Poison

Pakrat Estoukian

 Translated by Vartan Matiossian

The agenda of this week [April 24] forces us naturally, or perhaps automatically, to think on Armenian issues. There are events organized for every day, where we participate sometimes and speakers and sometimes as correspondents. We have to say that, unlike Diasporan Armeninas, the organizer or the driving force of events of this nature in our country is not the local Armenian community, but the non-Armenian people of the country. Also, unlike the previous years, this years the public gatherings have expanded to the interior of the country. According to the news that have reached us, so far there have been meetings and marches organized, besides Istanbul, in Ankara, Izmir, Bursa, Diyarbekir, Adana, Malatia, Bodrum, Dersim and other places.

Conference on Diaspora Discusses Critical Issues

Experts and scholars from four corners of the world were joined by hundreds of community members on Saturday April 27, 2013 at the University of Southern California’s Davidson Conference Center for a one-day academic conference called “Independence and Beyond: In Search of a New Armenian Diaspora after 1991,” which tackled critical issues facing Diaspora-homeland relations.

The Getty Museum Is in a Legal Fight over Armenian Bible Pages

Mike Boehm

The J. Paul Getty Trust failed Thursday [November 3, 2011] to derail a lawsuit by the Armenian Orthodox Church that accuses the museum of harboring stolen illuminated medieval manuscripts — 755-year-old works that are masterpieces and, to the church, spiritually and historically sacred

After a brief hearing, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Abraham Khan denied the Getty's motion to dismiss the claim. The museum's attorneys argued that the deadline for filing the suit had passed decades ago under the statute of limitations. But the judge said that's "not clear" and ordered four months of mediation, scheduling a March 2 resumption if the case isn't settled.
At that point, the judge said, he might focus on the complicated history of the pages' journey from the Turkish region of Cilicia to America during and after the World War I-era Armenian genocide, in order to determine whether the suit filed last year meets the six-year statute of limitations.