Vartan Matiossian
We went to one of the last performances of Talene Monahon's Meet the Cartozians on December 9, along with a group that included Archbishop Anoushavan, Prelate, and Archpriest Fr. Mesrob Lakissian, Pastor of St. Illuminator's Church. It was a full-house performance, as it has been since the beginning, which also granted an extension until December 14 with a very successful six-week run. Do I need to say that this was an play with an Armenian theme, but with a universal resonance, and that's why we barely saw an Armenian soul in the theater? That's good, for it ensures that it resonated with a wider audience with its discussion of discrimination, racism, immigration, racial classification, privilege, genocide recognition, etc. That's bad too, because Armenians should have flooded the theater over the past six weeks to learn something about their own past in this country and the threat of becoming second-class residents that they endured in 1924-1925, which has a lot of echoes today.
