A unique collection of theatrical works is now available for the interested public to view at the Zohrab Information Center. The Plays and Performances Collection was processed by Nareg Seferian, who completed his doctoral studies at Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs in 2023.
The tradition of Armenian theater is a venerable one. Records exist of dramatic compositions and performances in ancient times, while modern works testify to the rich tapestry of the development of Armenian culture in the Ottoman, Romanov, and Qajar realms over the course of the 19th century and into the 20th – presented most notably in Modern Armenia Drama (Columbia University Press, 2001) edited by Prof. Nishan Parlakian and Prof. Peter Cowe. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the activities of Armenian playwrights, actors, and producers – to say nothing of the public – left a lasting impact in the world of theater throughout Turkish, Russian, and Persian society, certainly in the Ottoman Empire.
Along with many other cherished components of national culture, Armenian theatrical life made its way across the Atlantic with the establishment of diaspora communities in the Americas. The Plays and Performances Collection of the Zohrab Information Center is a reflection of the Armenian-American experience particularly in the New York metropolitan area in the second half of the 20th century.
The collection is divided into two series, the second of which, “Scripts of Published Plays”, contains more well-known works, even if some of the names showing up may be more recognizable than others. For example, William Saroyan. There is a copy of his Armenians: A Play in 21 Scenes in the collection. Zabelle Boyajian is another figure who may be familiar to the wider public. A published copy of Etchmiadzin: A Drama in Three Acts and Six Scenes is included. Those are the only two works in the collection fully in English.
The second series also features Hagop Oshagan, Alexander Shirvanzade, Hovhannes Toumanian, and Terenig Demirjian, among others. There is even an Eastern Armenian translation of a renowned work of Ancient Greek drama, Medea by Euripides.
Perhaps the most interesting piece in the second series is Artiagan Oriortner [Արդիական Օրիորդներ] or “Modern Maidens” by A. Toumayan (Abdullah).
It is a work set in Constantinople/Istanbul at the turn of the 20th century, written in a very colloquial style. There is plenty of slang and also some amusing contrasts between spoken Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian, or the language of a “Caucasus Armenian” young lady, as it’s called in the script.
The first series of the Plays and Performances Collection – “Unpublished or Unidentified Scripts” – is more compelling.
A running theme in that series is the Vartanants Rebellion. For example, Khorhourt Vartanants [Խորհուրդ Վարդանանց] or, roughly, “The Sacred Mystery of the Vartanank”, sub-titled “a national performance”, by Souren Manvelian.
This was probably a production written by a member of the community performed on the occasion of the Feast of St. Vartan and his comrades-in-arms, sometime in the 1950s, ’60s, or ’70s.
Some of those performances were directed particularly at children.
This one above is also by Souren Manvelian, entitled Avarayri Trvake [Աւարայրի Դրուագը] – “The Episode at Avarayr”. Notice how it has English words written in Armenian letters, underlined with broken dashes, and one pencilled in above: “Արմինիըն Սընտէյ Սգուլի Թիչըրը”, “փոէմ”, “ճէնըրալ” – “[the] Armenian Sunday School Teacher”, “poem”, “general”.
Just as there is an example of English written in Armenian letters, there is a whole Armenian script written in Latin characters.
The blocking (parenthetical notes for actors) is in English. But the words to be spoken are in Armenian – in fact, with somewhat odd and inconsistent transliteration and mistakes in grammar and language. The title is not immediately comprehensible – Bashdonus Khral Eh most probably implies, roughly, “My Duty is to Snore”. It is evidently a farcical work, so perhaps the text is purposefully designed to be colloquial, as with the piece by Toumayan highlighted above.
Ser yev Geragour or “Love and Food” is likewise a comedy, in two acts. It is, notably, by a woman author, Elise H. Kambourian, and the script is marked New York, 1933. This copy conveys something rather intimate, namely the hand-written notes of the person who apparently used it – Papken Kadehjian. He has some instructions for himself on the second page and a date, February 3, 1962. So, to put it one way, this play may have had a thirty-year run.
What’s unique in this text is the mix of Armenian and English (both written in their own scripts). That very back-and-forth is a theme of this play. For the first generation of post-genocide Armenian-Americans, the tense negotiations between assimilation and integration were reflected in many aspects of culture and social life, language being a particularly salient marker of identity. Attitudes towards multi-lingualism have changed in the United States over the past half-century and more. For many families, however, the anxieties of the past are never too far from the surface, as concerns for the future of home or heritage languages remain in America and the endangered state of Western Armenian in particular garners wider attention.
Finally, the collection includes three rather mysterious works. One is entitled Masounker Dkhrounien yev Aramen (Yeghpayrasbanoutyan Zoher) [Մասունքներ Տխրունիէն եւ Արամէն (Եղբայրասպանութեան Զոհեր)] or “Relics from Dkhrouni and Aram (Victims of Fratricide)”.
It may have another title noted at the top of the first page here. But the handwriting is not very legible. The entire play is written out by hand – all 49 pages of it. There seems to be a date, 1926, on this first page as well, and possibly the name of a location.
The next puzzling item consists of two pieces in one volume. The first has much clearer handwriting – 68 pages this time.
It claims to be a translation from the French of a work by Eugène Sue, a “moving, moral, and emotional” family drama in four acts entitled, possibly, Susanne Imbère [Սիւզան Իմպէր] (perhaps “Suzanne” or “Imbert” instead) or The True Regret [Ճշմարիտ Զղջումը]. The trouble is – there is no record of any such work! A search of the titles of the play or the names of the characters do not yield any results. It may be a very obscure text. Or it may not be a translation at all. The description of the opening scene mentions a telephone, whereas Sue died in 1857, twenty years before the first telephone line was installed.
The second piece in that entry is also a translation, type-written this time, of a work by a 19th-century Italian playwright named Paolo Giacometti.
Although it is called Corrado [Քօրրատօ] and noted as a drama in four acts in the Armenian, it is evidently a translation of La Morte Civile, a play in five acts by Giacometti. Another unusual point of this item in the collection is that the translator is stated to be Yenovk Shahen on the first page and Yenovk Armen on the last, also noting the location as Sgudar (or Scutari – today the Üsküdar district of Istanbul). The names correspond to two contemporaries in the Ottoman capital at the turn of the 20th century. Yenovk Armen was a writer, remembered, among other things, for translating Ambassador Morgenthau’s memoirs into Armenian. Yenovk Shahen (Yerpanosian) was an actor and director, tragically a victim of the Armenian Genocide, one of the many community leaders arrested on April 24, 1915. Could it be that the two collaborated on this translation? Or perhaps the person typing out this copy of the script simply confused the names.
The final enigmatic piece in the collection has its title page missing. It is a play written in Western Armenian set in Soviet Azerbaijan in the early years of the establishment of the USSR. Struggling for the rights of women seems to be its major theme. This text, it turns out, is a translation of an Azerbaijani play called Almaz by the noted playwright Jafar Jabbarly, later made into a film as well. Why should there be a translation of such a piece in Western Armenian and how did it find its way to New York? Was it ever performed by any theatrical troupe of the Armenian-American community?
These are the kinds of questions that await answers from researchers interested in examining this collection, now available for study along with other rich and diverse materials at the Zohrab Information Center.
In the case of this specific work, it may not be unreasonable to speculate that it might have been a part of the many cultural activities backed by the Soviet Armenian government directed at Armenian Diaspora communities – not an uncommon phenomenon in the United States or western Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Under the auspices of the Hayastani Oknoutyan Gomide [Հայաստանի Օգնութեան Կոմիտէ] or Committee for Aid to Armenia, such events were often meant to raise funds for various projects in the young Soviet republic and to encourage immigration.
The Plays and Performances Collection of the Zohrab Information Center reflects the strong tradition of Armenian theater and its continuing legacy in the Armenian Diaspora. Although it is rarer to see Armenian-language productions staged in the United States these days than in the past, a number of ad hoc and established theatrical troupes continue to function in various communities in the country and all over the world. Besides, which Armenian school would be complete without a hantess at the end of the semester or year or on special occasions? They are performances written, directed, and produced by the loving hands of community leaders who have – as is made evident by this collection – nurtured their enthusiasm of theater and Armenian culture across continents for generations.
Nareg Seferian
