The set consists of as many levels as possible. Projected images accompany all the action, some specified in the text.
Captions on historical genocides feature throughout the play, marked with a ⢠in the text. They all appear in an identical house style, each featuring an appropriate picture and captions.
As the audience enter, songs are heard from the album âHye Yerk â Armenian Classic and Folk Songsâ â Armen Guirag.
Images: Two images are shown in an alternating loop.
Image 1: UN 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Image 2: âWho, after all, today remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?â Adolf Hitler, 1939.
Enter ACTOR 1.
ACTOR 1: Weâre here tonight to tell you a story. A true story. Our company of actors, using eyewitness reports from people who were there, will tell you the story of the Armenian Genocide.
⢠Genocide Image: The Ottoman Empire. The Armenian, Greek, Assyrian and Yazidi Peoples. 1915-1923.
And, yes, this evening â of course â is, has to be, about the extermination of a million and a half people and the erasure of a three-thousand-year-old civilisation. But itâs also about what happened after that. And how, exactly 100 years later, itâs very far from overâŚ
So, if youâre sitting comfortably â
A look suggesting âunlikely in this placeâ.
â then weâll begin.
You donât need to take notes. There wonât be a test.
So, probably the first thing youâre wondering is â who are the Armenians?
Music: âBelieveâ â Cher.
Images (in quick succession): Begins with faces of Armenian people of all ages, and then Alice Panikian, Cher, Eric Bogosian, Andre Agassi, Charles Aznavour, Arshile Gorky, Principal Skinner from âThe Simpsonsâ, Gregory Peck, David Dickinson, Andy Serkis as Gollum, Alain Prost and Serj Tankian and System of a Down, ending with Diana, Princess of Wales.
(Refers to screen.) Yup â she was 1/64th Armenian. And letâs not forget the most famous Armenian in the whole world.
Image: In quick succession, different images of Kim Kardashian, ending with the title card for âKeeping Up With The Kardashiansâ.
Kim Kardashian. And her thirteenth cousinâŚ
Image: David Cameron.
David Cameron. Thatâs not a reason to vote for him.
Then, as appropriate during the following speech â
Images: ancient relics and sculptures, then an Egyptian mummy. Then, Armenian landmarks, Armenian churches and priests and examples of the Armenian alphabet.
Going back three thousand years, Armeniaâs neighbours on the Ancient map â the Cappodocians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Scythians, Parthians, Hittites â you know, all that boring stuff in the museum you skip past to get to the mummies â theyâre all gone. The Armenians are the only ones that survive. The very first Christian nation on earth â with their own independent Church, and even their own thirty-eight letter alphabet. As a country, Armenia had long ceased to exist: half the Armenians lived in the Russian Empire â thatâsâŚumâŚRussia todayâŚand the other half â the ones weâre concerned with â live in the Ottoman Empire â thatâs Turkey today.
Like the Jews in Germany, or the Tutsis in Rwanda,
⢠Image: Europe. The Holocaust. 1941-1945.
⢠Image: Rwanda. The Tutsi People. April-July 1994.
banking, and finance, and the professions like law and medicine were dominated by the Armenians. Which⌠well, that didnât go down so well with the Turks.
Image: âThe way to get rid of the Armenian question is to get rid of the Armeniansâ â Sultan Abdul-Hamid II.
Now, itâs only fair to say that the Ottoman Empire had been far more tolerant of minorities than the West for much of its history. But the Armenians were always legally second class citizens. And often savagely persecuted. Between 1894 and 1896,
Image: 300,000.
300,000 Armenians were massacred. In 1909,
Image: 25,000.
25,000 were killed.
And so the Armenians are caught in a fatal Catch 22. If they demand equal rights, theyâre persecuted. If they seek help from foreign powers, theyâre traitors. If they resist persecution, theyâre massacred. If they resist massacre, theyâre terrorists.
But this is their home. Itâs April 1915. And itâs Easter.
Music: âTasmerov Parâ â Shoghaken Ensemble. Sound of birdsong. Images: Pre-war village life, and family portraits of pre-war Armenians.
The COMPANY perform a folk dance. As they do so, they give each other coloured eggs, and say the Paschal Greeting to each other as they pass each other.
ACTOR 5 and ACTOR 6 sit at the table and play cards.
VILLAGERS: Christos haryav i merelotz.
Image: âChrist is risen.â
VILLAGERS: (In reply.) Orhnial e Haroutiunn Christosi.
Image: âBlessed is the resurrection of Christ.â
Music: Hayrenik â Mariam Matossian.
HERANUĹ: Yes Hay em. Iâm an Armenian. My name is HeranuĹ Gadaryan. Iâm 11 years old. My mummyâs name is Isgushi, and my daddyâs name is Hovhannes. I have two brothers â Horen and Hirayr, and two sisters. I live in the village of Habab. I help my mummy look after all my little brothers and sisters. One day I want to be a mummy myself and have lots of babies.
Every Easter, we dye eggs with onion peel, and we eat çÜreks.
Image: A çÜrek.
Mummy makes them with eggs and cherry essence, and fennel seeds. Mummy is teaching me how to make the d...