Boston Playwrights' Theatre's 30th Anniversary season comes to a close with Joyce Van Dyke's story of the Armenian genocide in Deported / a dream play, presented in association with Suffolk University.
“How can we overcome a past trauma? How can we find the words and acts to represent the ‘inconceivable’ for today's audience? Is it possible to overcome this historic burden? In her extraordinary Deported / a dream play, Joyce brings these essential questions to the stage.”
- Taner Akçam Ph.D., Robert Aram, Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marion Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies, Clark University
Playwright Joyce Van Dyke is a descendant of Armenian genocide survivors, and in Deported she explores her own family history and that of many Armenian families forever changed. Joyce interweaves the memories and dreams of two women whose friendship and history binds them. These dreams evoke the repercussions of a long-ago genocide as we move through time from 1938 to almost a century ago and, finally, into our future. As we approach the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide in 2015, its political repercussions are still making headlines today, making this production both historically significant and topical as well.
Directed by Judy Braha and featuring an ensemble cast including: Ken Baltin*, Mark Cohen*, Liz Hayes*, Jeanine Kane*, Marya Lowry*, Rob Najarian* and Bobbie Steinbach*, the production also features music and Armenian dance choreographed by Apo Ashjian of Sayat Nova Dance Company.
Deported was developed collaboratively by the actors, director and playwright, with additional collaboration from Sayat Nova Dance Company, Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archives, and the Armenian Library and Museum of America in Watertown.
Deported will run March 8 – April 1 at the newly renovated Modern Theatre at Suffolk University, 525 Washington Street, Boston.
*Actor appears courtesy of Actors' Equity Association
BACKGROUND HISTORY
Deported / a dream play is inspired by the true stories of its two main characters – the playwright’s grandmother, Elmas Sarajian Boyajian, and her best friend, Varter Nazarian Deranian (the mother of Dr. H. Martin Deranian of Worcester). The history in brief: during the two decades before World War I, the Ottoman government engaged in repeated massacres of its Armenian citizens. These massacres culminated in the genocide that began in 1915. Armenian men were rounded up and killed. The women and children were “deported,” culminating in a death march through the desert which few survived.
In the summer of 1915, Varter Nazarian and Elmas Sarajian (called “Victoria” in the play) were among those deported with their children from the city of Mezireh in what is now Turkey. Elmas had three children. Varter had six, with another born to her on the deportation route. The two women lost all their children on the deportation. They eventually reached Aleppo where they remained until 1920. In 1920 they boarded a ship together, bound for the United States. In America each woman remarried and had another child. Elmas and Varter remained close friends until Varter’s premature death in 1929. Elmas died in her sleep in 1977.
ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM
Joyce Van Dyke (Playwright) has received numerous awards and productions of her plays. Deported / a dream play, a finalist for the 2011 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, will be her fourth play produced by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. Other productions include the award-winning A Girl’s War, a play about the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in Karabakh, produced at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre (2001), New Repertory Theatre (2003) and Golden Thread Productions (2009). Her play The Oil Thief, originally commissioned by the Ensemble Studio Theatre / Alfred P. Sloan Project, won Boston’s 2009 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding New Script (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre). She is also a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Huntington Theatre Playwriting Fellow, and has won the John Gassner Award, Provincetown Theatre Playwriting Award, and Boston Globe “Top Ten” plays of 2001. Her plays have been published in Laugh Lines: Short Comic Plays and Contemporary Armenian American Drama. She has an MA in playwriting from Boston University, a PhD from the University of Virginia, and a BA from Stanford, and teaches Shakespeare at Harvard University Extension School.
