ERMENI

by Eric Sirakian
Yale Repertory Theater, Yale College
March 26 - 28, 2015

CREATIVE TEAM

directed by Noam Shapiro
produced by Jill Carrera
stage managed by Danielle Derlein
dramaturgy by Eve Houghton
assistant directed by Gian-Paul Bergeron
costumes designed by Marisa Kaugars
sound designed by Danielle Lotridge & Janine Chow
sound engineer Hannah Friedman
master electrician Ava Hunt
scenic design by Lidiya Kukova
technical direction by Paul Styslinger
lighting designed by Roger Pellegrini
properties designed by Lizzy Emanuel
hair designed by Charlotte Juergens
makeup designed by Anne Jones
assistant stage managed by Ellie Boswell, Maxine Dillon,
and Michelle Yancich
photography by Liz Miles & Andrew Schmidt

ERMENI

October, 1970: When Armenian American college student Ani brings home her Turkish boyfriend Taner, an argument about history turns into a family crisis as Ani’s grandmother suffers a heart attack and must be hospitalized. Taner visits the old woman in the hospital to make peace with the family and to win back the girl he loves. His unexpected friendship with a genocide survivor transports him into the past, into the lost world of Diyarbakir, in a journey towards truth, reconciliation, and the revelation of a family secret that has been buried for years upon years. In 2015, the centenary year of the Armenian genocide, Eric Sirakian’s Ermeni poses questions about history, identity, and memory at a salient moment for Armenian studies and culture.

Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide in 1943 explained, “I became interested in genocide because it happened so many times. It happened to the Armenians and after the Armenians, Hitler took action.” Indeed, on the eve of his invasion of Poland in 1939, Hitler asked his generals, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” In 1970, a character in Ermeni repeats this chilling quotation to his daughter. “Who remembers?” he asks. “Who is supposed to remember, if you don’t remember?” 

Yet even as it grapples with the Armenian genoicde, Ermeni is also a hope and a prayer. In his 1935 short story, “The Armenian and the Armenian,” William Saroyan writes of the Armenian diaspora, “see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” Moving from the past to the present, Sirakian's play invites us to begin a broader conversation about how we reconcile the narratives of love and hate, friend and foe—and how we remember.

Ermeni received its world premiere as the Yale Dramatic Association's 2015 Spring Experimental Production at the Yale Repertory Theater in New Haven, Connecticut. The Dramat, an organization devoted to teaching students and producing full-scale productions, is one of the oldest undergraduate theatre organizations in the country, and one of only a few that is entirely student-run. The Dramat puts on seven productions each year, and over 250 students work on these shows each year, learning from and teaching others in areas ranging from financial management to production design.

On March 28th, 2015, Ermeni's performance was preceded by a panel entitled, "1915-2015: The Centenary of the Armenia Genocide," which featured Professor Jay Winter (Yale University), Professor Fatma Goceck (The University of Michigan), Meline Toumani (author, There Was and There Was Not), and was moderated by Eve Houghton (Yale College, 2017).

PRESS

"Dramat Show Explores Ethnic Tensions" by Joey Ye for the Yale Daily News, March 25, 2015

"Yale Play ‘ERMENI’ to Confront Armenian Genocide Aftermath," press release in Asbarez.com on March 19, 2015