American director Daniel Kramer at the Mariinsky Theatre speaks out against notorious homophobic law in St Petersburg

Via The Moscow Times: Mariinsky Stages Dark, Brooding Debussy Opera

[...] One thought that comes to mind after reading an interview with Kramer, published in the production's program, is that the theme of forbidden love is also political.

"Look at one of the laws that has just been passed in St. Petersburg," the director said, referring to the notorious bill banning "gay propaganda" that was passed by the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly this spring.

"Does the human heart have rules? Who decides who we can and cannot love? Can anybody govern our hearts? The revolutions of the human heart are unstoppable in my experience," Kramer said.


*Thanks to M. for the link.

"Sexual Synthesis": First gay-themed theatre play in Tbilisi, Georgia

Just came across this report by Russia Today. I wish I could find video excerpts from the performance too. If you are aware of any video material re this theatre play, please, let me know.
***

*via Russia Today

Gays taking center stage in Georgia

(published 12 January, 2010; edited 11 June, 2010)

The first-ever performance centering on homosexual relationships has been staged in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, despite negative reaction from the authorities.

According to the Georgia Online website, the main character of the controversial performance entitled “Sexual Synthesis” is a famous Georgian actor who is gay.

The performance was brought together by local stage director Shota Pirtskhaishvili who was quoted as saying a number of theatres across the country refused to host the production.

In the end, the premiere of the performance on the unorthodox topic – which is reluctantly and rarely discussed in Georgia – took place at the tiny “Art Face” theater, which measures ten meters.

“And even in this case there were several attempts to foil the premiere of the performance. A group of people tore off a banner and several playbills in front of the theater. This only proves again the intolerance to liberal discussion of such topics,” Pirtskhaishvili told Georgia Online.

Meanwhile, Georgia is the motherland of the “Most Handsome Gay Man of Europe” David Baramia.

The Georgian refugee won the coveted title at a beauty pageant in Oslo last summer after which the Gay-Caucuses website proclaimed him “Georgian of the year.” [Unzipped: Gay Armenia - see here too]

Russia Today highlights discrimination of transgender Georgian in its LGBT report

Russia Today (RT) reports on discrimination of LGBT people in Georgia, citing widespread homophobia in a society, fuelled by church's bigotry. RT details the case of transgender Nika who got fired from the police force "... for being a woman. Nika is transgender and says he is not accepted for wanting to live in a man’s body."

Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake - Christmas theme for Fortnum & Mason famous department store in London

Unfortunately, when I was there today, I did not see the dancers (real ones). Apparently, they did pose for windows displays, as per these 2 pictures below via Fortnum & Mason website.

If you have not seen Matthew Bourne's production of Swan Lake, do it. It's on Sadler's Wells over December 2009 - January 2010. It's fresh, it's daring, it's sexy. I enjoyed it in full. Modern ballet at its best. I wish it would be possible to show Matthew Bourne's works, including Swan Lake and Dorian Gray in Yerevan too. It would be something, I promise.

Yerevan diaries: HighFest opening ceremony (disappointing!)

Disappointed with the HighFest (International Performing Arts Theatre Festival in Yerevan, Armenia) opening ceremony. Children/teenagers made an effort, of course. However... Lasted 15 mins instead of 1hr. Nothing cutting edge.

Yerevan diaries: Theatre poster

Yerevan diaries: HighFest - 7th International Performing Arts Festival, 1-8 Oct 09

Armenian phallic cult

There were times. Some say these were “golden ages” ;)

*source

"[...] The Armenian gousan as the mimes of Greece not only had repertory of farces but also the butaphoric phallus, a common attribute of all mimes. The phallus was an indispensable part of the costume of the gousan, a traditional adjunct of the clothing of mimes. This symbol was deeply rooted in the local phallic cults and its presence as such in Armenia is underscored by many recent findings, such as stone representations of the phallus excavated at the monastery Sourp Minas in the village of Noratous, on the southern shore of Lake Sevan, the portza-kar in Zangezour, bronze statuettes found also in Zangezour, among the ruins of the citadel near the village Ardzevank, on the southern shore of Lake Sevan near Nor-Bayazet, among the ruins of a citadel in the village of Sarekamish in the province of Kars, and in the region of Lake Van. Some of the figurines represent dancers who, although clothed have their phallus bare, which is typical of the stage costume of the mimes. Vestiges of the symbolic use of the phallus in the scenic arts also appears in Armenian miniatures of the medieval period. In one such painting, A.D. 1401, found on the margin of a Bible, an actor in his role to the accompaniment of an orchestra, is represented in the same way. An interesting parallel is the naked figure of St. John on the walls of the cathedral of Akhthamar, built A.D. 915-921; and of Adam in a Bible, in Echmiadzin, illustrated by Markar and Markos. All these sensory representations were possible because it was customary for the gousan to appear in that fashion. [...]"

*source : Armenian Dramatic Arts Alliance

**Many thanks to George for the links.

Japan-themed theatre play in Yerevan (Picture of the Day)

*via Paparazzi.am (Yerevan Puppet Theatre)

Dorian Gray by Matthew Bourne

Matthew Bourne is one of my favourite contemporary British choreographers. I make sure not to miss his productions. So far, my top favourite among his works is the all-male Swan Lake.

And here is another treat: Matthew's interpretation of Oscar Wildes story of Dorian Gray . It's on Sadler's Wells in London 7-19 July. I've already booked my tickets. A must see, in my opinion. Below is a preview video clip of Dorian Gray.

All-male Romeo & Juliet by Roman Viktyuk in Moscow

*via Gay.ru

WTF? A bizarre follow-up to my posts on gay-themed theatre play in Vanadzor, Armenia

Remember that gay-themed theatre play MetastaZ I posted about? The one which then received theatrical awards including for “best young director” in an annual theatre award ceremony in Yerevan.

After almost a year I first posted the info & videos, now the “best young director” (award received for that very play) and the main actress feel ‘ashamed’ and ‘outraged’ of publicity after my posts and videos. They asked me (I am not sure what was the exact wording they used) - through other people involved in the play - to delete my posts and videos. I doubt they understand English, otherwise they would have read my posts properly and understand that there were no X-rated comments there, unless you consider as ‘X-rated’ positive and nice things said about the play. Unless you consider as ‘X-rated’ any gay related blog. Bear in mind that the play itself was gay-themed.

I have only one question: WTF is going on?

You write the gay-themed play, you participate in it, you receive prizes for it, and now (after quite a while, I have to say) you are ashamed and outraged of the info being published in gay blogs? You are ashamed and outraged to be seen in a scene (which one of you directed and the other one played in) with a gay kiss? In fact, back then, they were very happy and thankful that the videos were made.

But the most ridiculous thing is the following. One of the reasons why they want the videos to be deleted is the actress’s boyfriend dislike that she is dancing there for everyone to see. I cannot even comment on this. This is beyond me. Why on earth she became an actress, and why on earth he is dating an actress if cannot stand an innocent dance during the play?..

You know what, I do not need your videos. You should ask me to keep them here. From today onwards all three uploaded to YouTube videos are private and will no longer be available to public. (there is no such possibility re one video clip uploaded directly to the blogger, so it will stay) Now it’s your turn, Ms. “best young director” Nune Khechumyan. What about giving up the “best young director” award? Слабо?

And one more thing. Re my blog posts, no one can dictate me of what I should and should not write on my blog. I can comment on any event I feel like it or find appropriate. That’s not your f* business.

Gay-themed play MetastaZ received theatrical awards in Armenia

UPDATE: (11 June 2009) WTF? A bizarre follow-up to my posts on gay-themed theatre play in Vanadzor, Armenia
***
Very happy to share this news.

Nune Khechumyan received "Best young director" award for a gay-themed play MetastaZ at the main Armenian annual theatre award ceremony "Artavazd 2009" on 27 March in Yerevan. Also, actor Temur Atchinyan (State Dramatic Theatre named after H. Abelyan of Vanadzor) was named "Best young actor" at the award ceremony. He was among a group of talented actors involved in MetastaZ.

My congratulations!!

For more info about MetastaZ and video clips from the performance, see:

MetastaZ - gay related theatre play in Vanadzor, Armenia

*posters - via PINK Armenia

A Girl's War: An Armenian-Azeri Love Story (theatre play)

Long before Artush and Zaur, there was this fascinating (based on description, see below) award winning theatre play by Armenian-American playwright Joyce Van Dyke. This is a taboo breaking heterosexual love story between Armenian and Azerbaijani against the backdrop of Karabakh war. I wish I could see the play. May be they could submit it for the annual HayFest international theatre festival in Yerevan which is known for alternative, thought-provoking plays (to be held on 1-10 October this year).

Golden Thread Productions is proud to present the West Coast premiere of Armenian-American playwright Joyce Van Dyke's award-winning play, A Girl's War. This love story of opposite sides was first produced at Boston Playwrights' Theatre in 2001. Named one of the "top ten" plays of the year by the Boston Globe, A Girl's War won the John Gassner Playwriting and the Provincetown Theatre Company Playwriting Awards.

Written by Joyce Van Dyke, directed by Torange Yeghiazarian, featuring Ana Bayat, Adrian Mejia, Zarif Sadiqi, Simon Vance and Bella Warda (artists bios)

Date: February 14 - March 8, 2009
Venue: Thick House, 1695 18th St, San Francisco

During a stormy fashion shoot, Anna Sarkisian, a New York fashion model, learns that her younger brother has been killed by enemy soldiers in her native Karabakh in the Caucasus Mountains. In the Armenian enclave of Karabakh, formerly part of the Soviet Union, an unresolved civil war still smolders between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. The war has already killed Anna's older brother and driven her mother into the army. Anna decides to return home to her village for the first time in 15 years. Living with her fiercely partisan Armenian mother in the bombed ruin of her childhood home, Anna defiantly refuses to identify herself with the Armenian cause. Tensions ignite when Ilyas, a young Azeri deserter shows up, claiming to be a former neighbor. Anna and Ilyas, powerfully drawn to one another, become lovers in secret. The competing desires of love and vengeance, fueled by jealousy, propel the characters toward an explosive climax with tragic consequences.

*Thanks to Q-Hye (San Franicsco LGBT Armenian group) for the info

Enlgish playwright Mark Ravenhill on life and work in Armenia

As I mentioned in my post about MetastaZ gay-themed theatre play in Vanadzor, Armenia, English playwright Mark Ravenhill was in Armenia in October as part of HighFest festival.

Wikipedia: His most famous plays include Shopping and Fucking (first performed in 1996), Some Explicit Polaroids (1999) and Mother Clap's Molly House (2001). He made his acting debut in his monologue Product, at the Edinburgh Festival in 2005. He often writes for the The Guardian arts section.

In 1997, Ravenhill became the literary director of a new writing company, Paines Plough. In 2003, when Nicholas Hytner took over as artistic director of the National Theatre, Ravenhill was brought in as part of his advisory team. In the mid-nineties, Ravenhill was diagnosed as HIV+, his partner of the early 1990s having died with AIDS.

Mark Ravenhill shares his impressions of Armenia and writes about his most recent work there in The Guardian.

I'm in Armenia directing my play. It's going well - even if no one has a clue what I'm saying

More than a decade ago, the statue of Lenin was removed from Republic Square, the heart of the city of Yerevan. Now the square is dominated by a massive water feature. This eye-catching, if rather kitsch, landmark in the new capitalist Armenia spits out great plumes of water in time with the blasts of popular classical music booming out of concealed speakers.

The Armenian people have moved on from their Soviet past. The new cafe society of young couples parading in their Italian clothes is more reminiscent of Milan than Minsk. But there is one legacy of the Soviet past that Yerevan has held on to. The city, with more than 1 million inhabitants, has a tremendous appetite for theatre: there are no fewer than 12 working companies, and an audience that's enthusiastic for all kinds of performance. During the Soviet era, the challenge for Moscow was to balance the introduction of Russian ideas and language with a respect for local culture. Drama was an excellent tool: both Russian and Armenian theatre was supported and promoted by the Soviet state. And the Armenians have preserved this theatrical legacy.

I'm in Yerevan to direct a translation of one of my Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat plays, a 20-minute work called Paradise Lost. I have an impressive Armenian cast. Part of the Soviet legacy is the high standard of actor training. The quality of the acting is astonishing. So, too, is the loyalty countries such as Slovenia, Georgia and Lithuania still show to a Russian idea of theatre: large ensemble companies, actors working together for a lifetime, lengthy rehearsal periods, visionary directors. While all around them everything is being privatised, actors and audiences have held on to a form of theatre that, by the logic of market forces, should have disappeared long ago.

There is a barrier for me to cross: I don't speak any Russian or Armenian, and the cast doesn't have any English. I've been given an interpreter, an enthusiastic - but not exactly fluent - English speaker. And so rehearsals have taken an unusual course. After the briefest of introductions, in which I tried to summarise the play in a single sentence and gave a few key notes for each character, we hit the stage, slowly working through a couple of pages a day. I've found myself standing at the footlights, beating out the tempos for different sections with a book, holding my hand up to indicate the length of pauses, tapping my head to indicate changes of thought or intentions for the characters. I've focused on giving the actors concrete physical moments to play. I've even demonstrated actions - something many British actors would consider an insult to their craft.

The results occasionally look like the kind of coarse acting you can find anywhere in the world. But at other times, this commitment to the physical has produced exciting results that seem more like the theatre I've seen in mainland Europe than the type of work you usually see on British stages.

Some blimpish Brits still insist that theatre from other countries is more physical and visual than ours because they don't have our language, which - so the argument goes - is the richest in the world. I don't buy this. Surely Goethe, Molière and Chekhov couldn't have been inspired to produce the world's greatest plays in impoverished languages? But it is true that British audiences are unusually attuned to the nuances of language: they can smell a hint of irony quicker than theatre-goers anywhere else.

This ear for language is surely the greatest strength, but also the greatest weakness, of the British stage. Perhaps we should think a little less about the words. Here in Armenia, I'm learning to unlock the meaning of a play without understanding a word the actors are saying. It's a fascinating lesson.

*photo - via The Guardian

MetastaZ - gay related theatre play in Vanadzor, Armenia (video)

UPDATE: (11 June 2009) WTF? A bizarre follow-up to my posts on gay-themed theatre play in Vanadzor, Armenia
***
It’s my personal impression that theatre life in Armenia sees its kind of new revival. And it’s not only classical theatre but alternative one too. Experimental theatre has its regular scheduling at the NPAK or other venues. HighFest festival brings to Armenia cutting edge performances from within the country and abroad, e.g. by English playwright Mark Ravenhill.

But this mainly focuses in capital Yerevan. Therefore, it was even more encouraging to read on PINK Armenia about MetastaZ, theatre play in Vanadzor, Armenia’s 3rd city.

In the end of May the State Dramatic Theatre named after H. Abelyan of Vanadzor opened curtains for the premiere of the performance "MetastaZ (Metastasis)" under same play of Hovhannes Tekgyozyan "Metastasis". […]

From the very beginning it was planned as the audience would be a part of the play: there were 30 chairs black and white colored, like chessboard and they were on the stage. […]

A plead of talented actors was evolved in the play, such as Temur Atchinyan, Alla Darbinyan, Edgar Qocharyan, Hamlet Gyulzadyan and also one of the founders of PINK Armenia, Arthur Haroyan. The casting has been done very carefully. Also Hovsep Mesropyan and Vahe Shahverdyan were in all that action, the author of original sound tracks was the same Arthur Haroyan. […]

The most interesting fact is that a performance based on real facts of two homosexuals was played in the third city of Armenia and not Yerevan.The main goal of the director was not the elucidation of the theme of homosexuality and drugs in general, but the torture of the people, having a pain arisen by treachery. The same can overtake each of us like it happened to the heroes of performance "MetastaZ". […]

The most part of public has been shocked and admired from professional acting and director's work of performance, and some others experienced a shock, proceeding from basic reasons and traditional mentality: " How can it be possible, we are Armenians, not homos?" […]

For the first time, below you can see selected video clips from the MetastaZ. Many thanks to PINK Armenia for providing this material. (video clip No.4 was impossible to upload to the YouTube due to its duration – more than 10 mins – therefore, I uploaded it directly to the ‘Blogger’).

MetastaZ (clip No. 1)



MetastaZ (clip No. 2)



MetastaZ (clip No. 3)



MetastaZ (clip No. 4)

[This video removed upon personal request]

Nancy Agabian: My Gay Family and The Crochet Penis (hit plays in New York)

Must see if you are in New York on 18-19 July 2008.

*source: Bread & Water Theatre and Indymedia (Rochester IMC)

Each one-woman show is a unique take on what it is to be a bisexual woman in the modern world. My Gay Family tells the coming-of-age story of a shy, funny, Armenian-American bisexual girl who flees her small town of Walpole, Massachusetts to tell the stories of her family of one gay brother, one lesbian sister and two homophobic parents. The Crochet Penis is a much more biting play as it deals with Nancy’s life in the wake of her grandmother’s death, a woman of courage who survived the Armenian Genocide. In this emotional time she confronts her issues of sexuality, love and loss.

After graduating from Wellesley College with a degree in Studio Art in 1990, Nancy Agabian moved to Los Angeles, where she wrote and presented the poems and solo performance texts collected in Princess Freak. Her writing has also appeared in numerous anthologies. With Ann Perich she formed the folk-punk duo Guitar Boy, their CD Freaks Like Me was released in 2000. In that year she also received the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann fellowship to attend Columbia University’s writing program, from which she graduated in 2003. Her master’s thesis, Me as Her Again, is a memoir that explores the influence of her Armenian-American family on her coming-of-age and will be published by Aunt Lute Books in 2008. Since Dec. 2002, she has been coordinating Gartal, a literary reading series for Armenian-American writers at Cornelia Street Café in Greenwich Village. In 2007, Ms. Agabian traveled to the Yerevan State University in Armenia where she conducted researched and lectured on the topic “Writing Armenia: Personal Stories” on a Fulbright Scholarship. She currently teaches creative non-fiction writing at Queens College in NYC.

The encore performances of The Crochet Penis and My Gay Family will be presented at 243 Rosedale St. (New Life Presbyterian Church) on July 18th and 19th, 2008 at 8:00pm.

Yerevan Experimental Theatre (NPAK): Slaughterhouse (play)

Sounds interesting.

*via Facebook

Date: Thursday, April 17, 2008
Time: 7:00pm - 10:40pm
Location: Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art (NPAK)
Street: Pavstos Buizand Blvd., 1/3
City: Yerevan, Armenia

Description:

A human is sentenced to loneliness. He has failed to love, to be loved. He has been alienated from surrounding world, has been put in opposition with fake and dishonest relations, and theatricised behaviorism. He is lonely. “Poor white craw”. This woman, with her torturous monologue unmasks human evil. But nobody needs it. She is target of society repentance. The sacrifice offered at the slaughterhouse.