Beast On The Moon Premiered In Prague

[MosJan]

BEAST ON THE MOON PREMIERED IN PRAGUE

 

“Beast on the Moon,” a play by American playwright Richard Kalinoski, had its Czech premiere recently at one of the best theaters in the Czech capital Prague. This sensitive drama, a memory play that examines guilt endured by survivors of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, was recognized as one of the best plays in the USA in 1995 and was premiered since then in many countries.

 

In 1893 a lunar eclipse occurred in Turkey, and, convinced that a "beast" was swallowing the moon, the Turks fired their guns into the sky in an attempt to kill it. The same guns, still smoking with a racial hatred toward the neighboring Armenian population, prompted a systematic extermination of the predominantly Christian Armenians. A series of widespread pogroms in the late eighteenth century culminated in the Genocide of 1915 and the murder of almost 1.5 million Armenians, activities that then, as now, were seldom discussed outside the immediate region.

 

Kalinoski, whose ex-wife is Armenian, has set the play in Milwaukee, Wisconsin between 1921-1933 and spins the troubling tale of two survivors. Aram Thomasian is a newly immigrated photographer trying to build a career, and craving a wife and family in his new home. He chooses his 15-year-old Armenian bride from a series of photographs, and they are married by proxy. Young Seta arrives from an Armenian refugee camp, all wide-eyed and cloyingly indebted to her stern husband. His strict upbringing coupled with desperate sense of loss instills in him a driving need for a large family. Seta, however, has been left barren from years of starvation during the slaughter.

 

Burdened with the loss of their families and unable to have a child of their own, the scarred survivors struggle toward understanding and reconciliation. Entering this turmoil is a waif named Vincent, whom Seta takes under her protection. The three orphans struggle with their plagued existence and the youngster's presence changes Aram and Seta's lives forever