The 40-year old Yerevan State Pantomime Theater attended dozens of international festivals. Recently, it attended such an event first time held in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia. At the meeting with “Aravot”, Honored Art Worker of Armenia, Artistic Director of the Theatre, Jirayr Dadasyan said that they would attend two more international festivals by the end of the year. One in Belgrade on June 25-28, where the International Mime Festival is held for the 40th time, and the other in the autumn in Mexico to the «Servantino» festival. We were firstly curious to learn from Jirayr Dadasyan about the International Mime Festivals. Our interlocutor reminded that the International Festival named after Leonid Yengibaryan is held in Tsakhkadzor once in two years. In 2016, they will mark the 5th anniversary, and then he briefly presented the art of our neighbors in this sphere. “The pantomime theater in Georgia has a history of half a century, which was founded by Amiran Shalikashvili. In the recent period, junior Amiran Shalikashvili leads this Theatre. The Armenian audience would probably recall the performance of Georgian mimes at the “Nazenik” festival so far held in Armenia only in 2001. After that, in response to our invitations, Georgians “kept silent” because of the political ups and downs in their country. In Azerbaijan, the pantomime theater was founded in 1994, which has gained a state status only in 2000, led by Bakhtiyar Khanizade.”
To the point, a model building was opened in 2013 for the Azerbaijani Pantomime Theater. Referring to the recent festival held in Tbilisi, Mr. Dadasyan said that the geography was not broad, only Germany and Japan attended, and then he said that they presented “Sheranik” staged under his producing and according to Haghpat gospel miniature. To the observation that they often travel to foreign countries with this performance as a business card of the Theater, the Director replied, “”Sheranik” was necessary in Georgia. After the performance, some of the audience came up and thanked him for addressing this issue, saying it forced them to reconsider their own history. The plot of “Sheranik” is the description of Ani city liberation in early 13th century by the Armenian-Georgian joined army led by Ivane and Zakare Zakaryans.”
In the mime performances, mainly they, the directors, act as screenwriters. To our questions of whether it is possible that any performance would be staged by the “outside” screenwriter too, Jirayr Dadasyan replied that such a cooperation is not ruled out. He also added that they have more than 10 performances in their repertoire, and one of them is the performance of the same name by Derenik Demirchyan’s “Flowers Manuscript” novel. He also noted that they are cooperating with modern composers, listing “Sheranik” and “Goat-rite” under Vache Sharafyan’s music and Vahan Artsruni’s “Flowers Manuscript” performance.
Samvel DANIELYAN
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In the photo: a scene from “Sheranik” performance. “Aravot” daily
