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REVIEW: SILK ROAD RISING'S NIGHT OVER ERZINGA
By Alice Singleton
Gapers Block
Oct 26 2012
The lynchpin in the Great American Dream Press Kit is, and has always
been, reinvention. "Give me your tired, poor, huddled masses", and
I'll make your forget all those tyrannical inhumanities you and yours
have suffered under from the ages.
Well, it's a nice hook, and a great selling point of yesteryear;
today's (fewer and fewer) immigrants know that maybe you can go home
again someday, and to read the fine print on the Statue of Liberty --
America's a great place to be, but the Land of Promise cannot wash
away the atrocities of genocide.
The Oghidanian family of Erzinga, Armenia find themselves in the worst
grace-under-pressure circumstances -- it's the middle of World War
I, and the Turks are not only occupying their country, but killing
off the Armenians in mass, happily obliterating them, kidnapping and
forcing young Armenian men to fight on the Turkish side, killing off
the older men, and the young children, and raping and torturing the
young girls and women. The Oghidanian's son, Ardavazt, turns eighteen,
ripe for familial celebration, but also the age that he must leave his
family and "enlist" the Turk army. Ardavazt's family hides him from
the Turks during a home "inspection", and on his eighteenth birthday,
after cake and drink, Ardavazt is whisked off to a ship that sails
to safe lands, where he transfers to join a distant cousin in Boston.
In Boston, Ardavazt eventually becomes "Jimmy", and begins the
build-out of his American dream. Letters are exchanged between Jimmy
and his family left in Armenia, but after a couple of years, there is
no longer a response from this family. Jimmy files away his Armenian
memories, and never speaks of his family again, not even to Alice,
also an Armenian immigrant Jimmy finds love at first sight with in
their Boston neighborhood. Alice wants to remember and talk about
Armenia -- the good and the horrid. Jimmy refuses to let Alice share
those memories with him, and later their young daughter Aghavni "Ava",
and as Jimmy further grasps unto the great American entrepreneur,
Alice loses her grasp on reality, and eventually must be committed
to a sanitarium and submitted to electro-shock treatments. Alice no
longer recognizes her husband and child, and with no understanding
of why her father is emotionally shut off and brittle, or what made
her mother go insane, "Aghavni" is forever Ava, leaving her father's
home to become a chorus dancer, but bringing the same of being a
disconnected immigrant with her.
"Jimmy" and "Alice's" secrets become Ava's lies, and it is not until
she meets singer "Benny" Raymundo, a proud Dominican, baring happy,
sad and harrowing memories of his former Dominican life, does Ava begin
to open up, a little. Benny insists that Ava have a reconciliation
with her father, if only that their child Estrella know her roots,
and also (mistakenly) believing that Jimmy is all the family that
Ava has left. The reunion of Ava and her father is a mixed bag --
Jimmy and Benny come to quickly adore one another; Ava would rather
her father be back in Boston, especially if he's going to share her
family secret with Benny.
The birth and upbringing of Estrella brings sobering realities to
Ava -- knowing better doesn't necessarily result in doing better
or being better, and a Christmas Eve reunion with Jimmy and spirits
from the past bring epiphany to both father and daughter, which will
allow Estrella the freedom from Turk atrocities Erzinga is not a
story about genocide, but a story about the "collateral damage" of
genocide; the shame and shaming of the victims; the stench and aroma
of madness that infects and plunders until the victim finds the key --
the lynchpin -- to unshackle themselves, first by finding the ways
to accept that bitter herbs rest next to the sweetness of honey and
apples in this life, the lives that came before, and Erzinga must
be seen and experienced for what it is -- a remarkable work that
resonates through all of us with a buy-in to the Family of Humankind.
Night Over Erzinga plays through November 11 at Pierce Hall at the
Historic Chicago Temple Building, 77 W. Washington St. Tickets and
more information here.
http://gapersblock.com/ac/2012/10/26/night-over-erzinga-presented-by-silk-road-rising/
By Alice Singleton
Gapers Block
Oct 26 2012
The lynchpin in the Great American Dream Press Kit is, and has always
been, reinvention. "Give me your tired, poor, huddled masses", and
I'll make your forget all those tyrannical inhumanities you and yours
have suffered under from the ages.
Well, it's a nice hook, and a great selling point of yesteryear;
today's (fewer and fewer) immigrants know that maybe you can go home
again someday, and to read the fine print on the Statue of Liberty --
America's a great place to be, but the Land of Promise cannot wash
away the atrocities of genocide.
The Oghidanian family of Erzinga, Armenia find themselves in the worst
grace-under-pressure circumstances -- it's the middle of World War
I, and the Turks are not only occupying their country, but killing
off the Armenians in mass, happily obliterating them, kidnapping and
forcing young Armenian men to fight on the Turkish side, killing off
the older men, and the young children, and raping and torturing the
young girls and women. The Oghidanian's son, Ardavazt, turns eighteen,
ripe for familial celebration, but also the age that he must leave his
family and "enlist" the Turk army. Ardavazt's family hides him from
the Turks during a home "inspection", and on his eighteenth birthday,
after cake and drink, Ardavazt is whisked off to a ship that sails
to safe lands, where he transfers to join a distant cousin in Boston.
In Boston, Ardavazt eventually becomes "Jimmy", and begins the
build-out of his American dream. Letters are exchanged between Jimmy
and his family left in Armenia, but after a couple of years, there is
no longer a response from this family. Jimmy files away his Armenian
memories, and never speaks of his family again, not even to Alice,
also an Armenian immigrant Jimmy finds love at first sight with in
their Boston neighborhood. Alice wants to remember and talk about
Armenia -- the good and the horrid. Jimmy refuses to let Alice share
those memories with him, and later their young daughter Aghavni "Ava",
and as Jimmy further grasps unto the great American entrepreneur,
Alice loses her grasp on reality, and eventually must be committed
to a sanitarium and submitted to electro-shock treatments. Alice no
longer recognizes her husband and child, and with no understanding
of why her father is emotionally shut off and brittle, or what made
her mother go insane, "Aghavni" is forever Ava, leaving her father's
home to become a chorus dancer, but bringing the same of being a
disconnected immigrant with her.
"Jimmy" and "Alice's" secrets become Ava's lies, and it is not until
she meets singer "Benny" Raymundo, a proud Dominican, baring happy,
sad and harrowing memories of his former Dominican life, does Ava begin
to open up, a little. Benny insists that Ava have a reconciliation
with her father, if only that their child Estrella know her roots,
and also (mistakenly) believing that Jimmy is all the family that
Ava has left. The reunion of Ava and her father is a mixed bag --
Jimmy and Benny come to quickly adore one another; Ava would rather
her father be back in Boston, especially if he's going to share her
family secret with Benny.
The birth and upbringing of Estrella brings sobering realities to
Ava -- knowing better doesn't necessarily result in doing better
or being better, and a Christmas Eve reunion with Jimmy and spirits
from the past bring epiphany to both father and daughter, which will
allow Estrella the freedom from Turk atrocities Erzinga is not a
story about genocide, but a story about the "collateral damage" of
genocide; the shame and shaming of the victims; the stench and aroma
of madness that infects and plunders until the victim finds the key --
the lynchpin -- to unshackle themselves, first by finding the ways
to accept that bitter herbs rest next to the sweetness of honey and
apples in this life, the lives that came before, and Erzinga must
be seen and experienced for what it is -- a remarkable work that
resonates through all of us with a buy-in to the Family of Humankind.
Night Over Erzinga plays through November 11 at Pierce Hall at the
Historic Chicago Temple Building, 77 W. Washington St. Tickets and
more information here.
http://gapersblock.com/ac/2012/10/26/night-over-erzinga-presented-by-silk-road-rising/