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Australia Dispatch: Kachoyan's Star Ascends Down Under
http://asbarez.com/117879/australia-dispatch-kachoyan%E2%80%99s-star-ascends-down-under/
Tuesday, December 31st, 2013
BY ARAM KOUYOUMDJIAN
Sitting in a theater in Sydney a few weeks ago, waiting for the start
of the play `Sweet Nothings' - directed by John Kachoyan - I could not
help but think of William Saroyan's lines about Armenians encountering
one another in all corners of the world.
In truth, this particular encounter was not the type of happenstance
Saroyan was describing. My life has actually intersected with
Kachoyan's on three continents, although we've only met once. I did
not see him during my brief stay in Sydney - he was stuck in Melbourne
- so the play was his proxy.
Kachoyan, who is Melbourne-based, belongs to a rare breed of
sought-after directors who make their living in theater. He favors new
plays and neglected classics, and his credits as director and
dramaturge run a wide spectrum, from Shakespeare's `The Winter's Tale'
to world premieres by contemporary playwrights, particularly
Australian ones like Ben Ellis (`Unrestless' and `The Captive').
Although he has roots in Australia, Kachoyan has spent considerable
time studying and working in Canada and England, having obtained a
Master's degree in theater from the Royal Central School of Speech and
Drama.
During the years he spent in England between 2007 and 2011, Kachoyan
took part in the Old Vic's New Voices Program and was a member of the
Young Vic's Genesis Directors Program; he founded IronBark to present
Australian works to audiences in the United Kingdom; and he was the
Resident Assistant Director at London's intimate but esteemed
Finborough Theatre.
Kachoyan staged "Sweet Nothings" in Sydney.
That's how our paths first crossed, in 2010, when the Finborough
staged a reading of one of my plays, `The Delicate Lines,' as part of
Vibrant 30 - a 30-day festival of play readings to celebrate the
theater's 30th anniversary. Kachoyan directed British television
actress Kazia Pelka (`Coronation Street') in the solo piece about an
Armenian woman in the aftermath of the Genocide as she struggles with
her poet brother's descent into madness and with her conflicted love
for his best friend.
Unable to make it across the pond at the time, I neither got to meet
Kachoyan nor see the staged reading. By the following year, he was
back in Australia, serving as Director-in-Residence for the Bell
Shakespeare Company, which performs at Sydney's iconic Opera House and
on tour across the country. He is now the Co-Creative Director of MKA:
Theatre of New Writing.
We finally met earlier this year, when he was in Los Angeles, over a
leisurely lunch. He was witty in conversation and, despite his
relative youth, full of knowledge about theater history and technique.
By sheer coincidence, I was on his continent mere months later,
catching some theater alongside diving in the Great Barrier Reef and
tasting kangaroo.
***
I saw `Sweet Nothings' at the Wharf Theatre complex, which literally
overlooks the Walsh Bay, adjacent to Sydney Harbor - as beautiful a
location for theater as one can dream up. The play by David Harrower
is an adaptation of `Liebelei' by Arthur Schnitzler, who generated
much controversy at the turn of the 20th century with his
sexually-charged and still-influential drama `La Ronde.'
There's no absence of sexual charge in `Sweet Nothings,' which opens
with a dinner party for two young couples, where drink flows freely
and does away with inhibition. The host, Fritz, indulges the romantic
hopes of Christine, who is unaware of his affair with a married woman.
The party is interrupted, however, by the married woman's husband, who
has discovered the affair and who challenges Fritz to a duel.
In its second act, the play shifts course, making Christine its
central figure. It is a difficult script to navigate, but Kachoyan had
staged it with finesse. His take on the opening act was a physical,
high-octane approach, with the actors dominating the two-tier set,
often by leaping on or over furniture. It made for no-holds-barred
theater that was compelling to watch.
As the second and third acts softened in plot and dialogue, Kachoyan
appropriately scaled back the feverish pitch, settling in for a
well-executed character study by eliciting fine performances from his
cast.
***
Kachoyan expects to be as busy as ever in the new year. He is slated
to direct `Dogmeat' for MKA at the Perth Fringe Festival in February,
but, in the meantime, he is work-shopping `Gilgamesh,' his own
adaptation of Joan London's novel, which traverses from Australia to
Soviet-era Armenia.
`Gilgamesh' is initially set in rural Australia, where its central
character, Edith, meets a visiting Armenian named Aram, an orphan of
the Genocide. Their brief time together results in Edith's pregnancy,
and she eventually sets out for Armenia, with her young son in tow, in
search of Aram, arriving in Yerevan on the eve of World War II.
`I am very excited about it,' Kachoyan wrote me via e-mail recently. I
could guess why. I remembered what he'd written me after the reading
of `The Delicate Lines': `It's a pleasure to be presenting Armenian
work.'
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
http://asbarez.com/117879/australia-dispatch-kachoyan%E2%80%99s-star-ascends-down-under/
Tuesday, December 31st, 2013
BY ARAM KOUYOUMDJIAN
Sitting in a theater in Sydney a few weeks ago, waiting for the start
of the play `Sweet Nothings' - directed by John Kachoyan - I could not
help but think of William Saroyan's lines about Armenians encountering
one another in all corners of the world.
In truth, this particular encounter was not the type of happenstance
Saroyan was describing. My life has actually intersected with
Kachoyan's on three continents, although we've only met once. I did
not see him during my brief stay in Sydney - he was stuck in Melbourne
- so the play was his proxy.
Kachoyan, who is Melbourne-based, belongs to a rare breed of
sought-after directors who make their living in theater. He favors new
plays and neglected classics, and his credits as director and
dramaturge run a wide spectrum, from Shakespeare's `The Winter's Tale'
to world premieres by contemporary playwrights, particularly
Australian ones like Ben Ellis (`Unrestless' and `The Captive').
Although he has roots in Australia, Kachoyan has spent considerable
time studying and working in Canada and England, having obtained a
Master's degree in theater from the Royal Central School of Speech and
Drama.
During the years he spent in England between 2007 and 2011, Kachoyan
took part in the Old Vic's New Voices Program and was a member of the
Young Vic's Genesis Directors Program; he founded IronBark to present
Australian works to audiences in the United Kingdom; and he was the
Resident Assistant Director at London's intimate but esteemed
Finborough Theatre.
Kachoyan staged "Sweet Nothings" in Sydney.
That's how our paths first crossed, in 2010, when the Finborough
staged a reading of one of my plays, `The Delicate Lines,' as part of
Vibrant 30 - a 30-day festival of play readings to celebrate the
theater's 30th anniversary. Kachoyan directed British television
actress Kazia Pelka (`Coronation Street') in the solo piece about an
Armenian woman in the aftermath of the Genocide as she struggles with
her poet brother's descent into madness and with her conflicted love
for his best friend.
Unable to make it across the pond at the time, I neither got to meet
Kachoyan nor see the staged reading. By the following year, he was
back in Australia, serving as Director-in-Residence for the Bell
Shakespeare Company, which performs at Sydney's iconic Opera House and
on tour across the country. He is now the Co-Creative Director of MKA:
Theatre of New Writing.
We finally met earlier this year, when he was in Los Angeles, over a
leisurely lunch. He was witty in conversation and, despite his
relative youth, full of knowledge about theater history and technique.
By sheer coincidence, I was on his continent mere months later,
catching some theater alongside diving in the Great Barrier Reef and
tasting kangaroo.
***
I saw `Sweet Nothings' at the Wharf Theatre complex, which literally
overlooks the Walsh Bay, adjacent to Sydney Harbor - as beautiful a
location for theater as one can dream up. The play by David Harrower
is an adaptation of `Liebelei' by Arthur Schnitzler, who generated
much controversy at the turn of the 20th century with his
sexually-charged and still-influential drama `La Ronde.'
There's no absence of sexual charge in `Sweet Nothings,' which opens
with a dinner party for two young couples, where drink flows freely
and does away with inhibition. The host, Fritz, indulges the romantic
hopes of Christine, who is unaware of his affair with a married woman.
The party is interrupted, however, by the married woman's husband, who
has discovered the affair and who challenges Fritz to a duel.
In its second act, the play shifts course, making Christine its
central figure. It is a difficult script to navigate, but Kachoyan had
staged it with finesse. His take on the opening act was a physical,
high-octane approach, with the actors dominating the two-tier set,
often by leaping on or over furniture. It made for no-holds-barred
theater that was compelling to watch.
As the second and third acts softened in plot and dialogue, Kachoyan
appropriately scaled back the feverish pitch, settling in for a
well-executed character study by eliciting fine performances from his
cast.
***
Kachoyan expects to be as busy as ever in the new year. He is slated
to direct `Dogmeat' for MKA at the Perth Fringe Festival in February,
but, in the meantime, he is work-shopping `Gilgamesh,' his own
adaptation of Joan London's novel, which traverses from Australia to
Soviet-era Armenia.
`Gilgamesh' is initially set in rural Australia, where its central
character, Edith, meets a visiting Armenian named Aram, an orphan of
the Genocide. Their brief time together results in Edith's pregnancy,
and she eventually sets out for Armenia, with her young son in tow, in
search of Aram, arriving in Yerevan on the eve of World War II.
`I am very excited about it,' Kachoyan wrote me via e-mail recently. I
could guess why. I remembered what he'd written me after the reading
of `The Delicate Lines': `It's a pleasure to be presenting Armenian
work.'
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress