Merrimack Repertory Theatre, in partnership with the Armenian International Women’s Association, the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, and the Armenian Museum of America, is pleased to announce Judith Saryan’s commission of a new play about the life of Zabel Yessayan.
Zabel in Exile
By R. N. Sandberg
Directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian
Sunday, August 12, 4:00 PM
Free – Please RSVP
The Nancy L. Donahue Theatre
50 East Merrimack Street, Lowell, MA
Join us for a free reading of Zabel in Exile, a new play about the extraordinary life of Armenian writer, political activist, and feminist Zabel Yessayan. She harnessed the power of the pen to fight for equality and peace and often found herself at odds with the authorities in the tumultuous world of early 20th-century Europe.
The play takes place during Yessayan's interrogation by the Soviets for espionage. As she fights to survive, Yessayan must come to terms with the whole of her life and the impact of her writings and actions.
The play is partly based on Yessayan’s book In the Ruins, which is her eyewitness testimony of the 1909 massacres of Armenians in Adana, Turkey, and her memoir, The Gardens of Silihdar. Other works include her novels My Soul in Exile and In the Waiting Room, which confront the isolation and alienation faced by women.
Photos courtesy of the Museum of Literature and Art, Yerevan, Armenia
Video courtesy of AGBU Video
