The City of Practices

My parents on the left, Sally's parents on the right

Deep into rehearsals, I was asked why do I wear a corset?  I don't know, by habit?  To hide? Someone said it will make your derriere smaller? Every girl and woman wore one at the time?

You don't have to.  You will move more freely without it.  It made sense.  I stopped wearing it right there and then and have only wore a corset once since.  Ironically, it was to perform my show in Beirut when I returned for the first time in 29 years. And 35 years after not wearing one.  I had put on a lot of weight in America and a friend suggested that what I had decided to wear on stage required a corset.


I performed my autobiographical tragicomedy.  It was not stand up comedy.  It had a beginning, a middle and an end.  No one taught me how to write, what to write, and for whom.  I had to choose an audience to write for because I was inspired by three other friends of mine who were doing monologues one after the other.

I stretched myself, found my audience of one and started writing.  I was the audience.  A monologue is a monologue is a monologue.  During writing I added the number of audience members according to the story.  I started reading parts of it to whoever will listen.  I was done listening, even to myself. I needed to talk. I wrote and rewrote.  I edited, changed the chronology, and finally found the thread that connected the whole.


Transformation? Metamorphosis?  Being able to find a solution to the pain that comes from the past?  How about laughter, self-deprecation and imagination?  Not all realities are imagined. Some need therapy.  Others, need someone crazy enough to try to make sense of it all.


I was so inhibited that when I first walked like Marilyn Monroe on the roof of that building where we rehearsed, as part of an exercise; when I allowed my body to let my hips sway left and right while walking, tears of "I have just lost my virginity" (I am not kidding) rolled down my face. Diana was so sweet and understanding about it. In fact she was sweet and understanding with everyone.  Being our senior, from England and a graduate in dramatic arts, we confided in her, she gave us advice, comfort and her expertise. Whereas her husband, Varoujan, was focused on directing.  At the end, we were both laughing while Missag Abajian, may he rest in peace, the eldest in our company, offered me a cigarette. He always offered me a cigarette whenever I finished doing a scene or an exercise and came back to sit with the audience.  Out came the lighter too and he lit my cigarette.  He treated me like I was special.  I credited this to him being a friend of one of my uncles but I was proven wrong later.  It was refreshing and odd at the same time. I never got used to it because I did not understand it.  I never took anything for granted. So far, my encounters with the opposite sex had been at least predictable, transparent and adventurous.  Missag Abajian was showing me the attention I thought were only reserved to the "elite".   

 A huge wall of resistance and misinformation multiplied by traumatized and ignorant sexual understanding (sic), had prompted me to wear a corset and a jacket in summers humid and hot.  But now the pendulum had swung to the other extreme of not being in touch with my body at all.  Not caring about looks so much.  Living in my head, practicing in my head, again, after so many years, although I had ample room to practice out loud. 

It does not matter why I had been wearing a corset until I started acting.  Maybe news of the suffragettes had not reached Lebanon yet.  It does not matter.  It matters that I was wearing one after so many years where it made me not wear it in the first place.

Sometimes, when we didn't have a car, as we would have otherwise alternately used the family car, Varoujan and Diana gave us a ride home and Varouj turned back to us and asked "why do you both talk in monotone like that? Like there is no life left in you?"  Hmm, we were tired?  It was 11 p.m. at night and you can say we had had a full day?  We were secretaries by day and actresses at night?  We are not complaining, but we are tired.

The actress was not paid but the secretary was.  The actress loved what she was doing, the secretary, not. 


I was the first one to arrive at the theater on opening night.  Tchaikovsky's music from the opera Oniegin was playing as the audience came in and four clowns, including my sister Hourig, ushered and entertained them until curtain time.  I remember thinking that I will never forget this music and how I feel this moment: I have an acute case of anxiety but am fully aware of the significance of these moments.  I was extremely excited.  

My butterflies carried me on stage.  They helped me not panic but focus and enjoy every second.  I did.  It was like falling in love.  It was a honeymoon, a party, a celebration and a dance all in one.  I felt at home. I felt I was in a sanctuary, my sanctuary.

There, I said it.  Nowhere else have I felt at home whether I am happy, sad, successful or a flop but on stage.  Whether acting, singing, talking or dancing, there I am and that is how I feel.




 

 

 

The City of Bourj Hammoud

I picked up the telephone and said "hello." 

It was my cousin Sally.  She wanted to know if I had seen the wanted ad for actors in the newspaper.  I had seen it.  Never before in a newspaper there had been such a thing.   The Levon Shant Theater Company in Bourj Hammoud needed actors. There was a man's name and a telephone number to call.  I knew the name from having seen the man act on stage with the famous Kasbar Ipekian group.  Varoujan Hadeshian.

"What do you say Arpie, do you want to go?" Sally asked hopefully.

"What?  What?    Wait a minute.  How is that possible?  First of all, our parents would never allow it.  Yes, we are twenty years old, only a month apart in age, our fathers are brothers and there would have to be some negotiations to secure permission.

Becoming a girl scout?  Yes.
Playing Basketball? Yes.
But theater? Doubtful!

"But it sounds so inviting, so wonderful, so life giving, so...yes, let's go."

Bourj Hammoud is a suburb of Beirut, heavily populated by Armenians.  Within Bourj Hammoud there are areas which are named after cities, rivers and villages of Western Armenia, now Turkey, where the people that now lived in Bourj Hammoud came from. Like New Jersey or New York, they are named New Marash, New Adana.  But instead of New, the English word, they are called Nor Marash and Nor Adana.

Surprisingly, I had never been to Bourj Hamoud but knew some people from there who were students at my high school.

Miraculously, we were allowed to go. 

We called the number in the newspaper and were told to bring something in Armenian to read.

It was a hot June evening when the two of us, cousins, drove to Bourj Hammoud as if we were going to the gates of heaven.

During the day we both worked as secretaries and did not exactly have a life outside of that. Yes, there was the occasional movie theater, or play we went to see and that was it.  We found the building and went up the stairs to the third floor.  The door was wide open, so we entered.  There was a large room lit with florescent lights and a bearded man sat behind a table with a woman by his side.  He introduced himself as the director Varoujan Hadeshian, his wife Diana, sitting next to him, and we introduced ourselves.

We read a few lines each and were told that if we wanted we could go up to the roof for exercises that the group did.  Did we want to?  Of course we did. It was the first exercise in years.  Since leaving school we had both acquired secretarial hips from the long hours in front of a typewriter.

This, baby, was exciting, invigorating and inspiring.  Voice, body, extremities, breathing and emotions were exercised.  There was stretching, whistling, hissing and improvisations.

Sally and I were chosen to play in different short plays of Anton Chekov and I was put on a diet to lose some weight. 

Instead of public transportation, I started walking to and from work, a fifteen-minute walk each way, while holding my stomach in.  It is amazing how a life with purpose can inspire.  I loved the walking during which time I repeated my lines.  When there was no work to be done in the office, and there were days like that, I would just close my eyes and rehearse with words and movement, over and over again, in my head.

My mom, Anahid, made my costume at home following Diana's drawing.  It was a dark pink velvet dress with black trimmings.

The above sentence was written three weeks after the previous one during which I traveled to New Jersey to see mom who passed away a couple of hours later.  I returned to Arizona a week later and it is only now that I finally get to write.  And I start with mom? I think it is good timing. Rest in peace sweet mom.

Ridden with anxiety, I made my first steps on stage by running to my "husband" and exclaiming his name, followed by a darling, "Andryusha, sireliiiiiis" in Armenian.  I was playing Tatiana in Chekhov's A Jubilee, which was quite a stretch for me. This woman was vivacious, talkative, elegant, rich and young, married to the bank manager, in love with life and oblivious to what went on around her.

It was so much fun to finally be able to personify that character even for a brief moment in my life. It was an auspicious beginning, and led to many more challenging parts.  I had not allowed myself to decide anything about my future yet but no other path seemed remotely interesting.