Beast on the Moon – Richard Kalinoski

First performance of the “Dolichos” Theatre Company.

From February 5, 1999 to April 4, 1999, at the “Apo Michanis” Theatre.

The performance was reprised at the same venue from November 3, 1999 to January 30, 2000.

The performance was presented on May 6, 1999 at the “Amalia” Theatre, as part of the “Spring 1999 in Theatre” Festival presented by the “Techni” Experimental Stage under the auspices of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture.

In 1893, there was a lunar eclipse in Turkey, and the Turks, convinced that a “beast” was swallowing the moon, turned their weapons towards the sky, attempting to kill it. Using the same weapons that they had employed in acts of racial hatred against their neighbouring Armenian people, they annihilated the Christian Armenians through a series of extensive pogroms in the late 18th century, culminating in the genocide of 1915 and the extermination of approximately two million Armenians. Richard Kalinoski placed the action of his play in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, between 1921 and 1933. Aram Tomassian, a twenty-year-old survivor whose family has been massacred, has escaped to the United States, where he works as a photographer specialising in immigrant family portraits, aspiring to become the progenitor of the new Tomassian family. He has brought with him from Armenia only one family photograph and his father’s coat, which provided him with cover to survive. He has cut out the heads of his deceased relatives from the photograph, inserting in their place his own and that of fifteen-year-old Setta, who has just arrived to America from the orphanage in Constantinople, as a “mail order bride”. With his young wife, Aram is eager to fulfil their sacred duty, which consists of giving birth to his father’s descendants, who will complete the picture.

However, Aram’s plan does not go as intended: Setta is not the girl that Aram Tomassian chose to become his wife; the photograph that he saw was of another, deceased girl. As if that wasn’t enough, the bride that has come to him is unable to conceive due to years of malnutrition during her time at the orphanage. Weighed down by the loss of their families and unable to have children of their own, the frightened survivors struggle for understanding and compromise. In the midst of this turmoil, Vincent, a homeless boy, enters the scene and Setta takes him under her protection. The three orphaned individuals wrestle with their wounded existence, and ultimately, Vincent’s appearance changes the lives of Aram and Setta forever. After years of silence, Setta manages to persuade Aram to stop memorialising his lost family, demystifying his father’s coat, removing the photograph with the severed heads, and accepting young Vincent as the new member of the Tomassian family.

“Beast on the Moon” is an intriguing hybrid of traditional theatrical performance and storytelling. The majority of the play relies on the convention of the “fourth wall,” but Kalinoski has included a narrator who directly addresses the audience.

Source: Poreia Theatre