Toronto Star, Canada
Feb 19 2008
Confronting memories of genocide
For Hrant Alianak, role of Armenian who doesn’t want to remember is
personal
Feb 19, 2008 04:30 AM
Richard Ouzounian
theatre critic
"Genocide is genocide," says Hrant Alianak.
"It doesn’t matter whether it happens in Armenia or Germany or
Rwanda. It’s something we can never forget."
The veteran of Toronto’s alternative theatre scene has been forced to
confront memories of his own family’s past as he works on the world
premiere of Richard Kalinoski’s A Crooked Man, opening Friday at the
Theatre Centre.
The play deals with an 88-year-old Armenian named Hagop, who faces
the horrible effects the massacres he witnessed as a young man have
had on his life when his journalist grandson sets out to interview
him for a seemingly benign magazine article.
It’s not necessity that has driven Alianak to play the lead himself,
as well as direct the play, even though it marks his first appearance
on a Toronto stage in 15 years.
It’s also the first professional production in Canadian theatre
history with an all-Armenian cast. Alianak’s fellow actors are Araxi
Arslanian, Garen Boyajian, Carlo Essagian and Michael Kazarian.
"There’s a number of aspects of the character and many people from my
past that I’ve been forced to remember and confront working on this
project," Alianak says quietly. "It hasn’t been easy."
He was one of the sparkplugs of the Toronto theatre scene throughout
the 1970s and ’80s, and no one who saw his spaghetti western version
of Titus Andronicus at Theatre Passe Muraille in 1975 will ever
forget it.
He spent most of the 1990s as a lucratively employed villain on TV
series like Robocop and Psi Factor, but when he returned to the
theatre to direct Kalinoski’s Beast of the Moon in 1997, he truly
began to reinvestigate his Armenian heritage for the first time. A
Crooked Man has brought him even deeper into the past.
"I was born in the Sudan in 1950." he begins.
"My father had fled there from Turkey when he was only 3 years old.
There was an Armenian club in Sudan with about 1,000 members and I
grew up hearing all their stories.
"Everyone had lost someone back then," he says, referring to the dark
days from 1915 and 1918 when between a million and 1.5 million
Armenians were killed by the Turks. Turkey still denies the genocide
happened.
"I had a great uncle who was 7 when it happened," recalls Alianak.
"He was out in the barn looking at a donkey having her baby. When he
came back, his family was gone and he wandered around the countryside
for two years, searching for them."
There’s a pause before he can continue. "Everybody tells you a little
bit of their story, but they stick to the surface facts, because it
is too painful to dig all the way inside."
But that is exactly what happens to Hagop in this play. "A man who
was esteemed in his time is now forgotten, then suddenly forced to
open the doors to his past. When all that he has hidden for so many
years comes out, it overwhelms him."
Even though Alianak insists that "the message of the play is beyond
the Armenian issue, it’s a human drama," he is also proud of his
Armenian cast. "The play can best be told," he concludes, "with the
passion an Armenian can bring to it."
A Crooked Man begins previews Wednesday night, opens Friday and plays
until March 2 at the Theatre Centre, 1087 Queen St. W. For tickets
and more information, go to artsboxoffice.ca or call 416-504-7529.