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undercut column in the theotokos church in tadem, anatolia

Teatr ZAR’s project “Armine, Sister”

is dedicated to the history of the Armenian people in Anatolia and their extermination at the beginning of the 20th century. It explores the question of “Europe’s silence” as well as the act of witnessing and inheritance of witnessing. The project is realized in both artistic and research fields, including expeditions, study of Armenian tradition and history, as well as performer work sessions run at the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław.

Between 2010 and 2012 the ensemble travelled to Istanbul, Anatolian towns, Erevan and Jerusalem, meeting musicians, choir leaders and choristers in search of material for new work.

“Armine, Sister” is a multi-pronged project. Its focal element is a performance of the same title. In parallel, members of Teatr ZAR are preparing an album, photography exhibitions, panel discussions and concerts of the musicians who participate in the project.

Rather than focusing on the history of the events of 1915 or the history of the ensuing denial and taboo, Teatr ZAR centres on the history of ignorance that feeds on inaction and leads to inaction on the part of today’s Europeans. On the other hand, the history of ignorance also includes the story of building an “accord of silence” around each act of violence. The events in Anatolia in the early 20th century should launch us into a wider debate about lessons in “witnessing after the witnessing”, which always turn into lessons in identity.

ruins of armenian churches in harput (left) and in palu, anatolia

Musically, “Armine, Sister” explores the tradition of monodic chant, unique in Armenian tradition, and how it has been preserved among Armenian diasporas worldwide.

“Armine, Sister” marks a fundamental change in the work of Teatr ZAR. Building on the ten-year experience of working on polyphonic singing (Teatr ZAR is the only group worldwide, mostly due to the level of difficulty of the vocal technique involved, that performs Svan/Georgian funeral songs and Sardinian hymns), the ensemble have now decided to work with Anatolian monodic traditions. The new vocal training and techniques have required a two-year process learning and ‘embodying’ the songs. The emergent vocal material has been recomposed, harmonized and orchestrated in order to create a contemporary musical drama.

Teatr ZAR’s poetic sensibility has been extended towards exploring its narrative potential. A new international group of performers has constellated, including master singers from Iran, Armenia, Anatolia and Istanbul. The group keeps its musical focus on Armenian liturgical traditions – from the monodic traditions of St Trinity Church in Istanbul to Makar Ekmalian’s compositions to Komitas’ collections, interwoven with Eastern, including Persian and Kurdish, traditions. After the first series of expeditions in 2010, a monodic song studio was established in Wrocław, which works all year round.

an example of manroossoom’s complex neumatic manuscript (madenadaran collection, sign. 755, pp. 159b–160a)

“Armine, Sister” is the first manifestation of WITNESS/ACTION, the new domain of Teatr ZAR’s work.

ruins of armenian church in yergayn, anatolia

Armine, Sister a piece dedicated to armenian history and culture and to the armenian genocide

Originally, Armine, Sister was intended as a séance in which it is not us calling the departed, but the spirits of the dead calling to have a trace of the past revealed, made visible, unearthed. The title, Armine, Sister, recalls the first two words of a letter with no legible address, doomed to drift around in time and space.

In light of the post-Auschwitz future that Theodor W. Adorno envisaged for poetry, art and education, we would like to ask: “Is there a chance that the 21st century will not become the century of ignorance?” In our new piece we ask about Europe, convinced that Europe is a question – one about history, identity, dignity. One of the main ideas of Armine, Sister is to tackle the issue of historic taboos and lies as opposed to a duty to witness.

When working on the performance, we often invoked Paul Celan’s Death Fugue, in which the dreams of the murderers and victims are dreamt in the same space. The space of the performance/séance of memory, like the space of a dream, is co-inhabited by thousands of beings. Armine, Sister touches on how painful the memory-carrying process can be. It is also an attempt to identify/name our place in relation to past generations, and to understand who we are – we, who always stand on the other side of memory like on the other side of the camera. We see history through a peephole, seeing only traces, shadows, thoughts.

premiere: 28 November 2013, Grotowski Institute, Na Grobli Studio

performers/musicians: Davit Baroyan, Ditte Berkeley, Przemysław Błaszczak, Alessandro Curti, Jarosław Fret, Murat Içlinalça, Dengbej Kazo, Aram Kerovpyan, Vahan Kerovpyan, Kamila Klamut, Aleksandra Kotecka, Simona Sala, Orest Sharak, Mahsa Vahdat, Marjan Vahdat, Tomasz Wierzbowski

modal song studio led by: Aram Kerovpyan

vocal collaboration: Virginia Pattie Kerovpyan

sets built by a team led by Piotr Jacyk: Maciej Mądry, Krzysztof Nawój, Paweł Nowak, Andrzej Walada

lighting: Maciej Mądry

project coordination: Magdalena Mądra

musical dramaturgy, installation, direction: Jarosław Fret

The studio space is completed with 16 columns which evoke the interior of an abandoned church. The visual narrative is largely propelled by changes in stage imagery, with the actors’ actions broken up into several images/scenes. The music structure of the performance is interwoven with a very intensive movement score.

saint theotokos church of the monastery of tadem, anatolia

ruins of armenian church in khulevank, anatolia

The project includes musicians from various traditions of Asia Minor, Anatolia and Iran, whom we met on our expeditions: the Van-born Kurdish singer Dengbej Kazo; Murat Iclinalca, the master singer at St Gregory the Illuminator Church in Istanbul; the Teheran-born sisters Mahsa and Marjan Vahdat; and Vahan Kerovpyan, a composer and drummer born to an Armenian family in Paris. We also collaborate with the singer Virginia Pattie Kerovpyan. Our main collaborator on Armine, Sister is Aram Kerovpyan, the Istanbul-born master singer of the Armenian Cathedral in Paris.

Aram Kerovpyan was born in Istanbul. As a youth, he received liturgical chant training in the Armenian Church. He learned to play the kanoun and studied the Middle Eastern music system with master Saadeddin Öktenay. In 1977, Aram Kerovpyan moved to Paris where he devoted himself entirely to music, playing with various Middle Eastern musicians. In 1980, he joined the Ensemble de Musique Arménienne that later became Kotchnak. From this date on, Armenian music has become his principle field of research, particularly the modal system of liturgical chant. In 1985, he formed Akn, an ensemble of Armenian liturgical chant. Parallel to his activities as a musician, Aram Kerovpyan attends conferences, gives lectures (Europe, North America), and publishes papers in the field of Armenian modal music theory. He holds a Ph.D. in musicology. Since 1990, he has been the master singer of the Armenian cathedral in Paris.

Virginia Pattie Kerovpyan was born in Washington, DC. While in the USA, she studied singing and sang in a number of choirs and early music ensembles as both chorister and soloist. Upon her arrival in France, she continued her voice studies at the École Normale Supérieure de Musique de Paris and at the Conservatoire National

Supérieur de Musique. Virginia has performed and recorded with early music ensembles such as Les Arts Florissants, Ensemble Guillaume de Machaut de Paris, Per Cantar e Sonar, l’Offrande Musicale, La Grande Écurie et la Chambre du Roy. In 1976, she and Rouben Haroutunian formed the duo that would later become Kotchnak. In 1985, she helped form an Armenian liturgical chant ensemble called Akn, in which she is a singer.

Vahan Kerovpyan was born in Paris and currently lives in Portugal. He is a musician, instrumentalist and composer who started playing drums at an early age. He studied dehol with Edmond Zartarian and zarb and dap with Madjid Khaladj. In addition, he plays the piano, sings in an Armenian choir and is a member of Kotchnak. Vahan graduated in Armenian studies from the National Institute of Oriental Language and Civilization (INALCO), and read history at Sorbonne (IV). He collaborates with artists, composing music for performances as well as playing and singing live. He is involved in projects that aim to preserve Armenian heritage, runs classes for Armenian children, publishes papers, and supports the renovation of Armenian architecture in Turkey.

Murat Içlinalça was born in 1985 in Istanbul. At the age of 8 he began to take singing lessons from master Nisan Calgiciyan. He has studied singing and folk music at the Istanbul Technical University Music Conservatory, from which he graduated in 2010. In the same year he was appointed master singer at Saint Gregory the Illuminator in Istanbul.

Dengbej Kazo was born in 1950 in Van and now lives near Istanbul. He often gives concerts performing both popular Kurdish songs and his own compositions. He also improvises in keeping with the dengbej tradition

(dengbej are travelling Kurdish singers and storytellers). In 1960 the Turkish government officially banned the practice of the dengbej. In the 1980s many of the dengbej had to move to the cities in search of safety and work, and settled in their poorest sections. The dengbej tradition started to fade into oblivion. In 2003 a number of EU-funded projects were begun to protect this tradition. The memory of the dengbej is a rich fund of knowledge about Kurdish history and tradition. Documentation efforts are now underway to describe this extraordinary phenomenon of voices that embody the past.

Sisters Mahsa and Marjan Vahdat were both trained in classical Persian singing by master musicians in Iran as well as in regional and traditional Iranian music. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979 in Iran, public female singing was banned and even many years after the revolution female singers can only perform for women-only audiences or alongside a male voice, and can never perform solo in public. But many female singers in Iran have continued singing regardless, as have Mahsa and Marjan, who give private concerts in Iran but mostly perform outside of the country. Their repertoire comprises their own interpretations of regional and traditional music. Their lyrics are mostly mystical and love poems by great Persian poets like Hafez, Rumi, Saadi, as well as contemporary Iranian poetry speaking about Iranian society. An active campaigner for human rights, Mahsa gives numerous benefit concerts and, with Marjan, is one of the ambassadors of Freemuse, an independent international organisation advocating freedom of expression for musicians and composers worldwide. She has attracted considerable attention recently with her work on the Lullabies from the Axis of Evil album.

Cultivating an ethos of ensemble work, Teatr ZAR develops its artistic projects through long-term research into source material while creating a new theatrical language drawing on music from various traditions. Teatr ZAR is a multinational ensemble that was formed during annual research expeditions to Georgia between 1999 and 2003. During these travels, the group collected musical material, including a core of centuries-old polyphonic songs that have their roots in the beginning of the human era and are probably the oldest forms of polyphony in the world. ‘Zar’ is a name of funeral songs performed by the Svaneti tribe who inhabit the high regions of the Caucasus in north-west Georgia. Teatr ZAR attempts to demonstrate that theatre does not only relate to ‘thea’ (Greek for ‘seeing’) but it is something that above all should be heard. Performances are just part of a long process of research, expeditions, personal explorations and transformation. ZAR brings back theatre as

it was before art ruptured into different disciplines and styles. Its work addresses themes that, in the contemporary world, seem to be reserved for the religious domain. It comes from conviction, influenced by Polish Romantic ideas, that art is not only complementary to religion but can fill the dynamic chasm between the everyday and transcendent life. Juliusz Osterwa, one of the greatest figures of 20th-century Polish theatre, who tried to put these ideas into practice – and one whose ideas had a great impact on Jerzy Grotowski – once wrote: “God created theatre for those for whom the church does not suffice”.

Gospels of Childhood. The Triptych, created between 2003 and 2009, is a culmination of Teatr ZAR’s more than 10 years of research and growth. The triptych premiered in London at the Barbican Centre and then was presented in Los Angeles, Wrocław, Florence, San Francisco, Chicago, Sibiu (Romania), Legnica, Szczecin and Bydgoszcz (Poland). In October 2010, The triptych received the Wroclaw Theatre Prize. The second part of the triptych, Caesarean Section. Essays on Suicide, was shown at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August 2012, winning a Total Theatre Award for Physical/Visual Theatre and a Herald Angel Award.

www.teatrzar.art.plContact: Magdalena Mądramagda@grotowski-institute.art.pl+48 693 927 324

Project cofinanced by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.

photo by magdalena mądraedited by monika blige

graphic design: barbara kaczmarek

view of the syrian desert from mardin, a town on the turkish-syrian border