A scene from “The Birthday Gift”

By Aram Arkun
Mirror-Spectator Staff

RICHMOND, Va. — For the first time ever, the Hovhannes Tumanyan State Puppet Theater of Yerevan visited the United States this January. Its East Coast performance tour began on January 20 at St. James Armenian Church here and continued to various Armenian churches and communities in Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Fair Lawn, NJ, New York City and White Plains, NY, as well as Boston and Providence. A five-member ensemble of the group, including its artistic director, performed Robert Arakelian’s short story, “The Birthday Gift,” in Armenian, and Hovhannes Tumanyan’s “The Foolish Man” in English with floor puppets. The initial presentation was directed in particular at younger children. The four actors of the ensemble also sang a medley of lively Armenian traditional and folk songs. Continue reading →

By Alan Whitehorn

After almost a century since the 1915 state-sponsored mass slaughter of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, one would think there would be few new pioneering books on the subject of the Armenian Genocide. That, however, is not the case. At least four important new reference volumes on the Armenian Genocide have appeared in English within the past year: Verjine Svazlian, The Armenian Genocide: Testimonies of the Eyewitness Survivors, Vahakn Dadrian & Taner Akçam, Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials, Raymond Kevorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History, and Shahen Khachaturian, The Color of Pain: The Reflection of the Armenian Genocide in  Armenian Painting. Each book is an important work that has been years in the preparation. Collectively, these works will have an enduring impact, as we approach the 100th memorial year.
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