LOS ANGELES — Rogue Machine Theatre (2017 Ovation Award “Best Season,” and two-time recipient of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle “Polly Warfield Award for an Excellent Season in a Small to Mid-Size Theatre”) presents “100 Aprils” opening on Saturday, June 9.
“100 Aprils” is a darkly comic look at the generational consequences, and insanity, of history denied.
John Saypian is a modern-day Don Quixote. He and his family are second-generation Armenians whose parents escaped the Genocide. John believes that a tormentor is pursuing him. Is the enemy a haunted memory from his childhood or is he real?
“I needed to contribute something to honor, and coincide with, the centennial commemoration of the Armenian Genocide,” said playwright Leslie Ayvazian. “It is a story that all Armenians carry, and tell throughout generations. This particular telling comes from an absurdist world. It lives partially in hallucination and partially in dreams that cannot be silenced.”
Ayvazian is the author of eight full-length plays and seven one-acts, published by Samuel French and Dramatists Play Service. “Nine Armenians” won the John Gassner/Outer Critics Circle Award for best new American play, The Roger L. Stevens Award and second place for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She has received commissions from the Manhattan Theatre Club, Windancer Productions and South Coast Repertory Theatre. “High Dive” was produced at the Long Wharf Theatre and the Manhattan Class Company, directed by David Warren, and went on to be produced in Poland and Slovakia. Her short film “Every Three Minutes” starring Olympia Dukakis was produced by Showtime and won a Telly Award.
Director Michael Arabian was honored with five Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards, including Best Production and Best Direction, for “Waiting for Godot” at the Mark Taper Forum. The production was nominated for 10 Ovation Awards, winning five, including Best Production; and was cited as one of the ten most memorable productions of 2012 seen in either New York or LA by Los Angeles Times critic Charles McNulty who called it a “luminous revival.” He has directed and produced numerous west coast and world premieres in New York and Los Angeles winning over 50 awards. Selected directing credits include “Disgraced” (SD Critics Award nom Best Production) and “Red” at San Diego Rep (both shows were in the San Diego Stage Beat’s top 10 list), “Kingdom of Earth” (Odyssey Theatre), “Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks” with Leslie Caron (Laguna Playhouse), “Staging the Unstageable” (Kirk Douglas), and “God of Carnage” (La Mirada).
