“Deported: A Dream Play” staged in Boston

PanARMENIAN.Net - Joyce Van Dyke’s “Deported: A Dream Play” was given a barebones presentation on Saturday, May 28, in a rehearsal space at the Stan Calderwood Pavilion in Boston.

Directed by Judy Braha, the play on the Armenian Genocide will receive a full production next year at the Modern Theater, also in Boston, and will run from March 15 to April 8.

Seven actors, dressed soberly in black and reading from scripts, played 22 parts, and Saturday night’s presentation lacked many ancillary elements - music, dancing, video - that will be part of next year’s full-blown run. The absence of these elements was compensated for by the reading of stage directions by Ali Kerestly, The Armenian Mirror-Spectator reported.

Although Van Dyke, of course, controls and shapes the final form and content of the play, “Deported” is still a work in progress and it is very much a result of collaboration. The story focuses on the memories of the Genocide of two women, Victoria, played by Bobbie Steinbach, and her friend, Varter, played by Paula Langton.

Van Dyke also introduces the issue of how the Genocide is treated differently from the Holocaust with the depiction of a young, Jewish reporter, who comes to interview Victoria in her old age.

Audiences are already familiar with Van Dyke’s works - “A Girl’s War” and “The Oil Thief” Now she is working on a new play, which, she says, has nothing to do with Armenian themes.

As a Huntington Playwright Fellow, Van Dyke won the Elliott Norton Award in 2009 for outstanding new script, and has been a fellow at the MacDowell Colony. Her rising reputation should ensure the growing audience she deserves.