Saroyan’s Unpublished Plays Set for L.A. World Premiere on September 15

• 08.25.2018, 09:01
•  World,  No-politics

http://asbarez.com

Never-before-staged scenes from William Saroyan’s unpublished plays will be performed in a world premiere production at the Los Angeles Central Library’s Taper Auditorium on September 15. “William Saroyan: The Unpublished Plays in Performance,” created by award-winning playwright and director Aram Kouyoumdjian, will be staged by Vista Players, “a boundlessly talented” ensemble that “set the standard by which others were judged” (Sacramento News & Review),  Asbarez reports.

Kouyoumdjian was granted special permission by Stanford University, where Saroyan’s unpublished manuscripts are housed, to stage the excerpts. Selections from such works as “The Armenian Play (or Opera),” “Home to Hayastan,” and “Ouzenk Chouzenk Hai Yenk” (Like It or Not, We’re Armenians) will explore a wide array of themes, including immigrant life, the trauma of genocide, and the notion of repatriation.

Saroyan is the pre-eminent Armenian-American author who rose to prominence in the 1930s and went on to have a prolific career for five decades. A writer of short stories, novels, plays, and memoirs, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his most famous dramatic work, “The Time of Your Life,” and an Academy Award for his screenplay of “The Human Comedy.”