La Cerisaie
Saturday 17th May - 19.30, Sunday 18th May - 16.00, Monday 19th May - 19.30
After spending five wild years in France, Lyubov Andreevna, ruined by her lover, is forced to return to Russia to live with her family (from whom she had left no news).
The joy of their reunion quickly gives way to worries and anxiety. Indeed, Lopakhin, a family friend and merchant, reminds them of the harsh reality: she and her brother Gaev are drowning in debt and must sell the family estate.
But can they even bring themselves to do so?
Presented in 1904 by the famous director Konstantin Stanislavsky, The Cherry Orchard is the final play of Anton Chekhov, who died a few months later at the age of 44.
Stanislavsky saw The Cherry Orchard as a drama bordering on tragedy, while its author claimed it was a comedy. It’s precisely this interweaving of laughter and tears that makes Chekhov’s theater so rich. In each of his plays, he delights us with his gallery of colorful characters and takes us on a roller coaster of emotions!
La Cerisaie is a French language performance.
Swallows and Armenians
Friday 20th June, 7pm & Saturday 21st June, 2.30pm & 7pm
Where East and West collide in a story about friendship and family, love and jealousy, with a good measure of sailing thrown in!
Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons is a classic book about children having adventures on a lake. The Walker family have always been depicted as quintessentially English but what is not widely known is that Ransome modelled his characters on an Anglo-Armenian family from Aleppo, Syria.
This joyous actor-musician production delves into the fascinating but often fractured relationship between the British author and the family who inspired him to write his iconic book for children.
Although a work of fiction, this production has been extensively researched using letters and diary entries from the Arthur Ransome archive, University of Leeds, Special Collections; letters in The Arthur Ransome Society (TARS) archives; numerous publications and testimonies by Altounyan and Guzelian family members.
There will be a pre-show talk by the writer Karen Babayan at 6.30pm and a post show ‘Circle of Life’ circle dance event with dance artist Shakeh Major Tchilingirian. All welcome.
Photo Credit Asadour Guzelian.