BEAST ON THE MOON

by James L. Seay

When one hears the word, "Genocide," one almost without fail calls to mind the Nazi "final solution" to "the Jewish problem" which has become known as the Holocaust. However, between 1915 and 1923, another Holocaust took place; one which is today virtually forgotten. On May 16th, 1978, past President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Jimmy Carter said, "It is generally not known in the world that, in the years preceding 1916, there was a concerted effort made to eliminate all the Armenian people, probably one of the greatest tragedies that ever befell any group. And there weren't any Nuremberg trials." On May 11, 1918, only two years after the beginning of the Armenian Holocaust, another past President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Theodore Roosevelt, summed it up, saying, "...the Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey is to condone it ... the failure to deal radically with the Turkish horror means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is mischievous nonsense."

After the able bodied Armenian men were "drafted" and killed by the so-called "progressive" Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire, villages and towns, now populated only by women, children and the elderly, were "relocated for their own good" as Turkish Gendarmes "escorted" them in death marches across Anatolia to the Syrian Desert, Der Zor. An estimated million and a half people died. Not only was it an Armenian Holocaust, but, somehow, I could not help but be reminded of the Trail of Tears. Man's inhumanity to man seems to know no boundaries.

I must admit, I knew little of the Young Turks and their efforts to eradicate the Armenian people, a Christian minority in the Ottoman Empire, except from reading The 40 Days of Musa Dagh by Franz Werfel in an undergraduate Modern World Literature class B and that was well over 40 years ago! This was my background when I traveled to Normal, Illinois to witness a play, Beast on the Moon by Richard Kalinoski, at the tiny Heartland Theatre, hidden away in northeast Normal in what used to be the Soldiers' and Sailors' Children's School and sponsored by Armenian-Americans, George, Carol and Peter Churukian.

Set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the 1920s, the core story deals with Seta, a sparkling, impulsive young girl, filled with hope and the love of life, who is brought to America from the "old country" by Aram as a "picture bride." Grateful that she has been saved from death, Seta discovers that her life as Aram's wife involves a different kind of suffering, as she endures a soul-chilling servitude to a desperate and wounded man bent on begetting sons who will replace the empty faces in a faded photograph of his dead family. The title, we learn, comes from a Nineteenth Century lunar eclipse during which the Turks ran from their houses and fired guns at "the beast on the moon," as the Armenian minority watched. A few years later, the Turks again ran from their houses with guns, but this time, fired at their Armenian neighbors.

The aching irony of the play is that both Seta and Aram, who have managed to escape the atrocities wrought by the Young Turks and their predecessors in the old country, find a new tyranny in which he attempts to turn his quicksilver bride into a "proper woman," obedient, compliant and silent, while he attempts to become a proper patriarch. The play, in spite of its historical background, is not so much a story of escape or revenge, but a graceful fable of transformation, and begs the question, in such a marriage and in such a world, how can both souls be rescued?

Kalinoski's play, skillfully directed by Rachel Chaves and featuring outstanding acting by Dan Irwin, Katy Lacio and Greg McGrath, is overflowing with a wealth of images and dramatic action. It is funny, poetic, compassionate and wise. But be warned, it is one of the most emotionally powerful plays I have seen in a long time. It has all of the terrible impact of a brick crashing through a plate glass window. And when you look at the play's poster of an ancient photograph of a stiffly-posed circa 1900 Armenian family, it will scald your heart. One should remember the words of Adolph Hitler, who, while persuading his associates that a Jewish holocaust would be tolerated by the West, stated, "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"

Beast on the Moon is presented at the Heartland Theatre Company, at One Normal Plaza, near the corner of Beech and Lincoln in Normal, Illinois. It was originally produced as part of the 1995 Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors' Theatre of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky. In three weeks, it will open at the Moscow Arts Theatre in Moscow, Russia (made famous by Constantine Stanislovski) and in March, 2005, it will finally open in New York. Remaining performances at Heartland Theatre Company are October 28th, 29th & 30th at 7:30 p.m.

Reprinted from The Pamphlet