Running February 19 through March 8 at the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, R. N. Sandberg’s Zabel in Exile tells the story of Armenian feminist writer and activist Zabel Yessayan. As personal and political histories collide, Zabel confronts not only the ghosts of her past, but what it means to resist—and to remember—when the very worst of human history repeats itself. The play is sponsored by Victor Zarougian and Judith Saryan, one of the editors of the English translations of Yessayan’s work and a member of NAASR’s Board of Directors and former Chairperson. Saryan initially commissioned the work in 2017, and selected playwright R.N. Sandberg’s—who is the director Megan Sandberg-Zakian’s father—script from the many approaches to Zabel’s story. The play has been developed at Merrimack Repertory Theatre and The Armenian Museum in Watertown.
Zabel in Exile
Yerevan, 1937. Armenian writer and activist Zabel Yessayan sits in a Soviet prison cell, awaiting execution. But what exactly is her crime? Writing novels? Knowing how to speak French? Being a woman? As Zabel confronts her captors, past and present blur, and she reckons with the injustices she has witnessed and confronted—from schoolyard bullying to the horrors of genocide. Zabel in Exile is a searing memory play that honors the strength of a woman unafraid to stand up to tyranny and wrestles with whether it is possible to continue to believe in light during times of endless darkness.