Armenia's theatrical world waiting for law on theatre – Today marks World Theatre Day

Armenian theatre actors and stage directors have been for over a decade looking forward to a legislation regulating the sphere. 

A bill, put into circulation in 2004, has not been carried into effect to date. Its finalized version is entitled draft law “On Theatre and Theatrical Activity”.

“Such a lingering - for ten years and more - is really very bad, but for certain things it is probably right say better late than never. “It has to be done, because a law on theater is very important,” Tigran Nesisyan, a merited actor of the Gabriel Sundukyaan National Academic Theatre, told Tert.am in an interview devoted to World Theatre Day.

According to Zhirayr Dadasyan, an artistic director at the State Pantomime Theater, the law is necessary to outline the functions of a theatre and to set clear-cut criteria distinguish it from companies whose activities is unrelated to the field.

“The term theatre applies to practically everything today, even to phenomena unrelated to the theatre. But the fact is theatre is a dramaturgic phenomenon, so if what you do is not dramaturgy at all, it cannot be a theatre. While dance is a dance, and song is a song, a theatre is a theatre. If you want a singing theatre, that’s the opera; if a dancing theatre is what you seek, we have the ballet. I remember when the [draft] law was being debated ten years ago, there was not the word ‘dramaturgy’, but it has to be primary,” he explained.

Speaking to Tert.am, Director of the Yerevan Puppet Theatre Ruben Babayan said he doesn’t find a new law necessary. He pointed out to two major problems the Armenian theatre faces today: “being modern, interesting, insightful, demanded and talented” and having the necessary organizational skills to express all that. 

“The theatre’s organizational character has remained what it used to be in the Soviet time; the creative and staging expenses do not absolutely differ from the activities in other sector,” he noted.

Babayan stressed the need of finding new talents and opening for them all the possible avenues to express themselves. “Because no one ever knows for how long a person was gifted with a talent,” he added.

Elaborating further on his formula, Babayan said it proposes using organizational skills for revealing geniuses.

“Theatre is an area which must permanently be modern; being an actor is a creative job which is very short-lived. He expresses himself in a very vivid manner, acquires a big reputation, but that’s within a short period,” Babayan added.

He further stressed the importance of the actor’s talent to be reachable to audience. “There has to be one objective: to create high-quality artistic work and enable it to have its audience and to manifest itself to the both in and out of Armenia,” he added.

The Armenian theatres’ repertoires includes works by Armenian and foreign authors and dramatists ranging from the classicism to the contemporary period.