| The Stage 24 Aug 2000 Like many of America's great creative giants of the mid 20th century, Arshile Gorky came of immigrant stock hurled by adversity into the Land of the Free via the portals of Ellis Island. This refugee from the 1915 holocaust in Turkey - when an estimated 2.5 million Armenians were slaughtered - grew up to become the States' greatest surrealist painter. Once described as ‘the tallest man in New York who paints and does shepherd dances', Gorky was a romantically complex creature. Based on her own biography of the artist, Nouritza Matossian recreates scenes and characters from his life to form an intimate portrait of the man behind the canvas. This is shaped by projected images and the voices of the women in Gorky's life: his mother tells of childhood and flight to America, his sister recounts his entry into bohemian life, his wives mark the stages of his commercial rise and personal decline. But the balance is a little uneven. The slides of Turkish Armenia are stunning but actually say very little within the time available. What is lost is a unique opportunity to dissect the Armenian/American fusion that created such a clear yet demented vision. Quibbles, though, in what is a compelling and original experience.
The Scotsman 9 August 2000 By Joyce McMillan The American-Armenian artist Arshile Gorky - real name Manoug Adoian - was not much older than the boys in Decky Does a Bronco when the 1915 genocide of Armenians swept one and a half million of his people away; but for him, the childhood trauma filled his life with an undercurrent of grief, violence and depression that would finally drive him to an early death. Nouritza Matossian's solo show about Gorky's life as seen by his mother, sister, lover and wife is hardly a play, and in some ways not even a performance; Matossian is a cultural diplomat who has written a book about Gorky, and simply comes on stage to tell us a little of what it says. But if good theatre is about telling a story that compels attention, and giving a voice to those who have not been heard before, the Black Angel makes the grade. The images of Gorky's paintings that illustrate the story are stunning, the emotional sincerity almost tangible; and a lost thread of history is reclaimed and acknowledged in a little hot room somewhere off Princes Street.
The Scotsman 19 August 2000 SIMON PIA'S FESTIVAL
DIARY: Get on your bike and show a bit of initative and what happens? You gest nicked by the local constabulary. Hagop Matossian had been zipping about the High Stree on his "goped" promoting his mother's show Black Angel, the Double Life of Arshile Gorky at the Hill St. Theatre. He tried to avoid detection by wearing a mask of Gorky, but still got nabbed. Meanwhile, the show is based on Nouritza Matossian's biography of the great surreal painter who survived the Armenian Holocaust in 1915. It has been described as "extraodrinary" by top radio pundit Brian "Morty" Morton. Nouritza, also a food critic, will no doubt be sampling of of the city's most iconoclastic dining experiences at the Aghtamar Armenian Monastery in Exile. Mine host Bedros is revered by the diary despite once kicking us out of his restaurant.
The Scotsman 22 August 2000 SIMON PIA'S FESTIVAL
DIARY: VANESSA Redgrave's arrival in Edinburgh on Saturday reminds us that you don't have to be blonde and babacious to make your mark at the Festival. Indeed this year is in many ways one of women with substance. Redgrave is coming up to express solidarity with her friend Keti Doloze and see her show. Doloze is Georgia's most celebrated actress, as well as the founder and director of the world-famous Tblisi International Theatre Festival. Her one-woman performance, Self-Portrait of My Generation, is inspired by her role as Medea and the White Scarf movement. Doloze set up the White Scarf Movement in the early 1990s - inspired by the Despericados, the mothers of the disappeared in Argentina - and led a protest of 2,000 women to the front line in Abkhazia. Meanwhile, there was some rather ironic news for another star from the Caucasus, Nouritza Matossian, currently starring in Black Angel, the Double Life of Arshile Gorky. In a week when her play about Gorky, who fled the Armenian Genocide by the Turks, was staged at Hill Street Theatre, one of the leading US academic publications, The Chronicle for Higher Education, reports that the Turkish government has been putting pressure on Microsoft's on-line encyclopaedia, Encarta, to remove all records about the Armenian Genocide of 1915. According to the article, Microsoft approached both authors, Ronald Grigor Suny and Helen Fein, to rewrite their entries. The Diary is delighted to report both Suny and Fein refused and instead publicised the Turkish government's pressure to rewrite history.
The Scotsman 24 August 2000 SIMON PIA'S FESTIVAL
DIARY: The Witness panel at the Book Festival which included Magnus Linklater, Neil Acherson and others were treated to a reading from the Diary. Humbled as we were merely a cipher of Nouritza Matossian, whose play Black Angel has been wowing audiences at Hill Street Theatre. Matossian is publicising the efforts of the Turkish government to erase the history of the Armenian gneocide from Microsoft's on-line encyclopaedia, Encarta. " I spoke about the importance of reporting," Nouritza tells us,"and how in the case of the Armenian Holocaust the history of it hardly exists because the records were destroyed." "Only newspaper reports and those of missionaries and other witnesses were vital for pieceing together the story. We dicusssed the internet and its use in news reporting. All good stuff and thanks to you. "There has been a huge reaction to the Encarta story and other support groups are protesting about it." Black Angel was a great success at the Barbican but this is Nouritza's first Fringe. "I am finding it a very piquant and surprising time, experienceing many contrasts, no doubt because I am performing as well as keeping in touch with the Book Festival, family life with my two sons who are my crew, lights, projectionists etc . . . and handing out flyers. "We go to horrific comic nights and wonderful movies and attend parties all together so I get the teenage viewpoint which is fascinating and often very critical."As we say up here Nouritza haste ye back.
The List 24 August 2000 By Judith Ho Having spent twenty years writing a book on his life, it's possibly surprising that Nouritza Matossian has chosen to spend an entire festival portraying the tragic life of Arsile Gorky. She's given herself a bit more variety this time, telling his story through the eyes of four of his women; his mother, sister, lover and wife. Played over a backdrop of Armenian music, and images of Gorky's art the overall effect is haunting and absorbing and Matossians passion for his work is strongly conveyed. |