My Heart’s In The Highlands

Where do we belong? Where are our roots?
What do we remember? Why do we remember?
What do we long for?

Written before The Bald Soprano by Eugène Ionesco and Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, and considered a predecessor of the Theatre of the Absurd theatrical movement, My Heart’s in the Highlands is set in Fresno, California in 1914.

The play’s theme is based on Mac Gregor, a former Shakespearean actor who feels lost and disconnectedfrom the world, and his encounter with a nuclear family of an elderly mother, son, and grandchild.

The play’s dramaturgy is inspired and shaped by William Saroyan’s foreword “To the poets of the world. To those simple and sublime people whose lives are poetry. To everyone who is, and ever was, a child. To the heart in the highlands.” The entire play is narrated through the eyes of Johnny, the child of the nuclear family.

Inviting the audience to think through concepts such as roots, land, memory, belonging, and longing, the play with its characters who accept each other with compassion, describes in a very naïve language the possibility to remember the collective struggle we are waging for existence, in a city of culture that is attempted to be rendered without a memory in every respect.

Team

Cast

Thanks to:

Aras Publishing, Borusan Music House, Reha Keskin, Aylin Vartanyan Dilaver, Markırit Atmaca, Duygu Dalyanoğlu, Ari Hergel, Evren Barın Egrik, Norayr Olgar, Narod Avcı, Rudi Sayat Pulatyan, Dilara Özçelik, Hilda Demirci, Lisa Simonoğlu, Ülkü Albasmacıyan, Ertürk Erkek, Talin Demircioğlu, Raffi Demircioğlu

For their solidarity with us in providing rehearsal space, we would like to thank:

Arsız Sahne, Bereze Gösteri Evi, Feriköy Surp Vartanants Church Foundation, FEOYD, Karagözyan Orphanage Foundation, Locus Movement, and Samatya Surp Kevork Church Foundation

Photos from play

Photos from rehearsal stage