Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, the “Home of New Plays in Boston,” is a subsidiary of Boston University and as such oversees the MFA Program in Playwriting in the Graduate School of the College of Arts and Sciences.  Now in its 30th year, BPT is an award-winning professional theatre company, the founder of both the Elliot Norton Award-winning Boston Theatre Marathon and the Massachusetts Young Playwrights’ Project (a playwriting mentorship in 18 area high schools).  BPT alumni plays have been produced on Broadway, Off-Broadway, in the West End, and and at numerous LORT theatres throughout the United States.  For more information about BPT and its programs, go to www.bostonplaywrights.org.

CAST

BOBBIE STEINBACH has performed at many theatre companies including Actors’ Shakespeare Project, New Rep, Lyric, Huntington, Speakeasy, Boston Playwrights’ and Commonwealth Shakespeare. She is the proud recipient of the Eliot Norton Outstanding Actor Award.

JEANINE KANE has been a Resident Actor at the Gamm Theatre since 1997. She is a graduate of Trinity Rep Conservatory and teaches acting and speech at Massasoit Community College.

KEN BALTIN, a lifelong actor, director and acting teacher, has been performing on Boston area stages for the past twenty-five years.  Ken’s on the acting faculty at The Boston Conservatory.


ROBERT NAJARIAN is an actor, instructor, and fight director based in Cambridge, MA.  He has performed or fight-directed for many companies including Punchdrunk, American Repertory Theatre, and Washington National Opera. Faculty member of Boston University School of Theatre.  MFA: The Shakespeare Theatre’s Academy for Classical Acting at the George Washington University.  BA: Bowdoin College.

MARK COHEN. Home-based on the fulltime acting faculty at Boston University, Mark has performed with the Boston Center for American Performance, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Brown/Trinity Playwright’s Repertory Theatre, The Etty Project, and Harbor Light Stage.  He is a proud member of Actor’s Equity Association.

MARYA LOWRY, Founding member/resident actor: Actors’ Shakespeare Project. Boston: SpeakEasy, ART, Commonwealth Shakespeare Co., Merrimack Rep., New Rep. Featured performer: Boston Pops, Handel & Haydn Society. International teaching/performing: France, Greece, Bulgaria, Canada, UK and US.

LIZ HAYES is a Boston-based actor, teaching artist and dialect coach who has appeared with many companies including Orfeo Group (founding member), New Rep, Lyric Stage, SpeakEasy and Underground Railway Theater. She is a graduate of Brown University, holds an MFA from The Shakespeare Theatre’s Academy for Classical Acting at the George Washington University and teaches at The Boston Conservatory.

DESIGNERS

APO ASHJIAN (Choreographer) has been active in Armenian dance for 40 years. He studied under famous Directors and Choreographers in Armenia and is a certified Director and Choreographer. He founded the Sayat Nova Dance Company of Boston in January 1986.


JON SAVAGE (Set Design) teaches at BU. Jon has designed with Joyce and Judy on The Oil Thief and has been working with them on Deported for almost 2 years.

DAVID WILSON (Music and Sound Design), Lighting and Sound Designer, with over 300 productions of opera, theater, concert and dance. Founder of the Brandeis University graduate program in sound design.

MOLLY TRAINER (Costume Design), Costume designer for theater and media. USA 829 and USITT member.  Adjunct faculty, Salem State University, Salem, MA. www.mollytrainer.com

JOHN R. MALINOWSKI (Lighting Design) has designed over 200 productions since 1986, including many world and US premieres.  Among them: The English Channel by Robert Brustein; Tales from Chekhov directed and adapted by Tina Landau;Fabuloso by John Kolvenbach; Silver Spoon by Amy Merrill and Si Kahn; Spring Forward, Fall Back by Robert Brustein; and Weldon Rising by Phyllis Nagy. More at:   www.johnmalinowski.com

DIRECTOR, PLAYWRIGHT & ARTISTIC DIRECTOR

JUDY BRAHA (Director) has been a director, teacher and arts advocate in New England for over two decades. She has directed regionally for Actor’s Shakespeare Project, BCAP, Merrimack Repertory Theater, New Rep, Ensemble Studio Theater, Huntington Theatre Company, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Nickerson Theater, North Shore Music Theater, Emerson Stage, Nora Theater Company. As a founding member of The New Ehrlich Theater, Judy directed many award winning productions including BENT,STEAMING and HOUSE OF BLUE LEAVES, paving the way for a theater renaissance in the now-burgeoning arts community of Boston’s South End. Judy was a proud member of the Board of Directors of STAGE SOURCE for its first six years. Currently head of the M.F.A. Directing Program at Boston University’s School of Theater, her teaching and guest artist credits include Brandeis University, Emerson College, Mount Holyoke, M.I.T., Northeastern, Wheaton College and Trinity Rep Conservatory. Recently, she directedOTHELLO for ASP, THE ROAD TO MECCA for BCAP and Joyce Van Dyke’s THE OIL THIEF for Boston Playwrights’ Theatre which earned an Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding New Play.

JOYCE VAN DYKE (Playwright) has received numerous awards and productions of her plays. Deported / a dream play, a Finalist for the 2011 O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, will be her fourth play produced by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. Other productions include A Girl’s War, a play about the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in Karabakh, produced at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre (2001), New Repertory Theatre (2003) and Golden Thread Productions (2009). Her play The Oil Thief, originally commissioned by the Ensemble Studio Theatre / Alfred P. Sloan Project, won Boston’s 2009 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding New Script (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre). She is also a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Huntington Theatre Playwriting Fellow, and has won the John Gassner Award, Provincetown Theatre Playwriting Award, and Boston Globe “Top Ten” plays of 2001. Her plays have been published in Laugh Lines: Short Comic Plays and Contemporary Armenian American Drama. She has an MA in playwriting from Boston University, a PhD from the University of Virginia, and a BA from Stanford, and teaches Shakespeare at Harvard University Extension School. Currently working on a new play about a historic production of Othello, she is represented by Paradigm.

KATE SNODGRASS is the Artistic Director of both the Elliot Norton Award-winning Boston Theater Marathon and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, the “Home of New Plays in Boston.”  The author of the Actors’ Theatre of Louisville’s Heideman Award-winning play Haiku, her plays have been recognized with two IRNE Awards for “Best New Play” and a Steinberg Award nomination from the American Theatre Critics Association.  She lectures in Playwriting at Boston University and is a member of A.E.A., A.F.T.R.A., and the Dramatists’ Guild.  Acknowledged by Boston’s StageSource in 2001 as a “Theatre Hero,” Kate is a Playwriting Fellow with the Huntington Theatre Company.

SPECIAL THANKS

Special thanks to these additional Artistic Team members who added so much to the development of the play, 2007-11.

June Baboian
Ilana Brownstein
April Feld
Jess Grant
Paula Langton
Doug Lockwood
Elise Manning
Jules Menschen
The cast of the 2009 BU New Plays Initiative production of Deported/ a dream play

Deported / a dream play is in many ways an untold story.  Almost one hundred years after the fact, the Turkish government still denies the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey and the “deportation” of Armenian women and children on a death march through the desert.  The descendants of Armenian survivors in the U.S. and in the worldwide diaspora still struggle for recognition as the centenary approaches in 2015.

Until I began writing this play, it was a story I had tried to avoid my whole life, even though my Armenian grandmother was a deportation survivor.  I wrote a play about a contemporary Armenian conflict instead – A Girl’s War, first produced at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre (2001), and produced again at New Repertory Theatre in 2003.  At one of those performances in 2003, I met Dr. H. Martin Deranian.  From Martin I learned that his mother and my grandmother were close friends, deported together from the same city in 1915.  Through a lifetime’s research Martin had acquired insider information about both women’s experiences including things I’d never heard about my own grandmother (like many who lived through the ordeal she never spoke about it in later life).  Once he began passing this material on to me – stories, letters, photos, artifacts – I couldn’t stop thinking about these two women and the way their story could give focus to this huge cultural cataclysm.

Writing this play became the most difficult experience of my writing life, emotionally and artistically, but also, strangely, the happiest.  I decided to try the experiment of creating the play collaboratively.  Judy Braha, a director with a long history of developing work collaboratively and a passion for improvisation, agreed to work with me and a group of professional actors at Boston University School of Theater.

We began working with the actors in 2007, before there was any script or story, holding improvisational workshops based on survivor stories, including taped interviews with survivors that we listened to at the Armenian Library and Museum of America (ALMA), as well as the stories of Martin’s mother and my own grandparents. We also began collaborating with many Armenian cultural organizations in the Boston area, including ALMA, Project SAVE Armenian Photograph Archives, and Sayat Nova Dance Company, whose choreographer Apo Ashjian taught our actors dances that are now woven into the play.    As the script has evolved over the past two years we’ve had the opportunity to get valuable feedback from workshops and public readings sponsored by Boston University’s New Play Initiative, New Repertory Theatre, the Huntington Theatre, and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre.

With the 100^th anniversary of the genocide approaching in 2015, we are in the right place and the right time.   We hope to reach out to the widest possible public, to non-Armenian as well as Armenian audiences.  Both Judy Braha and I have a long history of collaboration with Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, known for its award-winning productions of new plays.   We are thrilled to launch this play with a world premiere production by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre in association with Suffolk University, at the beautiful, newly-renovated Modern Theatre in the heart of Boston’s theatre district.

- by Joyce Van Dyke

Deported is a dream play.  The story of two women friends, it fuses the everyday and the surreal.  Dreams evoke the repercussions of a long-ago genocide, down through more than a century – from 1915 to 2015 and beyond. “Memories and dreams interweave in this tale of enduring friendship incorporating music and dance …Deported celebrates the playwright’s own family history and that of many Armenian families forever changed” (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre 2011-12 season brochure).

Joyce Van Dyke’s plays have received numerous productions and awards.  Deported / a dream play, premiering March 8, 2012, is the recipient of a grant from the Boston University Center for the Humanities and a Finalist for the 2011 O’Neill National Playwrights’ Conference.  As a descendant of Armenian genocide survivors, the playwright developed this play from true stories including those of her own family.  Growing up in California, she often visited her Armenian grandparents and other Armenian relatives in Fresno.  Deported has had readings at the Huntington Theatre, New Repertory Theatre, and the Boston Theatre Marathon, and an earlier version had a developmental workshop at Boston University (2009).  Ms. Van Dyke’s other plays include A Girl’s War, a story of love and war that deals with a contemporary Armenian family in the Karabakh conflict.  Named one of the Top Ten plays of 2001 by the Boston Globe, A Girl’s War has been produced at San Francisco’s Thick House (Golden Thread Productions, 2009), New Repertory Theatre (2003), and Boston Playwrights’ Theatre (2001).  A Girl’s War also won the John Gassner Playwriting Award, the Provincetown Theatre Company Playwriting Award, and was nominated for the American Theatre Critics Association Steinberg New Play Award, as well as being named a Finalist for the Jane Chambers Award.  It was published in the anthology Contemporary Armenian American Drama (2004).

Joyce’s recent plays include The Oil Thief which won Boston’s 2009 Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding New Script.  Originally commissioned by the Ensemble Studio Theatre / Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project, The Oil Thief was produced by Boston Playwrights’ Theatre (2008).  Other productions: Interview, commissioned and produced for the Paramount Theatre opening ceremonies (2010); The Earring, published in Laugh Lines: Short Comic Plays (2007) and first produced in the Boston Theater Marathon; Not My Real Mother (Boston Theater Marathon, 2007); and Love in the Gulf (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, 1996).

Joyce Van Dyke is a MacDowell Colony Fellow, a Huntington Theatre  Playwriting Fellow, a member of Central Square Theater’s PlayPen, a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Playwriting Finalist Grant, and a graduate of Boston University’s playwriting program. She attended Stanford (BA) and the University of Virginia (PhD).  She teaches Shakespeare at Harvard Extension School where she received the Shattuck Teaching Prize.  A member of the Dramatists Guild and StageSource, she is currently working on a new play about a historic production of Othello. She is represented by Paradigm.

Boston Playwrights’ Theatre presents Joyce Van Dyke’s Deported / a dream play in association with Suffolk University, opening March 8, 2012, at the newly-renovated Modern Theatre at Suffolk University. The production features Armenian dance choreographed by Apo Ashjian of Sayat Nova Dance Company.

Deported will be directed by Judy Braha with the following cast:  Bobbie Steinbach, Jeanine Kane, Ken Baltin, Mark Cohen, Marya Lowry, Liz Hayes, and Rob Najarian.  Set design is by Jon Savage, lighting design by John Malinowski, sound design by David Wilson, and costume design by Molly Trainer.

Deported runs March 8 through April 1, with performances on Thursdays at 7:30pm, Fridays at 8:00pm, Saturdays at 8:00pm, and Sundays at 2:00pm.  Press opening night is Saturday, March 10, 8:00pm.  Ample parking is available within two blocks of the theatre, and dining/parking packages with neighboring restaurants will be available. Tickets are now on sale at  www.bostonplaywrights.org

Image by Peter Vanderwalker

Boston Playwrights’ Theatre presents Joyce Van Dyke’s Deported / a dream play in association with Suffolk University, opening March 8, 2012, at the newly-renovated Modern Theatre at Suffolk University. The production features Armenian dance choreographed by Apo Ashjian of Sayat Nova Dance Company.

Deported will be directed by Judy Braha with the following cast:  Bobbie Steinbach, Jeanine Kane, Ken Baltin, Mark Cohen, Marya Lowry, Liz Hayes, and Rob Najarian.  Set design is by Jon Savage, lighting design by John Malinowski, sound design by David Wilson, and costume design by Molly Trainer.

Deported runs March 8 through April 1, with performances on Thursdays at 7:30pm, Fridays at 8:00pm, Saturdays at 8:00pm, and Sundays at 2:00pm.  Press opening night is Saturday, March 10, 8:00pm.  Ample parking is available within two blocks of the theatre, and dining/parking packages with neighboring restaurants will be available. Tickets are now on sale at  www.bostonplaywrights.org