WHAT: Vahe Berberian’s new monologue “Sagayn”
WHERE: Brandview Collection, 109 E. Harvard St. Glendale, CA 91205
WHEN: May 21 – August 13, 2009, every Thursday night. Doors open at 7:30 pm, show at 8:30 pm.
HOW: For reservations please call (818) 941-4800.
“It’s true, what they say about silence being golden, but I have no love for gold, and I’d rather hear the sound of laughter than silence any time. That’s exactly why I decided to speak again,” says Vahe Berberian, regarding the premier of his latest monologue Sagayn. The artist, playwright, and comedian, Berberian, will perform his new monologue in Armenian every Thursday night, May 21 through August 13 at the Brandview Collection in Glendale at 7:30 pm.
Berberian had performed his previous monologues, Yevaylen, Nayev and Dagaveen, for many months to sold-out audiences in Pasadena. He later took his one man show to dozens of cities through the United States, Canada, the Middle East, Europe, Armenia, and Australia. Sagayn’s producer, Christina Shirinyan, explains that the show had to be moved to Glendale in order to accommodate Berberian’s large audiences and to provide them with a more central venue. “We’re thrilled about this new show,” says Shirinyan. “Can you believe it’s been five years since Dagaveen?”
Berberian explains that the Dagaveen tour exhausted him, so much so, that he needed to take a sabbatical in order to devote his time to painting and theater. “I can’t resist the urge to make people laugh and am looking forward to being back in front of an audience,” says Berberian. He promises that Sagayn will be as engaging as, and even funnier than his three previous one-man shows. “For me, the monologue is the best way of bringing together the actor and the writer in me. Basically what I do is think out loud,” says Berberian, explaining that Sagayn is the continuation of the previous shows. “I talk about various topics, and then concentrate on Armenian characteristics, and finally reflect on the Armenian condition…all in good humor.”
The performances will be held at Brandview Collection, 109 E. Harvard St. Glendale, CA 91205, every Thursday, May 21 – August 13, 2009. Doors open at 7:30 pm, show starts at 8:30 pm. Tickets are $30. For reservations please call (818) 941-4800. For organizations interested in booking shows please contact Christina, by calling the same number. Seating is first come first serve. Public parking available at the Marketplace structure on Maryland Ave or metered street parking on Harvard St.
“Painter, sculptor, writer, musician, and for all we know dancer and magician, Vahe Berberian practices his multiple talents with respectful gravity and, at the same time, expressive abandon. Thus his paintings, which have been labeled “minimalist” because of their spare compositions and atmospheric voids, are filled, near to the brim, with gestures, notations, veritable diaries of thought and motion. Vahe invites us to decrypt his myriad markings, but the markings themselves defy translation: you either know right away what they say to you – and perhaps to no one else – or you puzzle eternally over their literal significance. Their formal significance, however, keeps you engaged, and you find interpretation, only to lose it again, then find another, then lose it, in a never-ending drift of meaning that very likely mimics the process by which Vahe reasoned these images into being to begin with. That’s why he paints – not only to say the things he needs to say, but to watch them float, expand, and metamorphose like clouds into things he never thought of saying. Our impulse is to call these paintings “hermetic,” closed in sense to all but their maker; but in fact we as much as Vahe are the determinants of their meaning. They are messages Vahe puts in bottles and sets on a psychic sea; they are saturated with the spirit’s brine.”
The suspense is finally over! The boys of “Out of the Closet” are back with an ensemble cast featuring original skits and hilarious characters. Directed by Vahe Berberian, the new show “Out of the Cage” includes live enactments of their infamous YouTube clips, Peshawar Ensemble and Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation. Naturally, new installments of the ever popular “Japanese” and “Triangle” sketches will also be performed.