On Sunday, November 5, 2017, we enjoyed the Crane Calling performance, sponsored by the Hamazkayin association and directed by Tsolak Khacherian. Many of us had enjoyed this drama more than once since the 70s when the Hamazkayin's Kaspar Ipegian troupe toured to various Armenian communities of the Diaspora, including Aleppo, Damascus, Gamishli and presenting the performance staged by George Sarkissian. The performance fascinated everyone then. The Crane Calling from Homeland was a sobering alarm for many. The breath taking melody of the song by Gomidas made the listeners anxious and at the same time sober. It is the soul touching call of the crane symbolizing the Homeland of all Armenians.
The author of the play 101-year-old Jack S. Hagopian came to the theater on Sunday, and after having watched the performance attentively, delivered a speech and expressed his appreciation to the Hamazkayin Association, Kaspar Ipegian Company, director, actors and of course to spectators.
The level of the performance was higher than being an amateur performance, and the play of some actors was unbelievably successful. Therefore, it left a hope that such plays that Diaspora Armenians need would be staged more often in the future.
The drama was about the life of a Diasporan family that migrated to Australia in 40s. The resettlement motivated the family's father, Margar Hagopian to be alienated and be far away from the Armenian community as a vengeance for his being a rejected Armenian writer in the past.
His past, that had left a wound in his heart, (the first volume of his poems was ignored), became a reason for denying his nation and changing his name (Mark Jackson) in the new city and new environment. A father of another family, Kevork Artsruni (Tsolak Khatcherian), with a much fierce patriotism, at every cost struggles against the assimilation, by organizing a meeting and establishing a new union for the sake of preserving the Armenian identity. The meeting showed intolerance and disagreement as a consequence of discord. His wife, Srbuk (Tsovinar Abikian-Mikayelian), with her Armenian character and dialect from Atabazar, is a real Armenian woman and mother concerned about her daughter, Azatuhi's future, because the latter was in love with a foreigner. However the father of the family was against their marriage.
The clashes brought them to the point when Margar who denied his nation faced the recovery of his poet son’s nationality. The father by every means had tried to conceal his nationality from his poet son, who rejected the literary prize and five thousand sterling he deserved as a poet, because he preferred to take that prize as an Armenian and not as a foreign writer. The disputes finally resolved when the Armenian offspring listened to the Crane Calling and left his family denying Armenian identity. He threw himself into the warm Armenian arms. "We lost him, but the Armenians won," says Father, responding to the regret of Mother.