Inna Sahakyan´s and Ruben Ghazaryan’s work Outliving Shakespeare begins with a close-up of aged skin, followed by a painting of a woman screaming. We enter the cosmos of an Armenian retirement home, rife with defects. Even getting out of the lift with a wheelchair through the narrow door is an exhausting task. In other rooms, we see piles of furniture and cobwebs. A multitude of cats roam around, but a speech robot also ensures minimal communication.
Garnik Seyranyan
Everyday life would be rather monotonous were it not for 66-year-old Garnik Seyranyan, who steadfastly keeps his theatre group together, most of whose members are over 65, and confronts these nursing home residents with challenges that are not easy to tackle, such as performing key scenes from Shakespeare’s works.
The documentary, now in the international competition at the 37th Trieste Film Festival following this year’s #IDFA, portrays a man who sticks to his task even though he does not always receive support from the residents and is often subjected to verbal attacks meant to leave them alone.
Sahakyan and Ghazaryan never ask him about his motivations, doubts or expectations. Only a few pictures from his youth are included. In the protected space of the home, disturbing news penetrates through radio broadcasts and TV reports of military attacks by Azerbaijani troops on the already surrounded city of #Artsakh (the Armenian name for Karabakh), which is slowly being starved and bombed out. One of the residents of the retirement home, only 50 years old, fled but wants to return because only there does she have a house and a job that give her life meaning. But soon she returns, broken and traumatised. With her, around 100,000 people left the border town and fled to Armenia.
It soon becomes apparent that the final theatre performance is far less important than the preparations for it. These allow the participants to step out of their isolation and talk about their own lives. This therapeutic aspect is dominant. The final performance itself is no longer part of Inna Sahakyan and Ruben Ghazaryan’s work.
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in particular offers residents the opportunity to open up, pursue lost loves, and reflect on the social constraints of their lives. When asked about her first loves during rehearsals, a vivacious elderly lady gets carried away and whispers into the camera: «I had 100 lovers.»
But more than mere reflections, the rehearsals invite them to intensify their relationships with each other, which does not exclude conflicts.
Social drama
But more than mere reflections, the rehearsals invite them to intensify their relationships with each other, which does not exclude conflicts. Outliving Shakespeare shows the social dramas of these events alongside the theatre play in an unvarnished way. These confrontations with their own lives give Sahakyan and Ghazaryan’s film title «Outliving (Surviving!) Shakespeare» its deeper meaning beyond a mere rhetorical figure. Similarly, the actual title of Garnik Seyranyan’s play, Shakespeare Sin, accuses #Shakespeare of placing his protagonists in unbearable situations, first in his plays, but now also in the real lives of the nursing home residents.
Garnik Seyranyan quickly convinces even a newly arrived, almost blind resident to play Richard III in his Tarmani Theatre, and an ageing charmer who logically plays the role of Romeo.
Dramatic events are inevitable. One of the members of the theatre group dies, another leaves the home to return to his wife after his charm had won over another resident, who now suffers greatly from the separation. But this is just one moment among many. Shortly afterwards, the residents are seen dancing joyfully on the sand during a trip to the beach, as far as they are able.
Born in #Yerevan in 1977, Inna Sahakyan was already a guest at the Trieste Festival in 2022. In her historical documentary animated film Aurora’s Sunrise, she follows her protagonist, who fled the massacres in Armenia to Hollywood, as she continuously reminds people of the forgotten #Armenian genocide#. Aurora’s Sunrise was Armenia’s submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film in 2023. Since 2002, Sahakyan has also been working as a producer and screenwriter at Yerevan’s Bars Media Documentary Film Studio. She graduated from art college as a trained art critic.
Ruben Ghazaryan also completed his studies at the State Institute of Theatre and Cinematography in Yerevan. He has already worked as a set designer for Aurora’s Sunrise with Inna Sahakyan. He is also involved in the Armenian Road TV doc. series.
Observed documentary
Outliving Shakespeare fits convincingly into the series of closely observed documentaries of recent years that take the time to document the inner workings of institutions, be they asylums, schools, prisons or hospitals, beyond spectacular film language. Outliving Shakespeare has the special quality of taking the viewer to Armenia, to a modestly equipped retirement home, to impoverished but self-assertive residents who have retained their dignity and are allowed to revitalise their lives through theatre. The camera also leaves them their dignity and avoids probing their inner lives. It remains at the level of delicate hints.
