10.12.2025  00:04

The name Elvina Makaryan remains shrouded in myth even today. She has been called the "Armenian Ella Fitzgerald," the "woman of jazz," a "person outside of time." This makes the contrast between the singer's legendary reputation and the fact that she spent her final years in near-total obscurity in her homeland all the more striking. At the Artistic Theatre named after Mher Mkrtchyan, a new production by young director Nadezhda Israelyan does more than just rehabilitate the artist in the collective memory. It raises the question: why did we remain silent for so long about the people whose voices shaped the country's cultural identity — and what price did the country itself pay for this silence?

Born in Yerevan, Elvina dreamed of the stage from early childhood. This early passion was not mere child's play — it became an act of internal resistance, a symbol of the striving for freedom through music. After finishing school, the future star entered the Yerevan State Institute of Theatre and Cinematography and, while still a student, took to the boards of the Sundukyan Theatre. The theatrical stage became for her not just a space for performance, but an instrument of self-expression. Makaryan combined acting work with tours as part of the "Melodies of Armenia" orchestra and became one of the first to "legitimize" swing and bebop on the Armenian stage. This was a time when musical styles were not merely genres — they were markers of ideological allegiance. Every chord that sounded "un-Soviet" caused unease.

Israelyan's production deftly illustrates the tension between creative expression and political pressure, which seems to cement the characters' consciousness and paralyze their actions. However, the play consciously eschews a linear, biographical narrative. The viewer is not given a straightforward account of Elvina Makaryan's life — the details of her forgotten biography remain offstage. Instead, the focus shifts from the figure of the singer to the society that surrounded her — deaf, disoriented, steeped in its own guilt and fear. The audience finds itself inside a space of "frozen time," where semi-ruined characters drift between memories, unspoken truths, and suppressed emotions. These people do not live — they merely exist, dwelling in the shadow of a lost past and fear of an uncertain future.

Screenwriter Anait Ghazaryan has created ghostly images that appear and vanish like vague memories or forgotten dreams. They are united by a reluctance to understand the heroine — a woman whose exceptional nature provoked irritation and rejection. Elvina Makaryan does not appear on stage; she remains on the other side of a door that all the characters futilely try to break down. This door is a symbol of the boundary between recognition and oblivion, between truth and public myth. The singer's husband (Telman Khachatryan) confronts her mother (Lusine Avanesyan), while a colleague (Diana Raziel) displays open hostility. All these scenes reflect the social pressure that erases individuality, especially feminine, especially creative.

The play does not offer definitive answers, and therein lies its strength: it raises painful questions about the price of talent, the role of women in a closed society, and why some voices resonate through the ages while others fall silent almost as soon as they are heard.

The director chooses a metaphorical narrative: Elvina's voice is heard from behind the door, but not on stage. We do not hear her sing, as if society had deprived her of her voice — both literally and figuratively. Thus, the stage becomes a space of both memory and silence.

Her "too Western" style of performance attracted attention, and often Makaryan faced criticism. The play dissects the mechanism of this societal rejection: as soon as an artist steps beyond the permissible, society mobilizes its forces to ostracize them. Elvina Makaryan becomes a symbol of the very freedom the system fears. It is no surprise that the singer's personal life also becomes a target — the system cannot tolerate ambiguity.

The collapse of the Soviet Union brought the artist not only freedom but also a void. Makaryan spent several years in Moscow and later sang in Armenian restaurants in Los Angeles. Her disappearance from the public sphere is not a personal tragedy but the result of a structural loss of interest in culture as a form of resistance.

It is precisely this atmosphere of ruin that we see on stage — full of loss, fear, and social apathy. Israelyan works with visual metaphors of decay: the performance space is fractured, the curtain symbolizes not theatricality but censorship. The final scene is particularly powerful: a descending "Iron Curtain" divides the stage from the auditorium, emphasizing that the totalitarian shadows of the past have not vanished. They can still descend — not from above, but from within society itself. Here, the curtain is not an ending but a warning.

The play "Chewing Iron" is an act of cultural reparation and simultaneously an investigation into how the collective consciousness turns its own heroes into enemies. This is not about jazz, nor is it solely about Elvina; it is about silence as a collective crime. About how easily society forgets, and how difficult it is to later restore a voice to those it once cast out.

To speak of Makaryan is to speak of freedom, memory, and the right of culture to be alive, vulnerable, imperfect. Elvina's voice never actually rang out on stage, perhaps precisely because it must resound within us — as an awakening, as a disquieting chord. The play proves impactful precisely because the issue it addresses remains painfully relevant. The character of Elvina still lingers in the shadows, and that is exactly why it is vital that she is spoken of again — written about, sung about, remembered. To acknowledge not only her talent but also the profound misunderstanding she was forced to live with.

ANI Harutyunyan