“Azad” Storytelling: Interactive Karagöz Puppetry Experience

Event Registration

This event is a live storytelling performance. A woman’s magical, multi-generational, healing journey from the Armenian Genocide to the Syrian war, weaving Karagöz shadow puppetry, traditional Hakawati storytelling, and indigenous Middle-Eastern music.

Azad (“Free” in Armenian, Farsi, Kurdish) is a kaleidoscopic story within a story, centered on a storyteller’s discovery of her great-great grandfather’s shadow puppets in Aleppo during the Syrian war.

A century after Abkar Knadjian salvaged his family and his art from the Armenian Genocide, his great-great-granddaughter Sona Tatoyan unearths a trunk in the attic of the family home, filled with his handmade puppets and ancient magic tricks. This journey leads Sona to discover 1001 Nights and ScherAzad (the bold, brilliant weaver of tales who counters destruction with creation) and catalyzes an epiphany: the frame story of 1001 Nights is a story of how trauma transpires and how it is healed.

Presented by the U-M Center for Armenian Studies in collaboration with the Center for World Performance Studies with additional support from the U-M Arts Initiative, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Arab American National Museum, Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies, Department of Middle East Studies, Stearns Collection of Musical Instrument, and Hagopian World of Rugs.

Free and open to the public. Space is limited; reserve your tickets here:
https://forms.gle/ewWZDHQBwm5VPfzW7