Remembering Aygestan: An Artsakh actress’s story of loss and longing

Artsakh actress Srbuhi Balayan has one dream: to write a book about her village. Not to prove something to someone years from now, but so that the people of Aygestan village in the Hadrut region, along with the stories of their lives, are not forgotten but remain as a living testimony. “I wanted all those stories to be gathered in one place as a testimony. There are people who cannot find a way to leave a mark on this world; at least they can remain this way. And one day — I don’t know when or how — but I will definitely publish a book about all the people of our village,” Balayan told The Armenian Weekly. For Balayan, Aygestan is more than just the place where she was born. It is the people, their voices, their dialect, their habits, their quirks, the autumn sun and the little things that might seem insignificant to someone else but, for her, are part of an entire world. Chasing the sun in Aygestan In Balayan’s memories, childhood was bright, simple and almost fairy-tale-like. She spent her days in the yard, in the hills and at the village churches. She describes that period with a single image: a race against the sun. “When I was little, I spent so much time in the yard that my goal was to see if I could run faster than the sun,” she said. The autumn sun held a special place in her memory — the same sun under which her mother would wash clothes by hand in the yard. “When I would stand in the sun, I’d say, ‘This is a really good sun.’ My mom would say, ‘It’s the autumn sun, that’s why it’s so nice.’ It was imprinted on my mind that the autumn sun was always different,” she said. School was another important part of that childhood. Balayan remembers walking four kilometers every day to Hadrut High School and then walking the same distance back home. “We didn’t have transportation, so I would walk to and from school. I never asked why the school was so far away; it didn’t bother me. For us, it was never a question. It was just the way things were supposed to be,” she said. According to Balayan, about 300 families lived in Aygestan. Everyone knew one another, not only by name but also by clan. “Many interesting people lived in our village: unique, colorful, strange, very ambitious, conceited and, at times, arrogant, but in a good way. They could all have been movie characters, literary figures or prototypes for a play. My mom always says that I should write about everyone I know in our village,” she said. Today, of everything she left behind in Aygestan, she misses the cemetery and the stone beside their house the most. “We had a big stone next to the gate, a little tilted but well-balanced. My grandmother would sit on that stone, and after she died, my grandfather would sit there. I miss that stone so, so much,” she said. “After my grandmother died, we put a lock on the gate for the first time in our lives, because we had never needed one before. I wish I could go there, sit for a moment, and come back.” To add to the sense of loss, Balayan has no photographs of the house, either. During the war, her father could not get back into the house to retrieve any mementos, not even her school certificates of academic excellence and her “Best Actress” award. How Balayan found the stage There was no theater in Hadrut, and Balayan had never seen a performance in her life. Yet, in her own words, she knew for certain that she would become an actress. She was admitted to Yerevan State Institute of Theatre and Cinematography without taking any preparatory classes, earning the third-highest score. Her audition drew on the women of Aygestan and scenes from her childhood, which she had written about in a piece titled “Autumn Sun.” “My audition piece was about the women of our village, about baking bread in a clay oven. Then I read the monologue from ‘Autumn Sun.’ I hung laundry out to dry, just like my mom used to. We got a washing machine very late; my mom always washed clothes by hand, and I knew every detail of how she washed, wrung and hung the laundry. I acted all of that out while saying my lines. I think that’s why they accepted me.” After stepping onto the stage for the first time, Balayan realized that it was a place where she could be herself, feel free and fully live in the moment. “I live those moments for myself, and that hour and a half is about me. In that world, it’s just me and the story unfolding on stage.” The Nikolay Tsaturyan School Her memories of the people of Aygestan had shaped her habit of observing people and noticing their individual characteristics. Theater later turned that ability into a professional skill. Under director Nikolay Tsaturyan, she learned to understand a person not only through their words or actions, but also through the most ordinary details of their everyday lives. “He was a man who understood theater to the very core — without any formalities, without unnecessary lighting or sound. I remember when my classmates were supposed to play a married couple, Tsaturyan asked them, to help them understand their characters, ‘Now tell me, what’s in their refrigerator to eat?’ We wondered what that had to do with anything. And he explained that there was nothing in their refrigerator except sour cream that was past its expiration date and half-dried out. After that, I understood that I had to know everything about every character,” said Balayan. Tsaturyan was also demanding when it came to personal style, clothing and posture. He would not tolerate blandness and encouraged his students not to blend in with the crowd. “He really pushed us to have our own individuality. He would explain that you have to have a specific type; it could be a bad type, but it had to be specific.” Dialect as intangible cultural heritage Balayan is dedicated to preserving the Artsakh dialect. At the “Dizakart” Cultural Center, she teaches theater to children from Artsakh. She makes a point of incorporating the Artsakh dialect into her productions. She has adapted Hovhannes Tumanyan’s fairy tales, works by Gianni Rodari, William Saroyan’s “The Human Comedy” and Sos Sargsyan’s “The Slippers” into the dialect. The goal is not simply to teach the children theater. “Why are we doing this? So that the children of Artsakh, who have been here since they were one year old and have attended kindergarten here, don’t completely lose their connection to the dialect. It’s about preserving intangible cultural heritage. I now think I’m doing the greatest work of my life. I may be a relatively unknown actress, but if I’m engaged in preserving the dialect, that’s the one thing I’m completely proud of,” she said. Photos courtesy of Srbuhi Balayan.

Remembering Aygestan: An Artsakh actress’s story of loss and longing

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Anna Harutyunyan

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Anna Harutyunyan

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