InternationalSos Sarkisian and the struggle for statehood
One of Armenia’s greatest actors seeks harmony while battling disappointment
Published: Saturday March 21, 2009
Sos Sarkisian. Photolure
Yerevan - A few months ago a fight erupted outside the Hamazkayin Theater in downtown Yerevan. Two groups of teenage boys, in an attempt to settle a score, were beating each other to a pulp. Their commotion caused Sos Sarkisian, one of Armenia's greatest and most prolific actors, to come out of his office in the theater and onto the street. Just as the fight was breaking up, a young boy picked up a large rock and threw it indiscriminately at the opposing gang.
Almost 80 years old and frail, Sos strode up to the young boy who had thrown the rock. "Do you know what you have just done?" he asked. "That other boy has a mother, he has a father, he is an Armenian. You are throwing a rock at another Armenian?"
He looks at me with an inordinate amount of sadness in his eyes. "When I see the light in the eyes of a young Armenian, I feel triumphant," he says. "But I am disappointed," he continues shaking his head as he fidgets with his cuff. "Look at what we have become."
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Sos Sarkisian was born in Stepanavan in 1929 to a family of ranchbars (ploughmen). At the time of his birth, Stepanavan was merely a village, which used to be called Jalaloghli. The aging actor, still striking despite his tired appearance, explains that almost 230 years ago, a member of the Hassan Jalalian dynasty moved from Karabakh to Lori and established Jalaloghli. Lori is one of the ten provinces or marzes of Armenia. Jalaloghli wasn't a very big village, but over the years it grew. "Up until the 1980s, residents of Stepanavan wouldn't marry outside the village. They would only marry one another," he tells me, smiling. "At the most, some young men would bring brides from Shulaveridse, because they too are Karabakh Armenians." Shulaveridse, with its mixed ethnic population is a village in the Republic of Georgia. Sos Sarkisian's grandmother was from Shulaveridse. "We were somehow isolated from the rest of Lori," he says.
The actor went to a Russian school in his native Stepanavan. "It was a very good school because after the revolution many Russian intellectuals fled Russia and hid in the provinces," he explains. "Among my teachers were people who had graduated from the University of Leipzig, the University of St. Petersburg. They were people of high culture and intellect." He recalls his school years and his educators with great nostalgia, "I remember their extremely advanced knowledge, their morality.... Even with their looks they were aristocratic."
First tentative steps to the rest of his life
When Sos Sarkisian was in the eighth grade, a director from Yerevan came to his village to direct a play at the local theater. The director, Tsolak Nigoghossian, invited Sos to take part in the play; it was the first time he had ever been on stage. The local theater was small, with only 200 seats. "It was destroyed during the 1988 earthquake, and only now they are rebuilding it," he tells me. After his role in the play, the administration of the local theater invited him to be a part of the troupe. "I worked there for a year and half. So since the age of 17, I have been in the theater," he says as his eyes sparkle.
Did he know that the theater would be his life? "I never thought about acting," he says. "Our family was quite large, so I thought I could help my father out by working in the theater with my small pay."
Later, he was invited to Yerevan to work at the Young People's Theater, where he worked for another year and a half. That theater still exists today, continuing in its tradition of bringing the love of acting and the theater to a new generation of Armenians.
While at the Young People's Theater, the aspiring actor tried to get a job with the revered Sundukian Theater, but wasn't accepted because anyone joining the theater had to have a post-secondary education, which he did not have at the time. "The artistic director of Sundukian was Armen Gulakian and he rejected me. I have to say that Gulakian was a great man," Sarkisian says and goes on to admit that he only studied at university for two and a half years.
Even after a lifetime of acting, it still amazes this most prolific actor that circumstances in his life always led him to acting. There was always a fork in the road that led to the theater and he took it. "It's interesting that there were always people around me who saw me in the theater, who wanted to see me in the theater, independent of what I wanted, of course. Every time my life would take me away from the theater, they made sure it was directed back there." He admits there were times in his life when he wanted to leave acting, but conditions were created to keep him there. "It is fate. It is my destiny," he shrugs.
What would he have done if Tsolak Nighossian had not come to Stepanavan to direct a play at the local theater? "To be honest, I don't have those answers, I don't know what I could have been. Maybe I would have been a ranchbar like my father. Maybe I would have worked on the land," he says. "But this is how my life turned out and now I think, ‘What is better in the whole world than the theater?'"
Indeed, after studying at the Yerevan Fine Arts & Theater Institute in 1954, Sos went on to be part of the Sundukian Theater. In 1992 he established and headed the Hamazkayin Theater and today also serves as the rector of Yerevan Institute of Theater and Cinema.
A life of film
The venerable actor has played in about 40 films, both large and small parts. His favorite film of all time was Dzori Miro (1979). The hero of the film, Miro, loses his family during the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and fights against the Turks. Disappointed in his life, Miro finds refuge in Soviet Armenia. His love for a refugee girl sparks his willingness to create a family and start a new life. "I loved that film because it was as though it was born from inside me, from my soul, my dreams, my torment," he says, his voice almost inaudible. What was it that tormented him? "Hayrenasirutyun (patriotism)," he says simply. "When that film premiered, one cinema critic said that for the first time under Soviet rule, a gun was seen in the hands of an Armenian man who is protecting his soil, his country, his family. A role like that had never before existed in the Armenian cinema."
