A Trip to the Moon
by Omar Metwally

Broadway.com, NY
April 21 2005

About the author:

For Tony-nominated actor Omar Metwally (Sixteen Wounded), performing as
Aram in off-Broadway’s Beast on the Moon has been an amazing learning
experience. Born in Queens to parents who immigrated to America,
Metwally has come to appreciate their struggle for a new life in a
new world. Richard Kalinoski’s Beast on the Moon, which is currently
playing at the Century Center for the Performing Arts, tells the
tale of a married couple’s efforts to start a family and a new life
in America, but they are at a standstill when dealing with emotional
scars from unforgettable torture and loss of family during the tragic
Armenian genocide. Besides his Tony-nominated turn in Sixteen Wounded,
Metwally’s other stage credits include Homebody/Kabul, A History
of God, Quartett, The Bacchae 2.1, Company, The Winter’s Tale, and
Summertime. Here, Metwally shares what he has learned in order to
play the heartfelt Aram, and what is making him work so hard to send
out the overall message of Beast on the Moon.

The first time I read Richard Kalinoski’s play Beast on the Moon,
I was deeply moved and excited by it. I thought it one of the most
complex, heightened and beautiful scripts I had read in ages, full of
humor and pain. It is a story about survival, about slaughter, about
love. Beast on the Moon follows two young survivors of the Armenian
genocide, Aram and Seta, a boy and a girl. The two have each lost
their families in the tragedy and have eventually made their way to
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The play begins the day Seta arrives from an
orphanage in Istanbul as a mail-order bride for her new husband Aram,
who had come to America three years before. Beast deals intimately
and intensely with the tragedies that befell these people in their
native land, and with how their losses affect the relationship they
try to build with each other. So the first thing I had to do was learn
as much as I could about this tragic event that had shaped Aram’s life.

Prior to my reading Beast on the Moon, I had only a vague awareness
of the Armenian genocide of 1915-23. But as soon as I read the play,
I rushed to the library to find out more. I was shocked to learn
that between 1915 and 1923 the Young Turk government of the Ottoman
Empire carried out an organized campaign to slaughter its Armenian
population. This was done primarily through the rounding up and
murder of the men, and the deportation of women, children and the
elderly into the desert via forced march. While on these marches,
the Armenians were subject to robbery, rape, abduction and murder
by soldiers and roving gangs, and many more perished of starvation,
exposure and disease. All told, between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians
lost their lives.

It was the first genocide of the 20th century, and I couldn’t believe
how little I had heard of this massive tragedy. And then I learned
that the federal government of Turkey still denies the genocide to
this day, 90 years later. Such denial not only prevents healing and
dialogue between the affected communities, but it sends the message
that crimes of this kind can go unpunished and even unrecognized. As my
awareness grew, so did my urgent desire to help bring this important
and powerful play to New York. But the thing about Beast on the Moon
that I found most inspiring was the way that its central characters,
in the wake of a horrific tragedy, refuse to abandon the hope and
struggle for renewal. That’s why I think the play is so relevant and
why audiences seem to respond so strongly to it. In times where the
value of human life seems to be widely forgotten or willfully ignored,
a play about two people who find the strength to connect and heal in
spite of such violence is very timely.

Beast on the Moon is also a story about America and the joys and
struggles of being an immigrant in this country. As the child of two
immigrants, this aspect of the play touched me deeply. The hope and
excitement of what America meant to people around the world, as well
as the confusion and pain of trying to make a life here are all a
part of this play as well. In this regard, working on Aram brought
me closer to understanding some of the struggles and journeys taken
by my own parents.

The other part of my experience with Beast on the Moon has been
the incredible good fortune to work with the artists who have been
assembled for this project. My castmates Lena Georgas, Louis Zorich,
and Matt Borish are all extraordinary actors and I have learned so
much from each of them. And our director Larry Moss is the perfect
shepherd for this play. His immense skills as an acting coach and his
encyclopedic knowledge of the theater are a humbling and inspiring
combination for any actor. He creates an atmosphere in rehearsal that
truly encourages risk and exploration. So often these ideas are given
lip service but not really honored. But Larry creates an environment
that makes us feel relaxed and yet inspired to work harder than we
ever have before.