"Stay, You Imperfect Speakers" - Armenian Shakespeare Conferences

written by Elliot Huxtable

Our Q&A with academics and students from the Yerevan State Theatre and Film Institute.

You might remember in 2024 we were invited to speak at the Armenian Shakespeare Association’s biennial conference in Yerevan - it’s what kicked off this crazy adventure in the first place.

Well in good old 2026, we were asked back to Yerevan. Our co-production of Macbeth with the Yerevan Chamber Theatre is the brainchild of Hasmik Seymour, the head of the ASA, and she decided that seeing we were already out here, she would build the conference this year around our visit.

The theme? Macbeth. This year, the Conference’s title was Treachery For Power and Where is the “Milk of Human Kindness”? I had the very great honour of being the final speaker on the first day, first of all giving a short talk about our joint Armenian-British production of Macbeth. I focused on the challenges and pleasures of doing a production where the common language of the artists was in fact theatre. These included the intricacies of translations and the need for flexibility with the text.

For example, in one scene we have the witches greeting Macduff (and telling him that his wife and children are dead) - in the original text these lines belong to a Scottish soldier, and the greeting “Sir, amen” works perfectly well when changing the character to a Witch. However in Armenian, the translation was rather formal, and so needed to be altered in the rehearsal room. After a short discussion, we decided to go with (pardon the spelling) “vochoon” which roughly translates to “hail”, and is also how the witches greet Banquo and Macbeth much earlier in the play - helping to bring the story full circle. 

After a short talk about our production, I was invited to host the first of two masterclasses with students. The first, with students of the American University of Armenia, was mainly a discussion of text and the choices made by myself and the artistic team of this production of Macbeth. As the group were primarily literature students, they were mostly interested in the dramaturgical process.

The second masterclass, a few days later, was held in the Yerevan Chamber Theatre with their second year acting students. This consisted of a more potted history of the play, as well as a whistlestop tour of the text, with every student getting up to perform little snippets of Macbeth in order to give them a good idea of its key themes. The students were incredibly keen, and very insightful about the text - if there’s one thing I’ve loved about bringing the play here, it’s seeing it fresh through their eyes - we’ve said before how they have much less baggage with the play than typical British audiences and public.

It’s been a real pleasure and privilege to talk about Shakespeare with these brimming young minds, and if this whole experience has taught me anything, it is that good art transcends language barriers.

You can see snippets of the masterclass here https://www.facebook.com/reel/1001060825855567