Vaughan Pilikian’s Recent Play at The Yard

Review by Prof. Khatchatur I. Pilikian, London, 1 June 2012

Vaughan Pilikian's award-winning films have been screened in cinemas around the world, with recent retrospectives of his work in London and Yerevan. He has also published two volumes of poetry, and his paintings are in private collections in the US. He is Artistic Director of Unruowe, a motion picture and video production company.Ed.

Review by Prof. Khatchatur I. Pilikian, London, 1 June 2012

Vaughan Pilikian's award-winning films have been screened in cinemas around the world, with recent retrospectives of his work in London and Yerevan. He has also published two volumes of poetry, and his paintings are in private collections in the US. He is Artistic Director of Unruowe, a motion picture and video production company.Ed.

LEPER COLONY visualizes the moto perpetuo behaviour of a group of outcasts brought together, most probably against their will and haphazardly so, away from the mundane society.

With  short spoken phrases at minimal occurrences, they burst out their mini-monologues crying loud to 'go home', or even trying to climb walls to ‘go out’, but always reminding each other  that their colony is the  

home and not out there. No matter, some still continue to try and ‘go home’ or ‘go out’.

Mostly, they either do nothing but sit or lie down  in contraction, or they destroy the elements surrounding them — furniture, toys and all.

The paragon for a human being as a ‘social animal’  is in smithereens at Leper Colony. They are already neither social nor animal beings. Notwithstanding the incessant 'urge' of their subconscious to relate and possibly love each other physically or spiritually, their unadorned reaction is to refute fulfillment of any kind. Violent actions are expressed against their material surroundings but, paradoxically and  fascinatingly so,  never against each other. They indeed  are 'lepers' for being unfit to be soldiers or ‘canon fodder’ in industrial/military societies to  create profit for the warmongers of the one percent. Nothing bothers them as much as each to himself  or to herself.

A new sunrise of a new dawn or an atomic blast in the mundane world outside their own has no effect at all on their ad nauseam monotony of despair  ad infinitum. Being neither social nor animal, their 'leper' colony has  nevertheless  kept, and mysteriously so, that  most preciously humane part of the 'social animal' attribute — no physical violence towards each other in the colony. Albeit a single lone attribute, but for sure still a valid 'passport' for them to be with the ninety-nine percent — in essence their home out there, meaning us, our normal world.