I Wish to Die Singing

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Neil McPherson. I Wish to Die Singing

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I WISH TO DIE SINGING

VOICES FROM THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

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Normally, I would have just commissioned a playwright to write something for us, but I knew that I wanted something more than just a fictional domestic piece with the Genocide as a plot twist in Act II. And I had already done the research. Hubristic or not, I wanted to tell the whole story as simply and honestly as I could, and wherever possible using the words of the people who were there. The most authentic way I could think to do that was a hybrid of history lesson and documentary drama and verbatim theatre – and for it to be unashamedly agitprop. Agitprop theatre has become deeply unfashionable, but, for an event which was so unknown and where the facts were so stark, it seemed the only truthful way of presenting the story. A theatre production in an intimate Off West End theatre is never going to change the world. But I needed to at least try.

I called my old school friend who, with his customary generosity, lent me some rare books to get me started, and despite some death threats (always a sign that you’re doing something right), the 2005 production completely sold out its few performances. I decided to wait until the centenary in 2015 before doing it again so that we could open the production on the exact anniversary of the start of the Genocide – 24th April. For it, I wrote a radically different new version of the script, making full use of the hearteningly vast amount of additional research which had been published in the ten years since 2005, and trying to make the play as topical as possible. Our month long run saw the centenaries of both the Genocide and the Gallipoli landings, as well as the UK general election and continued atrocities by Islamic State, and so I also included a sequence that was updated for every performance so that the play would always be as up to date as possible.

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