The students of the Yerevan State Institute of Theater and Cinematography are going on strike on 20 March. One of the students made a statement about this.

The reason is that the Rector of the university, Lilit Arzumanyan, banned the performance of the third year students directed by the lecturer, People’s Artist of Armenia, Nikolay Tsaturyan, which was staged based on the play “Orphanage” by Edgar Kostandyan.

The students claim that the ban is unreasonable; the rector did not even watch the play.

Writer Edgar Kostandyan also touched on the topic. He noted that the Rector banned the play because profanity was heard from the stage of the student theater.

“Those kids will still play a lot of performances, they will play on very big stages, and you will be left with your bile and pettiness. And as soon as we remove everything from under it, it will be clear that nothing terrible happened, on the contrary, the students have already had a forbidden performance before they graduated from the institute. Enviable careers start…”

P.S. Guys, don’t become mean. I hug all of you…, and… a toast for the “Orphanage.”