Richard Kalinoski

Awards (Beast on the Moon) 

Mr. Kalinoski’s most well known play, Beast on the Moon, was chosen for the Humana Festival in March of 1995, and since has won the following:  The Osborn Award (American Critics Assoc.)  the Agnouni Award,  (Armenian Relief Society of North America ) the Garland Award (Los Angeles) Best Play from the Repertory, Moliere Award (Prix Moliere), Paris, France, May, 2001 (in addition to four other Moliere Awards); the ACE Award, Argentina, for Best Play in the year 200) October. Beast on the Moon has been translated into 20 languages as of September of 2020. In November, 2004 the play became part of the repertory of the Moscow Art Theatre and ran in repertory there for 13 years.

In 2005 Richard Kalinoski was awarded the Khorenatsi Medal for contribution to the Arts and Culture to the Country of Armenia.  The award is given by the President of Armenia (Robert Kachadarian).

Preface to the Turkish language publication of Beast on the Moon by Richard Kalinoski:

‘When I began work on BEAST ON THE MOON in 1991,  I had no idea that it would eventually be produced and published in a myriad of countries.  I could not have imagined that one of those countries might be Turkey.  As an American unschooled in the proud cultures of the Middle East, I am shocked that this play has found its way into the lives of people whose roots are so markedly different and distant from my own.  I have to hope that what is contained in these pages (and on stages) moves quietly in the direction of honesty and authenticity.  Audiences in many countries--from the U.S. to Argentina to Armenia and even to Egypt-- have responded to the plight of this humble family struggling to re-imagine and re-make their lives. 

At the very beginning of this journey I was struck by an image of an orphaned girl in a curious new place awkwardly wedded to a stranger—himself an orphan—both anxious and yearning.  What captured my attention was the courage of Seta Tomasian, a girl becoming a woman and striving for some small measure of domestic tranquility if not some return of affection from her troubled and proud husband. 

It has been my observation that women in particular must somehow muster a domestic courage in meager places where bitterness can outlast hope, and despair can overwhelm the most steadfast forbearance. In palpable ways my dedication to this play evolved as Seta evolved—her tough and tender soul somehow endures, finds meaning in simple things and courage while baking cakes. Seta is a fiction—a kind of illusion…but an illusion pulsing with a ferocious will to love. Seta is where this play comes from…and she is the one with the pluck and yearning to help restore the heart of her husband, Aram—proud and self-righteous but also fragile and then finally—gentle.

The play has been mostly a personal and much less a political voyage for me. Armenians and non-Armenians around the world have seemed to respond to the portrait of a marriage first—and then a bit later coming around to ponder the trenchant realities of the near destruction of an entire people.  The anxious lives of Aram and Seta Tomasian are emblematic of so many other survivors. Every survivor’s story is worthy of dignified representation—and worthy too of enduring and frightfully honest memory—the kind of memory which grieves towering loss but also celebrates those who survived and in generations—those who lived and even thrived….smilingly.”