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zabel in exile

Zabel in Exile follows the life of Armenian writer and activist Zabel Yessayan from her childhood in Constantinople, to her work as a novelist and a journalist chronicling the horrors of massacres in the Ottoman Empire, to a Soviet prison cell where she awaits execution. As Zabel confronts her captors, past and present blur, and she reckons with the injustices she has witnessed and confronted—from schoolyard bullying to the horrors of genocide. 

Depictions of:

• Imprisonment

• Hunger

• Death (including death of an infant), coffins, and corpses

• War trauma and PTSD 

• Abandoned and orphaned children

• Religious crisis and crisis of faith

• Post-partum depression

Descriptions of:

• Ethnically and religiously motivated violence (Armenian genocide, massacres, forced marches, mass killings)

• Sexual violence (rape and sexual assault, including a detailed description of a woman’s rape and murder)

• Widespread suffering and death, including the death of children.

• Beheading

Mentions:

• Loss of an infant

• Execution

• Suicidal thoughts and hopelessness

If you’d like more information on the content of Zabel in Exile, or to receive a preview copy of the script, please reach out to Artistic Director Megan Sandberg-Zakian at megansz@bu.edu.