Puppet Theatre of Armen Hovhannisyan, Marneuli, Georgia © Onnik James Krikorian 2023
Marneuli is a rural municipality of southeastern Georgia where 83.5% of the population of around 104,000 is ethnic Azerbaijani, with ethnic Georgians representing only 8.6%. Another 7% are ethnic Armenians. In this multicultural area, Tserakvi is a Georgian village whose annual One Caucasus intercultural music festival has brought Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian, and foreign artists, educators, musicians, and architects together since 2014.
Lesser known is the picturesque village of Shahumiani, 16 km from Tserakvi along the same road and just 7 km off the Tbilisi-Yerevan highway. It’s mostly ethnic Armenian, and locals even claim that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, half-Armenian on his father’s side, was either born or raised for a while here, even if official records suggest otherwise. Whether that’s true or not, the village has another more definite claim to fame: meet Armen Hovhannisyan, a talented Georgian-Armenian artist, poet, and puppeteer.
Hovhannisyan has created hundreds of puppets over the years and has showcased his work to admirers at events and exhibitions in Georgia and elsewhere, including at the Sergey Parajanov House Museum in Yerevan, Armenia. “I often visit and perform in the museum,” he says. And in July, supported by the Embassy of the Netherlands in Georgia, Hovhannisyan presented his latest play, Asiya, in the majority ethnic-Azerbaijani town of Marneuli.
“In Marneuli for the premiere of Asyia by brilliant puppeteer Armen Hovhannisyan […] on harmony and diversity in a multi-ethnic village,” Maaike von Koldam, the Dutch Ambassador, tweeted on 13 July, just days before finishing her diplomatic term in Georgia. “The play will go on tour in the region. I hope many children and grown-ups will enjoy it as much as I did.”
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