“So some are beheaded and some are crucified and some are slaughtered,
and who wins the battle of who died the worst death? Who wins?”

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Milwaukee in the 1920s. Aram believes he will begin a new life when his teenage ‘mail-order’ bride, Seta, arrives to join him. They are a couple united by history – both survivors of the Armenian Genocide. But their painful, shared experience does nothing to promote domestic harmony as Aram is obsessed with creating a family to replace the one he lost in such savage circumstances, and Seta, just fifteen and trapped by the traditions of the old ways, struggles to embrace her new life in a new country…

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Richard Kalinoski’s beautifully written, universal story of hope and healing, has been performed in more than twenty countries. It returned to London in a production commissioned by the Finborough Theatre, where it was last performed in the 1990s. Beast on the Moon remains a play for our times – a powerful exploration of legacy for so many refugees.

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The Armenian Genocide of 1915-16 was perpetrated by the Ottoman Turkish Government against the Armenians, a Christian minority in a Muslim state. Up to one and a half million people died. To this day, the Turkish government refuses to admit that genocide ever took place.