This book offers a bold new perspective on post-1970s US Armenian drama and theatre by female playwrights, situated within the historical context of the Armenian diaspora. At its centre is the Armenian Catastrophe—the mass violence and forced displacement of Ottoman-Armenians from the mid-1890s through the First World War—and its enduring imprint on collective memory and cultural identity. As survivors rebuilt their lives in the United States, theatre became a vital space for preserving heritage and redefining belonging. By examining plays that transform inherited histories of rupture and survival into performance, this book demonstrates how the Catastrophe continues to shape diasporic consciousness, artistic expression, and political imagination. It ultimately presents the stage as a dynamic site where memory, migration, and national belonging are negotiated and reimagined for contemporary audiences.

Sebnem Nazli Karali is a scholar of literature and theatre, as well as an actor, dramaturg, writer, and language instructor. She holds a PhD in Creative Arts from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Edith Cowan University. Her recent publications include 'Half-Armenian', Fully Diasporic: Navigating Memory, Trauma, and Identity Marcella Polain's The Edge of the World in Journal of Intercultural Studies: Migrant Life Narratives as Place-Making in Postcolonial Australia (2026); Postmemorial Dramaturgy of the Armenian Catastrophe: The Armenian Question in Performing Gender, Sexual, and Racial Dynamics on the US Stage (2023); The Hunger for Touch: Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand (Head-On) and the Cinema of Sensation (with G. Karpathakis) in Sexuality and Eroticism in a Post-pandemic World: Beyond the Biopolitics of the New Normal (2023).