The exhibition, which included the personal archives of Hagop Ayvaz, an Armenian actor, director, writer, and publisher, as well as Ayvaz’s collection of Kulis (Backstage) magazines, revealed to the broader public an ‘unknown’ and ‘ignored’ world.1 Both the archive (which Ayvaz referred to as his ‘heaven’) and the magazine collection constitute a body of primary sources that shed light on how Armenian theatre was reborn and sustained in the ‘underground’, maintaining a fertile existence that nurtured Turkey’s social and cultural environment.
