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Representatives of the Yerevan State Youth Experimental Theater (also known as ‘Posi’ Theater) believe that the Ministry of Culture of Armenia is planning to liquidate their theatre in January 2010.

As the theater’s chief administrator Karen Hovhannisyan explains, their employees – more than 20 people - got a notice stating that on December 31 this year, the date of contracts signed with the theatre expires.

“Even though Davit Muradyan, Deputy Minister of Culture, assures us that nothing like that threatens our theatre, we do not believe, because during our whole existence (30 years) we have never got such notices. The contracts were always extended at the end of each year,” Hovhannisyan says.

(A press conference raising the issue was held this afternoon. ArmeniaNow was unable to reach a MOC spokesperson for immediate comment.)

The employers of the theater, founded in 1978, say the theater has been in trouble since 2003 when it was deprived of its own territory.

“At the recent meeting of the Art Council Eugene Ionesco’s ‘Macbeth’ was approved among five performances submitted. However the author of the application for the performance was not present, the budget of the performance was not submitted either,” deputy chairwoman Hermine Vahanyan says. “We even do not know that director – Arkadi Manukyan.”

The theatre representatives are also worried about ‘Goy’ experimental theater’s (founded in 1989) art director Armen Mazmanyan’s statement made on ATV TV Company.

Mazmanyan expressed the same position towards the theatre to ArmeniaNow.

“Yes, I have announced that if a theatre annually performs only 18 times and if its staff factually consists of no more than five people, which annually spends 35 million drams ($ 92,100) on no one knows what, deserves to be eliminated, even by means of being depressed. By comparison, ‘Goy,’ even not having the ‘state status,’ performs at least 100 times annually.”