Photos: Leslie Ayvazian's Powerful MENTION MY BEAUTY at Pangea

Theater artist Leslie Ayvazian brings her latest experiments in mercurial minimalism to Pangea. Running now through Tue July 23, she performs one of her most popular chamber shows, Mention My Beauty, which has developed a loyal following among some of New York’s leading Downtown theater artists, even while Ayvazian keeps it studiously off the radar.

Stripped of all production values, Ayvazian’s proposition is that her performance experiences are not plays about nothing, but plays performed with nothing.  As she boldly chronicles her coming of age in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the anti-war movement, the women’s movement and the sexual revolution (hello!), and the lingering legacies of genocide (hello!), like her family’s Armenian nightmare in the early 20th century, Ayvazian, who is the current head of playwriting at Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts, Ayvazian creates shows that are bounteously spare.

Mention My Beauty is on Tuesdays June 25, July 9 and 23, all at 7pm.  Tickets for all dates, which are $20 when purchased in advance, are on sale at www.pangeanyc.com.

See highlights from last night's performance of Mention My Beauty last night taken by photographer Conor Weiss.