Author Archives: Lauren Liedel

Armenian Christmas Eve

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student; Musician
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 04/27/2015
Primary Language: English

D grew up in a household heavily influenced by Armenian culture; both her parents being Armenian encouraged D and her sister to participate in cultural fairs as well as dance festivals. While D enjoyed her time at these festivals performing and singing, she remembers most vividly the food and the process that her grandparents went through in preparing certain dishes. As we spoke about specific dishes, she had far too many to name. We settled on the simple process of stringing cheese that was an important part of her Christmas Eve celebration.

D: So as much as I love performing, you know I’m a musician, it’s really the food that makes me think of my Armenian heritage. If I tried to pick my favorite dish, I don’t think I could, but we do this crazy cheese thing around Christmas time. Each Christmas Eve, my family goes to my grandmother’s house to string cheese.

L: What do you mean by string cheese?

D: Oh, if you go to a specialty store (which we always have to per grandmother’s request) you can buy large blocks of string cheese. They’re giant ropes of cheese that you unravel and straighten out like yarn. The goal is to untangle as much of it as possible without breaking it. We sometimes turn it into a little game and have cheese stringing competitions.

L: I think my friend A, who is also Armenian mentioned something like that when we spoke last.

D: Every Armenian knows exactly what I’m talking about. We tend to do this stringing because it’s a long process and it’s nice to have more than two pairs of hands working on it. The cheese itself is also incredibly rich, so you really don’t want to eat it that often. I know my mom has tried to make more of the traditional dishes healthy by eliminating two of the three sticks of butter usually involved. I know it sounds crazy, but that’s how she makes her pilaf and a few other dishes. We also make delicious soup, but the main food related activity involved on our Christmas Eve’s is this strange cheese stringing. It brings up together in the cliché, cheesy way. Haha

Garlic Healing

Nationality: American; Brazilian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 04/25/2015
Primary Language: English

A grew up primarily in New York with an American mother interested in herbal and spiritual based medicines as well as a Brazilian father. As I am moving to New York, I visited her and her father in Manhattan. When we both came back to Los Angeles, I had actually cut my hand on her door frame from a splinter. This prompted her to tell me a story about how since she was small, her father has always taken care of her cuts.

A: Here let me get a piece of garlic.

L: Wait, what?

A: My dad always did this. It’s a Brazilian thing. Whenever I had an open wound like a small cut he would go to the kitchen and chop up a large piece of garlic and rub it on my cut

L: Did it help?

A: I don’t know, but it was his way of showing me he cared while bringing in his Brazilian tradition. I don’t know where he learned if from, but it definitely came from his time in Brazil

Armenian Knife Superstition

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student; Musician
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 04/28/2015
Primary Language: English

D comes from a family who spent many of their free time involved with an Armenian church in Virginia. She grew up learning traditional folk dances and making specialty dinners for the whole family from her grandparents. We met to talk about some future business logistics, but remembered the time we went to a working dinner at  Carousel with her father.

D: I don’t know if you noticed when we were at Carousel, but my dad is super Armenian.

L: What do you mean?

D: Oh my god, you didn’t see. Ugh, he has the this silly superstition. It’s Armenian, so I guess I kind of do it too now that I think about it. My sister does it too. Armenians are weird about knives. If you hand someone a knife its really bad luck. Dad always has you put it down and pick it up. If you try to hand it to him, he legitimately gets angry and has you put it on the table or whatever and then he will get it.

L: Why?

D: It apparently ruins your relationship with that person who hands it to you. I don’t know where exactly it comes from, only that he takes it rather seriously. I sometime catch myself doing it too.

L: In a way giving a knife is an offensive gesture against your friendship/relationship.

D: Yes! Exactly, but most of the people in my family do it.

Oxford Trashing

A and I are old grade school friends from our days in Washington D.C. We fell out of touch at the beginning of our sophomore year of high school and actually ran into each other on the street while both of us were studying abroad at Oxford University. She spent her whole term time as a part of Oriel College and became involved in the student life by attending formal balls, bops, and integrating herself in the Oriel squash and rowing teams. I was a part of New College, so naturally I was curious as to the particular traditions of Oriel College and how they differed with New. I actually got to participate in the act of trashing while I was there, but A had more experience doing it.

A:Remember that time we went to trash my friend? I can’t believe I got to do that. I wish C. University did that when we took our final exams. Each year, Oxford students take three finals. They even coordinate the color of flower they wear in their robes (red, pink, white) to the exam that they are taking. They rent special robes for the sole purpose of taking exams. However, once they emerge from their final exams, all their friends who are free wait outside the building with all kinds of crazy things to trash them with. Trashing can be with confetti, poppers, champagne, sometimes even eggs. Trashing also gets progressively worse the older you are. First years have the easiest time of it, whereas finalists tend to have crazy things done to them post finals. Often, you bring alcohol or food for the person who finishes their finals.

L: Yeah C was showing me photos of his finalist days of trashing,I couldn’t stop laughing with his face smothered in cake and flour.

A: Exactly, it’s a rite of passage marking that you survived the study days regardless of how you do on testing or not you’ve made it through in one piece.

Theatre Camp Haunting

Nationality: American; Brazilian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/27/2015
Primary Language: English

A, an improv enthusiast, spent many of her summers growing up at a theatre camp in Pennsylvania. She now dabbles in improv at university, but we met one evening to talk about my immersive theatre project I had just wrapped. She asked if I had any sort of background in the field. I said no, and she began talking about her times at theatre camp.

A: Camp Starlight, that was the name. It was this camp for all the theatre nuts who were interested in trying to be in different shows. You’d go when you were about thirteen or fourteen to make new friends. I wanted to get out of the city so I made sure I went each summer. Like most summer camps, you got scary stories. Our resident haunting happened to be in the main theatre house. It was always associated with the main stage and anything bad that happened on opening night.

L: Do you know the ghost story behind it all?

A: Her name was something like Mary, wait no, it was Elizabeth, but we all called her Lizzie for some reason. She haunted the main stage because on her opening night there was a massive accident. She had the lead role, but was not well liked because of how good of an actress she was. Some of the other actors decided to play a prank on her, but it went too far. She died right before the start of her show. I don’t remember which show she did, but I can imagine if we did know the camp would never put it on.

L: Was the camp aware of the story?

A: Yes of course; the counselors always talked about Lizzie. They even told us to stay in our rooms because sometimes you could hear her banging all the doors open and shut in the main theatre around two or three in the morning. Some of my friends heard screaming when they wanted to wait up and see if they could see who she was and maybe talk to her.

L: Did you ever try that?

A: No I think I was too scared, but I’m not sure if I believe it now. In retrospect it seemed like a lot of hype about nothing.

L: So why was this story so important for the camp? I went to a summer camp in Virginia, but we had a boy who drowned in the lake who haunted the cabins. I don’t think he ever had a name, but it was a big part of the culture. We would go have campfires and try to scare each other with his story.

A: It was similar to that, but again this was a while ago for me. The story seems pretty generic, but it did appear to be an integral part of going to Camp Starlight. She was said to have died in 1940. Also, something always went wrong during each opening night of the shows. However, I am unsure if that is because of her or inexperienced thirteen year old actors.