Istanbul municipal theater will stage Armenian writer Hakob Paronyan’s “Eastern Dentist” play.

“Armenians are the foundation of Turkish theater. Artists bred in this area are the DNA of this land. We need to claim our past if we want to modernize. Unfortunately, we are a society without a memory,” Aysenil Samlioglu, Istanbul Municipal Theater’s general art director told Hurriyet Daily News.

According to him, the theater would be pleased to bring the play to Armenia.

“We also marginalize our people. We ignored people who had been living on this soil for thousands of years due to ideological reasons. It is impossible for us to eradicate Armenian artists from Turkish theater,” Engin Algan, who adapted Baronyan’s work for the stage, told the newspaper.

Algan says it is important to stage the performance when enmity is used as a political tool. Speaking about Armenians, he stressed that they shared a common life with Turks 100 years ago and “it is this common past that carried us into the present.”