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Alexander Dinelaris, whose new play Red Dog Howls is making its world premiere at L.A.'s El Portal Theater, has a rather lofty aim: to create the next great American play. "At its best, American drama is unrelenting and powerful; emotion is thrown around because that's who we are as a country," he says.

Red Dog Howls tells the story of Michael (played by Matthew Rauch), who discovers his Armenian heritage after encountering his long-lost grandmother (played by stage legend Kathleen Chalfant). With that heritage also comes the legacy of a violent genocide that claimed the lives of over 1.6 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks, including a large portion of Michael's own family. The playwright was baffled last October by the failure of the U.S. House of Representatives to pass a resolution recognizing the nearly 100-year-old Armenian genocide as actually having occurred. "Because of politics, the United States Government is forced into a subdued position on this issue," he says, referring to the anger the Armenian resolution caused within Turkey, a strategically important U.S. ally in the war in Iraq. "This is a people who have wanted expression and relief and they haven't been able to get it."

While director Michael Peretzian's parents lived through the Armenian genocide, they never discussed it with their son. "What my parents didn't want to talk about was the fact that they survived," Peretezian says. "For some reason, they were allowed to live and the neighbor next door to them was slaughtered."