Story & Purpose

Our Story

First-generation Syrian-Armenian-American film and theater artist Sona Tatoyan spent her childhood summers in Aleppo, where she first heard stories of her great-great-grandfather, Abkar Knadjian, a master puppeteer, a survivor of the Armenian Genocide from Urfa… and a hakawati.

In 2016, during a silent meditation retreat, Sona had a clear vision: to build a storytelling organization devoted to healing, one that helps transform trauma into meaning, expands perception, and restores our capacity to see ourselves and one another more fully. The vision came with the name, Hakawati, in honor of her ancestor and his legacy.

In 2019, Sona returned to war-torn Aleppo and uncovered a wooden trunk in her family’s attic. Inside she discovered 180 handmade, multicolored Karagöz puppets from the late 19th century, carried across borders during Genocide and preserved through exile by Abkar. These 120-year-old puppets are now ready to speak again, carrying survival, humor, and ancestral memory, and inviting audiences everywhere into deeper belonging.

Who We Are

Founded by storyteller and artist Sona Tatoyan, together with producing partner Raffi Niziblian, Hakawati is a cultural research and programming nonprofit rooted in the understanding that healing begins when pain is met with presence, curiosity, and truth.

We preserve and nurture cultural heritage through storytelling, art, research, and contemplative practice, because story is how we remember who we are, how we belong to one another, and how we carry our ancestors forward.

Our mission is to hold space for voices long silenced, honoring their truths with dignity and mindful attention. Through creative expression and rigorous inquiry, we invite transformation: personal and collective wounds becoming pathways to resilience, connection, and liberation.

What We Do

Hakawati works at the meeting point of art, heritage, and perception research to cultivate awareness, belonging, and renewal.

Train Perception Through Story

We use storytelling as contemplative practice: pausing, turning toward what is difficult, staying curious, and noticing change. Through performances, workshops, and gatherings, we help individuals and communities meet what they have avoided, hold paradox without collapsing into certainty, and transform memory into meaning. Healing one becomes healing many.

Research How Story Changes Seeing

We are building a research program to study and measure how paradoxical storytelling shifts perception, anchored to established measures such as tolerance for ambiguity and integrative complexity. This work, in active development with academic research partners, treats the findings as a public good: open, published, and in service of the field.

Preserve Living Heritage

We safeguard endangered cultural practices, from oral traditions to Karagöz shadow puppetry, not as relics but as living expressions of impermanence, interconnection, and cultural resilience. The Abkar Knadjian Collection, 180 hand-painted Karagöz puppets carried through genocide and war, anchors this work and is the subject of an international program of scholarship, digitization, and exhibition.

Reimagine Migration

We reframe migration not as rupture but as a journey of becoming, a reminder that home is not fixed in place but discovered through presence, creativity, and shared humanity. By centering stories of resilience and belonging, we transform narratives of displacement into narratives of renewal.

Through this work, Hakawati supports artists, preserves culture, advances perception research, and cultivates mindful storytelling as a practice of collective repair.

Where We Do It

USA and Armenia. Hakawati USA is a 501(c)(3), a registered non-profit organization since 2018. Hakawati Armenia was registered in 2024.