Noor Theatre

Home? Or A Palestinian Woman’s Pursuit of Life, Liberty & Happiness

by Hend Ayoub

Directed by Carey perloff

Dramaturgy By Jesse Cameron Alick

stage Managed By Siena Yusi

Featuring Hend Ayoub

ABOUT THE SHOW

In Israel, she’s Palestinian. In the Arab world, she's Israeli. In America, she's an “Other.” An autobiographical one-person show about a young woman's journey to retrieve and imagine a new sense of home. On the way she learns: Why would you need to complete military service just to wait tables? Can you pass as an Israeli if you delete your Arab accent? And can you simply move to America and leave the whole Middle East behind? Through a panoply of vivid characters – from a five-year-old who just wants to join the neighborhood Purim party, to an Egyptian casting director who won't accept where she comes from, to her dying mother who longs for her daughter to find a place in the world – Hend shares a deeply personal, true story about a search for the place that many of us take for granted: Home.

The inspiration behind the inception of the piece, in the playwright’s words: The limited and sometimes non-existent knowledge fellow Americans have about Palestinians in general and the Palestinians of Israel in particular, has led me to want to tell my own story in an honest, educating yet entertaining way to shed some light on one of the longest on-going conflicts of the Middle East.

Meet the Team

HEND AYOUB

PLAYWRIGHT/PERFORMER

HEND AYOUB is a New York-based actor and writer. Theatre credits include: Broadway’s Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo with Robin Williams, as well as its previous run at Los Angeles’s Mark Taper Forum; A Thousand Splendid Suns (Arena Stage); Kiss (Yale Repertory Theatre); 9 Kinds of Silence (PlayCo); First Down (Noor/59E59 Theater); American Fast (InterAct Theater) and Veils (Portland Stage; Barrington Stage). Television credits include “Homeland”, “Orange Is The New Black”, “The Looming Tower”, “Madam Secretary”, “Royal Pains”, “Feed the Beast”, “The Accidental Wolf”, “Comedy Central’s The Watch List”, and recurring roles on “Transparent” and “Damages”. In Film, she co-starred in the Emmy Award-winning film “Death of a President” and the multi award-winning film “Private”. She can be seen in the new upcoming film “If You See Something”. HendAyoub.com

CAREY PERLOFF

DIRECTOR

CAREY PERLOFF is a director, playwright, producer and educator who served as Artistic Director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco from 1992- 2018, where she staged dozens of classical and contemporary plays. Since leaving A.C.T., Perloff has directed across America, in Canada and internationally, including: The Lehman Trilogy (Huntington Theater and Repertory Theater of St. Louis, Hend Ayoub’s Home?, Ibsen’s Ghosts (Seattle Rep and Williamstown), Pale Fire by Colm Toibin (Gate Theatre, Dublin), Merchant of Venice (Calgary) and A Thousand Splendid Suns at Arena Stage. As a playwright, Perloff’s work includes Vienna, Vienna, Vienna, If God Were Blue, Edgardo or White Fire, Higher, Luminescence Dating, Kinship and The Fit. Perloff is the author of BEAUTIFUL CHAOS: A LIFE IN THE THEATER (City Lights Press 2015) and PINTER AND STOPPARD: A DIRECTOR’S VIEW (Bloomsbury Methuen 2022).

JESSE CAMERON ALICK

DRAMATURG

JESEE CAMERON ALICK (he/him) is a dramaturg, producer, poet, playwright, essayist, artistic researcher and science fiction expert.  Jesse is the Associate Artistic Director at The Vineyard and an active freelance dramaturg at various off-Broadway theaters in NYC, nationwide and internationally. Jesse studied writing with Adrienne Kennedy and has taught theater courses, lectured at classes and mentored students at a myriad of programs, currently teaching at NYU.