Meet our Team
SIVAN BATTAT
DIRECTOR OF NEW WORK DEVELOPMENT
Sivan Battat (she/they) is an Iraqi-American theatre director & community organizer. Sivan’s work is across genres - in the theatre, in community, in ritual celebration, and beyond.
Recent directing credits: Layalina, Martin Yousif Zebari (National Queer Theater); The Night Traveller, Salah Abdul Saboor (Cutting Ball Theater); Close to Home, Sharifa Yasmin (Uprising Theatre Company); Coexistence My Ass, Noam Shuster (Harvard University/Tour); Who the Fuck is Ahmed, Michael Zalta (Rough Draft Fest, LPAC); She He Me, Raphael Khouri (National Queer Theater); Baba Karam, Sanaz Toossi, McArabia, Sevan Kaloustian Greene (Atlantic Middle Eastern Mixfest); Pie Shop Play, Alice Pencavel (Corkscrew Festival); East o’, West o’!, Michelle J. Rodriguez (ANTFest, Ars Nova). Sivan is currently the Roundabout Theatre Company Directing Fellow, the Drama League Leo Shull Musical Directing Fellow at New York Stage & Film, and a member of TCG's Rising Leaders of Color Cohort. Other residencies include: NYTW (Adelphi Residency), National Queer Theater (Mount Tremper Arts Residency), Roundabout Directors’ Group, 14th Street Y (LABA Fellowship), Studio Theatre (Artistic Apprentice). Sivan has assisted and associate directed extensively regionally & off-Broadway, with directors including Whitney White, Sam Gold, Rebecca Taichman, Neil Pepe, GT Upchurch, David Muse and more.
As an organizer, Sivan has worked with NYC-based Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) in numerous capacities, specifically organizing with Mizrahi & Sephardi Jews. She recently creative directed the first ever Mimouna, a celebration of identity & ritual led by members of the Mizrahi/Sephardi Caucus in partnership with the Arab American Association of NY. Sivan has curated several iterations of Salon Al-Mahjar صالون المهجر, a performance salon for queer & trans MENASA artists, leads ancestral storytelling workshops, and serves on the board with Ammud: the Jews of Color Torah Academy. Sivan has also worked at the Arab Hebrew Theatre of Jaffa, and with organizations Breaking the Silence, the Center for Jewish Nonviolence, Jewish Voice for Peace and with various Jewish communities to unlearn Zionism and organize for Palestinian justice & liberation. Sivan seeks to bridge justice work and cultural work, bringing the power of performance to our movements, and the vision of movement work to our theaters. BA Wesleyan University. Website: sivanbattat.com
Kate Moore Heaney
ARTISTIC PRODUCER
Kate Moore Heaney (she/her) is a NYC-based theatre director, producer, and dramaturg of Lebanese & Irish descent. In addition to serving as Artistic Producer of Noor Theatre, Kate is also Associate Producer at Long Wharf Theatre and a founding board member of the Middle Eastern and North African Theater Makers Alliance (MENATMA). She has directed and/or developed new work with The Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, The Playwrights Realm, Premiere Stages, The Civilians’ R&D Group, New York Theatre Workshop, NYU Abu Dhabi Institute (NYC), The Amoralists, The Flea, The Shakespeare Society, The 24 Hour Plays: Nationals, and other NYC companies. She has assistant or associate directed with Ibex Theatricals/The New Vic, McCarter Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, Yale Institute for Music Theatre, and The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway. B.A.: Yale. katemooreheaney.com
ARIANA SARFARAZI
eXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Ariana is an Iranian-American transactional entertainment attorney specializing in theater and the Executive Director of Noor Theatre. As its Executive Director, Ariana leads overall operations at Noor, including artistic programming, fundraising, and financial planning, in addition to overseeing the theatre company's strategic planning, developing institutional partnerships, and managing Board relations. As a theatrical attorney, Ariana has been named a “rising star” in NYC by SuperLawyers and represents producers and investors in the development, production, and financing of live stage productions; counsels not-for-profit theater companies; and advises a wide range of creative talent including Tony Award-winning bookwriters, composers, lyricists, directors, choreographers, and actors. Ariana serves on the board of Broadway for Arts Education, is a member of Theatre Producers of Color (TPOC) and the SWANA Writers Co-Op (a dialogue-based group for writers of SWANA descent) and is a volunteer pro bono attorney with Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. Once a proud “theatre kid” herself, Ariana enjoys singing, playing the piano/ukulele, writing, traveling the world every chance she can, and relishing in the healing power of music and the arts.
May Treuhaft-Ali is an Egyptian-American playwright, dramaturg, and teaching artist from Jackson Heights, Queens. (She comes by it honestly: according to family lore, her dad was a theater critic in Cairo before he moved to New York.) Community engagement is a vital part of her artistic practice, and she is particularly passionate about providing BIPOC, low-income, and marginalized audiences with access to and education about the new-play development process. She co-founded the SWANA Writers’ Co-op and served as Administrative Director for its inaugural two seasons. As a playwright, her plays have been developed at EST/Youngblood, Page 73, Rattlestick, Ars Nova, Clubbed Thumb, The Playwrights Realm, New York Theatre Workshop, The Movement Theatre Company, MCC Theater, Irish Repertory Theatre, Barrington Stage Company, South Coast Repertory, Cleveland Play House, and the Cape Cod Theatre Project.
To connect with Noor’s staff, please see Details below:
For artistic inquiries, please reach out to Kate at kate@noortheatre.org and Sivan at sivan@noortheatre.org.
For casting opportunities and postings, please write to opportunities@noortheatre.org.
For partnerships and/or cross-promotions, please write to Ariana at ariana@noortheatre.org.
For all other inquiries, please write to info@noortheatre.org
CATHERINE CORAY
AFFILIATE PRODUCING DIRECTOR
Catherine Coray has taught at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts since 1991, and has taught and collaborated with artists in Austria, Belarus, Chile, Cuba, Egypt and Lebanon. As an actor, she worked regionally and off-Broadway with directors such as Anne Bogart and Andre Gregory. She was the curator of the hotINK Festival at Tisch School of Arts and at The Lark, and was Director of The Lark Middle East-US Playwright Exchange. She curated and co-produced Arab Voices: here/there/then/now (Abu Dhabi, 2016), Arab Voices: Stories of Palestine (Beirut, 2018), and Arab Voices: Three New Dramatic Texts from Beirut and Berlin, at the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute in NYC (2019.) She recently produced, with Noor Theatre and the Foundation for Arab Dramatic Arts, the latest iteration of Arab Voices, Identities in Translation (Beirut, 2024.) Catherine is an Affiliate Producer with the Noor Theatre and serves on the advisory board of Golden Thread Productions in San Francisco, and on the Artistic Advisory Council of Playwrights Horizons and the Georgetown Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics Creative Core.
Board of Directors
President: Nilou Safinya, Entertainment Producer
Treasurer: ariana Sarfarazi
Secretary: ariana Sarfarazi
Hussein Khalifa, MVision, Founding Partner; Board Member
Laith Nakli, Actor/Playwright, Board Member
Heather Raffo, Actor/Playwright, Board Member