A Workshop Production
written and performed by Hend Ayoub
directed by Carey Perloff
dramaturgy by Salma Z. Zohdi
Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival:
Losing/Finding Home
The 3rd of 4 festival productions this year!
October 29 – November 13, 2022
LIVE, IN-PERSON PERFORMANCE
WITH COMMUNITY DISCUSSION
In Israel, she’s Palestinian. In the Arab world, she's Israeli. In America, she's an “Other.” From the extraordinary lead actress and director of Arena Stage’s 2020 production of A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS comes an electric one-woman 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? 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 can't forget 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.
HOME?
OR A PALESTINIAN WOMAN’S PURSUIT
OF LIFE, LIBERTY AND HAPPINESS
The Corner at Whitman-Walker
1701 14th St NW | Washington, DC
running time: 77 minutes (with no intermission)
What The Critics ARE SAYING
From The Washington Post:
by Peter Marks
D.C. Play Puts Wit and Warmth on the Map
"'Home?,' staged in a newly renovated storefront space, the Corner at Whitman-Walker, reunites Ayoub with Carey Perloff, who directed her nearly three years ago to mesmerizing effect in Arena Stage’s Afghan play 'A Thousand Splendid Suns.' They again prove to be a mutually catalyzing team.
"Ayoub overlays 'Home?' (subtitled 'Or a Palestinian Woman’s Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness') with an artistic paradox, one that gives the 80-minute performance piece a more poignant core… You can see via 'Home?' why Ayoub — who eventually came to the United States and studied with New York acting guru Wynn Handman — stuck so ardently to her dream: In a bare, white-walled space, with Devin Kinch’s projections to provide some context, she herself projects a radiant presence. But this is not an ideological tract by any stretch. Effortlessly shifting from English to Hebrew to Arabic and back again, Ayoub offers herself as a living example of how letting the global air in helps us all to breathe more healthfully."
- Read Peter Marks’ full review here
From DC Theatre Arts:
by Sophia Howes
"Ayoub has a remarkable ability to perform a staggering variety of characters, from her grandmother complaining about the information in Israeli textbooks ('Ask me.. the book? I should write my own book!') to a suspicious airport agent checking her baggage on her first plane trip, to her older brother, Jalal, who loves her but sometimes treats her with big-brotherly condescension. Her scenes with her imaginative, devoted mother are a highlight of the production.
...Events in the history of Israel and Palestine are deftly woven into the text... [And] Hend faces serious personal loss during the course of the play. She must cope with employment discrimination, prejudice against Arabs, and a world that often seems indifferent to her most deeply held dreams. Yet she never loses her sense of humor or her determination to move forward no matter how distant or unachievable her goals might seem. Through all the discrimination, vitriol, clueless advisors, endless acting classes, and absurd expectations, she finds herself in America and becomes what her mother always wanted her to be: An independent -- woman. An actress. And someone who has a vital message for us all..."
- Read Sophia Howes full review here
From Broadway World:
By Roger Catlin
"[Hend Ayoub is] a captivating performer...with self-deprecating humor sprinkled in the workshop premiere of her story...it involves not only her own voice at various stages in her life, but those of dozens around her in her family or out in the world. Her fluency in Hebrew, Arabic and English underscores both her ability to adapt to her surroundings and her uneasy footing in any one of them. Although still offered as a workshop performance, 'Home?' seemed to have a solid and satisfying dramatic shape already!"
- Read Roger Catlin’s full review here
Response from Audience
from Aref Dajani, Palestinian-American performer
A play opening this weekend that you need to see.
عدولي حلوة حلوة قشت بطة دلدولي
There is an amazing new play in production in DC: a one woman show called "Home?" It opens this weekend. Hend Ayoub is a young Palestinian Equity (very much professional) actress, born and raised in Haifa, as in where Baba and 'Amti 'Adla were born and Sido Shafiq served as District Judge for both the Ottomans and the British. Ms. Ayoub has a lot to say about identity and how she never fit in.
* In Israel, she was an Arab.
* In the Middle East, she was an Israeli.
* And in the United States, she is a Foreigner.
She plays many characters, movingly seamlessly from Arabic to Hebrew to multiple accents in English. Her Arabic is legit Palestinian. I attended the preview and spoke personally with the actress afterwards. She is legit; the story is her story. It is an amazing story.
The play is part of the Voices from a Changing Middle East Festival and is being performed at the Corner at Whitman-Walker: 14th & R NW. I strongly encourage you to see it. The voice of this actress is one rarely heard. It is a voice that sorely needs to be heard. In sharing her story, she shares her truth. And the truth of many.
عارف نادر شفيق عارف حسن اب الاقبال الدجاني
from MSNBC news host, Joy Reid:
"I think people need to know what’s happening in Palestine and this play shows us.
It’s brilliant – INFURIATING – and BRILLIANT!"
About the artists
Hend Ayoub (she/her) is Palestinian Israeli-born, New York-based actor and writer, most recently seen in the world premiere production of First Down at NYC's 59E59 Theater. Additional 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; Kiss (Yale Repertory Theatre); and Veils (world premiere, Portland Stage; Barrington Stage). Hend’s Washington DC debut came just before the pandemic in 2020 at Arena Stage where she gave a critically acclaimed performance playing the central role of Mariam in Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns (author of the best-selling, The Kite Runner), adapted by Ursula Rani Sarma, and directed by Carey Perloff. 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 and has just finished shooting a new film called If You See Something. Hend studied acting and scene study at the Wynn Handman Studio where she brought in early scenes of Home?, which was subsequently workshopped during the pandemic at San Francisco Playhouse.
For more information, go to www.hendayoub.com
Carey Perloff (she/her) is a director, playwright, producer, book author and educator who served as Artistic Director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco for 25 years (1992 to 2018). The youngest person ever chosen to lead a LORT theater, Perloff inherited an earthquake destroyed theater, a huge deficit, a struggling MFA program and a need to completely re-imagine the future of A.C.T. In addition to rebuilding the Geary Theater, reanimating ACT's educational programs and creating decades of vigorous, culturally diverse programming saw ACT's audiences grow and its work presented around the country, Perloff oversaw the creation of ACT's second stage, The Strand, a multi-venue performance space that provides a home for new artists, new work, new audiences, and the many aspects of A.C.T.'s training programs. Her highly acclaimed book Beautiful Chaos: A Life in the Theater (City Lights Press, 2015) explores many of the ideas and issues that emerged during her tenure at A.C.T. and shares the journey of a woman in a leadership field often dominated by men. Beautiful Chaos was selected as the One City One Book “Big Read” by the San Francisco Public Library and was featured in programs and discussions across the Bay Area and around the country throughout 2016. Her new book Pinter and Stoppard: A Director's View (Bloomsbury Methuen, February 2022) reveals the inner workings of the rehearsal process with two master playwrights, gleaned from decades of collaboration with Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard.
For more on Carey’s work as a playwright and artistic leader, go to careyperloff.com/bio
David Elias (Stage Manager) (he/him) has been an actor and stage manager for a multitude of theaters in the Washington area for 30 years. He teaches acting, and voice at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, and has taught stage management at George Mason Univ. David has been able to combine his career and travel bug by stage managing plays in Prague, as well as teaching a seminar about building/voicing a character at Universidade de Natal in Brazil.
Born and raised in DC, Sam Sherman (Assistant Director)(they/he) is an actor, director, and poet. He is a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts where he received a BFA in Acting and is a proud alum of the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, the District’s premier public arts high school. Since moving to New York City last year, Sam completed a Kenan Fellowship with Lincoln Center Education, where he developed his approach to teaching artistry and devised theatre. He is thrilled to be back in town working as assistant director for HOME? with VFP.