For two Palestinian artists, making S.F. theater is resistance

San Francisco Chronicle​

2 days ago

Hend Ayoub and Hanna Eady's plays might not seem to have much in common.
Ayoub's 'Home? A Palestinian Woman's Pursuit of Life, Liberty & Happiness' is an autobiographical solo show about becoming an actor in a world where you're always too Arab, too Israeli or just simply too foreign. Eady and Edward Mast's 'The Return' is a mysterious two-hander set in an auto body shop in which an Israeli Jewish customer keeps peppering a Palestinian mechanic with intrusive questions most of us wouldn't ask strangers.
But when two Palestinian Israeli artists make theater in San Francisco in the same month, as mass starvation threatens Gaza, perhaps it's inevitable that commonalities emerge.
San Francisco Playhouse's 'Home?' runs through Aug. 16, at Z Below, and Golden Thread Productions and Art2Action Inc.'s 'The Return' begins performances Aug. 7 at the Garret at ACT's Toni Rembe Theater. In advance of both runs, the Chronicle spoke to Ayoub and Eady about their relationship to the news, their homeland and their art.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Eady: Where we are in the north, in the Galilee — Gaza is in the south — we could hear the ground rumbling and the air force 24 hours a day in the skies.
When they started the war against Iran, a siren would go, and you have to find a bomb shelter. Most people in Palestinian villages don't have bomb shelters, and we'd just sit and say, 'Well, let's hope it's not going to land on my house.'
Q: Hend, 'home' is a loaded term for you, since it's the title of your play, but when's the last time you were back in your native Haifa?
Ayoub: A few months ago. Actually, I was in shelters as well — not this time, a few months before, when Hezbollah was still in play. Over there, there are apps (where) you get the sirens. You just hear that sound, and you just start running. For me, I felt better being there with my family instead of being here worrying about them.
More Information
'Home? A Palestinian Woman's Pursuit of Life, Liberty & Happiness': Written and performed by Hend Ayoub. Directed by Carey Perloff. Through Aug. 16. $40. Z Below, 470 Florida St., S.F. 415-677-9596. www.sfplayhouse.org
'The Return': Written by Hanna Eady and Edward Mast. Directed by Eady. Performances start Aug. 7. Through Aug. 24. $20-$130. The Garret at ACT's Toni Rembe Theater, 415 Geary St., S.F. 415-626-4061. https://goldenthread.org
Ayoub: To me, the news was very different after Oct. 7 happened. In the beginning, I was watching the news and just crying for the Israelis because I was in shock. Like, how could they do this? But then when Gaza happened, and it shifted, and you see the number of deaths, and you're crying for Palestinians in Gaza, but you're not seeing any of it on the news. It explains, I think, why Israelis don't care for the people in Gaza, because they don't see any of the images at all.
Eady: I'm going to say the forbidden word: It's a genocide. And if you're not watching it and not seeing the images, it's still faraway land. Even if it's on the news, it's their news. And it might not be true, because they lie.
Ayoub: When you're saying (Americans and Israelis) don't see images, they don't get exposed to other stories, other narratives, how are they going to know the other? In Israel, they don't know any Arabs. We don't even mix.
Eady: You're back to back.
Ayoub: Arabs go to Arab schools. Jews go to Jewish schools. All they see is awful coverage in TV and film, the way we're portrayed as the enemy, the villain, the terrorist.
Eady: On Oct. 7, 2023, I was supposed to go to D.C. to work with Ari Roth, (the Jewish artistic director of Voices Festival Productions), on a play that I wrote before Oct. 7, called 'Almonds Blossom in Deir Yassin.' Deir Yassin is the site of the first massacre in 1948. (Roth) called. He said, 'What do you think? Should we do it?' I said, 'There is no better time.'
If the war is going to stop us from creating and putting (on) this kind of important work, then we would never do theater. There's always a war.
'Deir Yassin' is a forbidden word to utter, but if we don't, then what? It's a wound that never healed.
Q: Do you feel you have certain expectations placed on you as Palestinian artists about what kind of art you're allowed to or supposed to make?
Ayoub: We have so many different Palestinians. You have the Palestinians who stayed on the land in 1948 and became Israeli citizens and didn't flee. You have the Palestinians that fled at gunpoint and stayed out when Israel closed the borders. You have Palestinians who you see here in America, the Palestinians who got stuck in Lebanon and Jordan refugee camps and in the West Bank and Gaza.
Because we have so many stories and perspectives, some might say, 'Why aren't you writing about what's happening in Gaza and the occupation?'
For me, I'm just writing my personal story and my perspective as someone who was born and raised there.
Eady: A lot of the stories were not told to us because there's so much shame. It's not a heroic story. We ran away. We didn't put (up) a good fight in 1948.
My job, to tell the story, it's an obligation. It's part of who I am. I have to continue to bang at the door until my story is heard.
Q: For the Arab characters in your plays, what is home?
Eady: (In 'The Return'), for him (an unnamed character played by Nick Musleh) to free himself from the oppressive system and the racism, it's going to require a full expression of who he is. For a long time in the play, he's having a hard time to say, 'I'm a Palestinian.' We grew up brainwashed by the Israeli system to say we're Israelis. The word 'Palestine' was never uttered in my house.
Ayoub: It wasn't allowed.
Eady: In (my) play, home for him is really (that) first he has to say who he is and then be able to have enough courage, although he's going to be punished, to say 'I'm going home,' and his home (is) most likely a destroyed village.
Home is to be able, not that they have to live in Palestine, but to have the right to come. Just like any Jewish American, they have this birthright. Some of them go; some of them don't. They choose. We don't.
Ayoub: Home is something that most people, I think, take for granted because they were born in a place where they belong, where they're part of the whole. For us, we don't really belong anywhere.
If we're talking specifically about people like us, Palestinian Israelis, home is taken away from you, even if you want to claim it. Even if you want to see yourself as Israeli, you can't, because you're reminded every time that you're not one of us: 'This is the land of the Jews, and you're not Jewish. You're a second-class citizen.'
Home is like when you belong, you're embraced, you're welcomed, you don't have to whisper your language in Arabic.