Actress Hend Ayoub, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, was tired of portraying the same one-dimensional, stereotyped roles, so she decided to write her own story. Her autobiographical one-woman show, titled “Home? A Palestinian Woman’s Pursuit of Life, Liberty & Happiness,” chronicles Ayoub’s life as both an Arab and an Israeli, including her upbringing in her hometown of Haifa and her struggles to land acting jobs in Israel, the Middle East and the U.S. She’s bringing it to the stage in San Francisco for a three-week run at Z Space starting July 26.
The show explores the strange and misunderstood “dual identities” of Palestinian citizens of Israel. At its personal core, the “Home?” is a love letter to Ayoub’s late mother, who initially convinced her to try acting. Ayoub’s American theater and film career spans two decades, including roles in TV shows like “Homeland,” “Orange Is the New Black,” “Madame Secretary” and “Transparent.” Based in New York City, Ayoub also performed onstage alongside the late Robin Williams in the Broadway production of “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo.”
“Home?” was commissioned by San Francisco Playhouse and also marks the relaunch of the company’s Sandbox Series, an incubator for new alternative theater.
Update: S.F. Playhouse announced on July 28 that “Home?” will transfer to New York for a limited Off-Broadway engagement this fall, at 59E59 Theaters.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
J.: Tell me about your background and what it was like growing up in Haifa.
Hend Ayoub: I grew up in a building where everyone was Jewish, and we were the only Arab family. All my friends were Jewish Israelis, and my best friend was the rabbi’s daughter. We lived on the same floor as the rabbi and his wife and his family, and our doors were always open. It was the best thing in the world.
Then we moved out of that building, and, you know, Arabs go to Arab schools, and Jews go to Jewish schools, and we don’t mix after that.
In your play you talk about how hard it was to get a job as a waitress. Did you witness other kinds of discrimination?
Absolutely. I mean, you face it all the time. You hear it from your friends.
Haifa is often presented as a place where Arabs and Jews mix, a place that’s very metropolitan. What’s your take?
If Israel is ever going to go somewhere better between the Arabs and the Jews, I think we would start in Haifa. But there’s also the other little discriminations along the way that shape your life and everything that you experience in Israel. So, in the broader term, yes, we live together. We go to university together, we work together. But, for example, you don’t have friends, like real friends, real friendships. You have colleagues.
Were there other moments you realized you were different from the friends that you were growing up with?
Well, there’s a big moment, and it’s in my play. It’s when I was kicked out of a Purim party because I was an Arab. I remember leaving that party crying. As a child, you don’t understand.
Did you stay friends with the rabbi’s daughter?
I never saw Avigail again. Every time I say this line in the play, I just have tears in my eyes. She was my best friend, and why does something like that have to be taken away from you just because of who you are?
How did you get into acting?
The truth is, after high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do, so I went to engineering school at the Technion, just like my dad and my brother. My mom saw how miserable I was, so she and my brother basically pushed me to leave the Technion and go study acting.
I’m so glad I did, because it’s what really saved my life. My mom, who was the love of my life, died when I was still in acting school. Acting was the only thing that kept me going. It stopped me from completely checking out and maybe even ending my life. So I’m very grateful that she pushed me into acting.
How was it working as an Arab actress?
The problem is, in Israel, there aren’t any roles for Arabs. And if there are, we are the terrorists, the villain, the bad person, the threat, the enemy,
If you want to get work, you have to get rid of your Arab accent. So I did. I worked very hard. And then the agent said, they won’t ever let you play Jewish Israeli. With an accent or without an accent, you’re still an Arab.
So I tried the Arab world, and the Arab world sees Palestinians from Israel as Israelis. They don’t treat you well, and to them you are very suspicious.
What made you want to finally bring your own story to the stage in this way?
It was a combination of things that pushed me to want to write this.
I didn’t see people like me represented on stage or on screen in a way that felt whole, beyond the one-dimensional portrayal or the stereotypes. But it’s first and foremost a deeply personal, human story. And I really want to emphasize that I’m not there to lecture the audience. It’s all done with humor.
I mainly want people to come and get to see someone they don’t know anything about, you know? Especially in a world where we’re just a statistic or a news item. Come see a human, a person without the labels.
Get to know a Palestinian, I guess, and laugh!
“Home? A Palestinian Woman’s Pursuit of Life, Liberty, & Happiness,” July 26-Aug. 16 at Z Space, 470 Florida St., S.F. $46. tinyurl.com/zp4zzk5j