In 2015, Yemen was in shambles. The Iran-backed Houthis seized control of the western part of the country, including the capital city of Sanaa. The rise to power of the fiercely anti-Israel and antisemitic extremists moved the Jewish Agency for Israel to help 19 of the last 100 or so Jews in Yemen escape to the Jewish state.
Two of the Jews who stayed behind were an Israeli couple of Yemenite descent who had come to Yemen with forged papers to work as teachers; Yemen and Israel have no formal relations.
Their decision to stay led to tragedy. The Houthis captured the husband, imprisoning and torturing him to death. Just before he was killed, his wife managed to escape through the desert and made her way back to Israel, where she lives quietly today.
Their story, which has not been made public until now, is the basis for “Desert Wind,” a new play by the Los Angeles-based American Jewish Theatre that will debut at the Potrero Stage in San Francisco this month, as part of playwright incubator PlayGround’s Innovators Showcase.
“Desert Wind” was written by Stephanie Liss, a longtime screenwriter turned playwright whose writing credits include the Emmy-nominated television movie “Second Serve: The Renee Richards Story,” starring Vanessa Redgrave.
After a cancer scare nearly 30 years ago, Liss turned to Torah study and decided to focus solely on Jewish stories in her playwriting career.
“I look at the cancer as HaShem giving me a break and showing me the way I should walk,” Liss told J. “And I did.”
She formed the American Jewish Theatre this January as a vehicle for plays designed to fight antisemitism. “Desert Wind” is the second in a five-part series of plays called “Revolution for a Jewish Life.” All five deal with personal stories of Jews forced to leave Arab lands. The first play, “Escape from Tehran,” was produced last year, before AJT was formally established. Future plays will focus on Jews in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
“Doing all of this is my way, our way, of standing up,” Liss said. “We are showing people who we are. I’m telling the stories of our people that have never been told, not really. It’s a huge responsibility because I’m Ashkenazi, but I know that world. I’ve spent enough time in that world, enough that it just kind of pours out.”
Liss came upon the plot for “Desert Wind” last year at — where else? — a Shabbat dinner in L.A.
“I met a Yemenite woman who had lost her husband,” Liss said. “We were at the same table. She wasn’t talking about how she lost him or what had happened, but there was something, you know, you get that little voice that says: ‘Something happened here.’ And I started talking to her, and she told me his story.”
After the husband was arrested, turned in by one of his students for allegedly “corrupting a Muslim boy,” Liss said, his wife stayed behind as long as she could. “She wouldn’t leave her husband.”
But the couple had two children back in Israel, so she eventually made the painful decision to cross the desert and return home. Liss will not reveal the couple’s names to protect the safety of the woman and her children.
In 2021, most of the rest of the Jews were spirited out of Yemen, the remnants of a once-proud and ancient community. The Houthis’ aggressions have now spread beyond Yemen’s borders, though. Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre in Israel, the Houthis have repeatedly launched missiles and drones at Israel, as well as attacking international ships in the Red Sea.
Liss’ play stars Palo Alto native and actor Assaf Cohen and Broadway actor Stephanie Satie. Elisheva Herrara is the company’s executive director, and the play features original music by Oakland resident Bruce Burger, aka RebbeSoul, an internationally known writer, performer and producer of Jewish music.
Burger has worked with Liss on several productions, beginning with his original score for “Sister Africa” in 2017, which highlighted the work of Jewish World Watch in the Congo.
“Desert Wind” will mark Burger’s first time playing a character in one of her plays. “I’ll be wearing a jalabiya [Arab caftan] and playing a cümbüş saz,” a Turkish stringed instrument somewhat like a lute, he said. “I’ll be wandering around the stage like Father Time, kind of a muse.”
Burger will set the mood of the play with his intro music, he said. “It’s ‘Eshal Elohai,’ a Yemenite song which, roughly translated, means ‘We beseech you, God, to free all those in captivity.’ And I thought, that’s very appropriate. And it’s Yemenite, so it’s perfect.”
“Desert Wind” will be staged on Nov. 23 and 24 through PlayGround, a 30-year-old playwright incubator and theater community hub in San Francisco whose Innovator Incubator program supports new playwrights and theater companies, particularly those highlighting the stories of historically excluded and marginalized communities. The eight members of this year’s group will all showcase their work in November and December as part of the 2024 Innovators Showcase
When PlayGround artistic director Jim Kleinmann received Liss’ application to join this year’s group, he didn’t hesitate to accept her. Not only does “Desert Wind” fit the incubator’s mission of focusing on marginalized communities, he said, but before he co-founded PlayGround in 1994, he was managing director of A Traveling Jewish Theatre, the longtime experimental theater company based in S.F.
“So this was obviously very close to my heart,” he said.
“The incubator program is a perfect fit” for the American Jewish Theatre, he added. “We help her build her capacity and help build connections to the Jewish community, which is my own history.”
Kleinmann also looks forward to connecting again with Cohen, who appeared in one of the very first Playground productions 30 years ago. “It will be a really fun reunion,” he said.
What does Liss hope audiences take away from this show and the others in her “Revolution for a Jewish Life” cycle?
“I want the audience to understand what is really happening with Jews right now. Nobody cries over the Israelis. Nobody cries over the Jews. And this bothers me,” she said.
“We’ve been driven out of every Arab country in which we’ve ever lived, or we’ve been forced to flee. People don’t know that. Jews don’t even know that. This theater is our way of saying we are here. These are our stories. Come on this journey with us. I want Bruce’s music to get in their kishkes. And I want them to understand that this is happening right now.”