“Home?” at the San Francisco Playhouse

Home?

By Hend Ayoub
Directed by Carey Perloff

San Francisco Playhouse
at Z-Space, 470 Florida, San Francisco
July 26 – August 16, 2025

Our protagonist Hend starts her story by coming on stage as an excited four year old who is about to go to a Purim celebration in her Haifa neighborhood with the next-door four-year-old girl who is her best friend. She tells how their families share a floor in the apartment building, how the doors between the families are never closed, how her brother’s best friend is her best friend’s brother, and how important her neighbor the rabbi is. She goes into more detail about what food she’s looking forward to at the party, her dress, her hair, and enough four-year-old’s small detail to let the audience start wondering what they’ve signed up to see.

You pass over the line about how she knows the neighbor rabbi is a significant force in his community “even though I am not sure what a rabbi is”.

Quickly our four year old comes back from the party in tears and her ignorance takes center stage. Some of the other children had stopped her from eating party treats and instead told her she doesn’t belong. You’re not Jewish, they yell at her accusatorily. They are right. She’s Palestinian.

Home? A Palestinian Woman’s Pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness grows up with Hend. The production is a one woman show, and the solo actor emphasizes that we are seeing a personal story. All the interaction is told through her eyes, through her words, through her gestures. And, in this world premiere production the lead actor is also the author and the subject of the story.

The dramatic transition between characters is flawless. You always know who is speaking or acting. Hend is expressive, clear, and appropriate. Still, there is a unifying vibe because there is only one physical person on stage.

The play is a solid story of Hend’s experiences and battles. But, its also tremendously important for the excellent way it opens up intellectual and emotional understanding of the dilemmas in Palestine, Israel, and the broader Middle East.

We feel how the political tensions rip up Hend’s friendships and neighborhood closeness. When she is still a child her family moves only couple blocks to an Arab apartment building, but she never again sees her Jewish “best friend”. She starts attending a school for Palestinians separate from the school for Jewish children and learns rules that limit Palestinians’ ability to express themselves.

We experience the disruption and pain caused by the intifada, the response, and the ongoing ethnic/cultural divide.

Hend is apolitical. At times her brother, mother, and father have to clue her in on the anger and dangers on the streets. She is painfully slow to recognize that she is excluded from employment and opportunities because she is Palestinian.

Home? is Hend’s life story, and we watch her develop into a young woman who wants to create her own life separate from the cultural chaos. She chooses to be an actor to escape from reality, and we follow her as she keeps running into distrust based on her ethnicity.

All the little prejudicial nits are horrifying. After a single successful role with an Israeli theater company she cannot get cast unless it’s a bit part as the daughter/wife/mother of an Arab terrorist.  So she moves to Egypt to try for work in an Arab culture. But, no. More prejudice. She may be ethnically Arab, but to the talent scouts she is from Israel, and they won’t employ an Israeli.

What a world we live in.

Her next step is to flee to America where, in an ironic line, she says minorities are not mistreated. And, in reality, she takes root in the US, working as a cocktail waitress while continuing her acting studies. She is encouraged to write her story, and now magically she is sharing her search for a Home? with us.  At the closing curtain I was wondering if her creation of Home? and its production is sufficiently wonderful to let me leave the theater in an upbeat mood. I still don’t know.

Throughout the performance we have experienced the road she’s taken to be with us in the theater. We are moved, fascinated, enlightened, and emotional.

The ongoing personal slaps and frustration are real events in the life of the play’s author and current actor, Hend Ayoub. Her personal story presented to us shows the misery, anguish, and cruelty that is foisted on Palestinians from all sides.

Home?’s lack of political self-righteousness is powerful. The play also has many funny lines and moments. This lightness made me drop my guard and then intensify my personal feeling of horror at the ongoing, never-ending conflict in Palestine and Israel. The human story on stage in front of us keeps getting disrupted and cheated by mistrust, bias, and discrimination.

Importantly this is not an anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli diatribe. Yes, some of the hurts come from Jews, starting from age four. But the Palestinians’ violence and also the   Arabs in Egypt and the frequent diminishing of women by men in whatever culture are equally complicit in keeping Hend from feeling at home.

Director Carey Perloff has also been an advocate for getting Home? into production. Carey is Jewish and says she is an advocate of Israel’s existence. The attitude and cooperation of Hend and Carey are a healthy respite from the actions and attitudes in the play itself.

Carey has made sure that Hend is sharp in every scene and there is a constant easy flow of the action. I had no “Yes, but…” moments in any scene.

SF Playhouse’s staging was simple and on target. The sparse layout of furniture with the addition of a video wall let the small space serve as multiple venues with clarity and comfort. The sound effects – Hend’s recorded voice?? – fit the moments and moved the story forward.

The focus on Hend the person and not on any political point makes the 90-minute show spectacularly powerful. Home? is a performance you should see for its emotional content. It is a so much better way to contemplate Palestine than seething about the horrors of October 7^th, Gaza, or endemic apartheid.