Back in the counter-culture days of the 60′s, we used to say the personal is political. For the characters in Return to Haifa, at Evanston’s Next Theatre, the personal is always political. And that holds true for the audience as well.
Prologue: A house in Haifa (photo by Michael Brosilow)
In our Ageless post on Monday, February 8, we wrote about Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani’s novella, Returning to Haifa; Boaz Gaon’s adaptation of the novella into a play, The Return to Haifa; and some of controversy surrounding its production in Israel.
Jason Southerland, artistic director of Next Theatre, saw Gaon’s play in 2008. Southerland was moved by Gaon’s adaptation of the novella, but he was even more impressed when he read Kanafani’s original novella. ‘There was a lot more depth to it.”
While working on a translation of Boaz Gaon’s adaptation, Southerland decided that he needed a fresh perspective on the play. Southerland turned to M.E.H. Lewis (Evanston resident, Margaret Lewis) who has tackled apartheid and reconciliation in Burying the Bones, pre-war Nazi Germany in Fellow Travellers and surrogacy/outsourcing in Here Where It’s Safe (premiering later this month at Stage Left Theatre)
The novella follows a Palestinian couple on a day trip from the West Bank to see the house in Haifa they’d fled nineteen years earlier in the violence and confusion of 1948. They find a Jewish couple living in that Haifa home overlooking the sea with its garden of roses and apricots.
Safiyeh (Diana Simonzadeh) and Ismail (Anish Jethmalani) photo byMichael Brosilow
This version, while inspired by the novella, is quite different. Return to Haifa focuses on two women: Safiyeh, the Palestinian woman forced to leave her home in Haifa during the fighting in 1948 and Sarah, a Holocaust survivor from Auschwitz, who buys the house.
The wood frame house sits on the set bordered by two concrete block walls, each covered with Hebrew and Arabic graffiti. Hebrew and Arabic lullabies, folk songs and pop tunes play while the audience is seated.
The play begins with the two couples: Ismail (Anish Jethmalani) and Safiyeh (Diana Simonzadeh), and Jakob (Daniel Cantor) and Sarah (Saren Nofs-Snyder) standing in shadows shouting “this is my house.” Downstage two men wrestle for position.
Act 1, in scenes set in 1947 and 1948, introduces us to the two couples. The Arabs have built a new house in Haifa, planted a garden and are expecting their first child. And the Jews, who arrive from Poland traumatized by the Holocaust, are looking to find their “home” in the land of Israel.
Act 2 shows Ismail and Safiyeh in a refugee camp in Ramallah in 1967. Their son Khalid (Todd Garcia), tired of his parents’ longing for Haifa, tells them that the borders are open. The couple chooses to return to see everything they have left behind.
Southerland and The Next Theatre attempt to thread a very complex needle. Through the story of two families, they acknowlege the very different narratives of the events of the 1948. For Israelis, it is called Milhemet HaAtzma’ut or War of Liberation. For Palestinians: al-Nakba or the catastrophe.
Saren Nofs-Snyder (Sarah) and Moishe (Miquel Cohen) photo by Michael Brosilow
Particularly in Act 2, the personal drama of these families – their longing, regret, and loss – transcends the political history of the period. Saren Nofs-Snyder’s performance is extremely moving as she reveals the darkest moments of her past.
After the show, we stayed for the Sunday Q & A with Southerland, Lewis, and cast members. A very lively debate ensued along somewhat predictable grounds. One woman couldn’t the believe that “a disgusting anti-Semitic play” would be produced at Next Theatre. While another decried the terrible treatment of Palestinians in refugee camps as being caused by Israelis “unwilling to share.”
The Israeli-Palestinian is perhaps the most polarizing of political issues, certainly in the Jewish and Arab communities around the world. While I would never expect anyone’s mind to be changed by Return to Haifa, the point is that as individuals and families we are pulled and tugged by forces outside our control. Through drama, we can appreciate the narrative of people with whom we differ. And perhaps that appreciation can lead to understanding and even empathy.
I suggest you see Return to Haifa with someone with whom you disagree on Israeli-Palestinian issues. It will certainly spice up your after theater discussion.
For tickets and more information, click here.
