Noura
- Written by Heather Raffo
- Directed by Joanna Settle
Playwrights: The Profane. Heather Raffo is an award-winning playwright and actress whose work has been seen Off-Broadway, off West End, in regional theater and in film. She is the author and solo performer of the play 9 Parts of Desire (Lucille Lortel Award, Susan Smith Blackburn commendation, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle, Helen Hayes nominations), which The New Yorker called “an example of how art can remake the world.” The play ran Off-Broadway for nine months and has played across the U.S. and internationally for over a decade. Current productions in Greece, Hungary and India. Raffo’s libretto for the opera FALLUJAH was part of Kennedy Center’s International Theater Festival, received its world premiere at Long Beach Opera and opened at New York City Opera in 2016. Heather’s newest play, Noura, just won Williamstown’s prestigious Weissberger Award. Noura was further developed at Georgetown University’s LAB for Global Performance and Politics with refugee and Middle East policy experts. Further workshops were supported by the McCarter Theater, Epic Theater Ensemble and our nation’s first Arab-American Museum in Dearborn, MI. Noura is currently receiving its world premiere at Shakespeare Theatre Company in DC before a production in Abu Dhabi. Raffo is the recipient of multiple grants from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
Playwrights debut. Joanna Settle recently directed the world premiere of Stew and Heidi Rodewald’s musical The Total Bent in a twice-extended run at The Public Theater. Other Public Theater credits include Winter Miller's In Darfur and the Finale of Suzan-Lori Park’s 365 Plays/365 Days. She also directed the world premiere of Heather Raffo’s celebrated 9 Parts of Desire at Manhattan Ensemble Theater, and for subsequent productions at theaters and art museums around the US. Settle served as the Artistic Director of Chicago’s Division 13 Productions from 1998 to 2004 and directed and adapted 15 projects including BLOOD LINE: The Oedipus/Antigone Story, two plays by Sophocles, Macbett by Ionesco, and several Samuel Beckett shorts including Cascando and Play. She served as Artistic Director of Shakespeare on the Sound 2009 to 2012, where she directed free outdoor Shakespeare productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing and Romeo and Juliet. Settle completed her graduate studies at The Juilliard School and holds a BA in Theater Directing and Design from Hampshire College. She has taught and guest directed at Bard College, Williams College, Juilliard, Cornell and Stanford and served as Director of the Ira Brind School of Theater Arts at the University of the Arts from 2014 to 2016. She is currently Associate Arts Professor of Theater at NYU Abu Dhabi. 2018 premieres include Noura by Heather Raffo, Lashed but Not Leashed by Martha Graham Cracker for Under The Radar Festival at The Public Theater and an untitled new opera (composer Lembit Beecher, librettist Hannah Moscovitch) with Opera Philadelphia.
Produced in association with Shakespeare Theatre Company
New York premiere
NOURA
Did it take Mosul being destroyed to find each other at this table? Could we have gotten here any other way?
Eight years ago, Noura and her family fled their home in Iraq. Today, she plans the perfect Christmas dinner to celebrate their new life in New York. But when the arrival of a visitor stirs up long-buried memories, she and her husband are forced to confront the cost of their choices, and retrace the past they left behind. With compassion and startling clarity, Heather Raffo’s play charts the intricate pathways of motherhood and marriage — and the fragile architecture of what we call home.
Featuring
Dahlia Azama
MaryamLiam Campora
Yazen/AlexMattico David
Rafa’aNabil Elouahabi
Tareq/TimHeather Raffo
Noura
Playwrights debut. Off-Broadway: Veil'd (WP), I Call My Brothers (PlayCo). Regional: Noura (Shakespeare Theatre Company). International: The School for Wives, Three Sisters, Taming of the Shrew (AUC, Egypt). Film/TV: “#WarGames.” Graduate Studies: The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (London). Undergraduate Studies: The American University in Cairo (Egypt). Awards (Egypt): Winner of the Ahmed Zewail Prize for Excellence in the Sciences and Humanities.
Playwrights debut. Broadway: Marvin’s Room (Roundabout). Film: The Dictator, The Black List. Portraying Yazen in Noura is a dream role and the pinnacle of Campora’s young theatrical career. He is also an accomplished dancer with a scholarship at Alvin Ailey.
Playwrights debut. Regional: Noura (Shakespeare Theatre Company); U.K.: Another World: Losing Our Children to Islamic State (National Theatre); Fireworks (Royal Court); Crossing Jerusalem, The Great Game – Afghanistan (Tricycle); Oslo (Harold Pinter Theatre); Oil (Almeida); A Take of Two Cities (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre), and more. Film: Zero Dark Thirty, Charlie Wilson’s War, In This World, Ali G Indahouse, The Sum of all Fears. Television: “Dark State,” “The Night Of,” and more.
Playwrights: The Profane. Heather Raffo is an award-winning playwright and actress whose work has been seen Off-Broadway, off West End, in regional theater and in film. She is the author and solo performer of the play 9 Parts of Desire (Lucille Lortel Award, Susan Smith Blackburn commendation, Drama League, Outer Critics Circle, Helen Hayes nominations), which The New Yorker called “an example of how art can remake the world.” The play ran Off-Broadway for nine months and has played across the U.S. and internationally for over a decade. Current productions in Greece, Hungary and India. Raffo’s libretto for the opera FALLUJAH was part of Kennedy Center’s International Theater Festival, received its world premiere at Long Beach Opera and opened at New York City Opera in 2016. Heather’s newest play, Noura, just won Williamstown’s prestigious Weissberger Award. Noura was further developed at Georgetown University’s LAB for Global Performance and Politics with refugee and Middle East policy experts. Further workshops were supported by the McCarter Theater, Epic Theater Ensemble and our nation’s first Arab-American Museum in Dearborn, MI. Noura is currently receiving its world premiere at Shakespeare Theatre Company in DC before a production in Abu Dhabi. Raffo is the recipient of multiple grants from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.
Creative Team
Andrew Lieberman
Scenic DesignTilly Grimes
Costume DesignMasha Tsimring
Lighting DesignObadiah Eaves
Sound DesignLaura Smith
Production Stage ManagerShane Schnetzler
Assistant Stage ManagerWCP: Doubt, Don Juan, A Flea in Her Ear, Flyin’ West, The Invisible Hand, Bedroom Farce. Off-Broadway: Fairview, The Merchant of Venice, Timon of Athens, Why?, Julius Caesar, Heart/Box, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Tamburlaine (TFANA); Seven Deadly Sins (Tectonic), Noura, This Flat Earth, The Profane, Rancho Viejo, Familiar (Playwrights Horizons). Napoli, Brooklyn, Look Back in Anger (Roundabout); The Taming of the Shrew, King Lear, The Comedy of Errors (NYSF); Detroit ’67 (Public); Night is a Room, The Liquid Plain, The Old Friends (Signature); Cymbeline (Fiasco), Red Dog Howls (NYTW); Uncle Vanya (Soho Rep).
Nabil Elouahabi is appearing with the permission of Actors’ Equity Association. The Producers gratefully acknowledge Actors’ Equity Association for its assistance of this production.
Compelling and ambitious. Heather Raffo is radiant.
Darkly evocative and honest.
