Casting Announced for RETURNING TO HAIFA at Finborough Theatre

The world premiere of the first English-language adaptation of the classic novella by Ghassan Kanafani, Returning to Haifa, adapted for the stage by Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi, opens at the Finborough Theatre for a four week limited season on Tuesday, 27 February 2018 (Press Nights: Thursday 1 and Friday 2 March 2018 at 7.30pm).

A compelling story of two families - one Palestinian, one Israeli - forced by history into an intimacy they didn't choose.

In 1948, Palestinian couple Said and Safiyya fled their home during the Nakba. Now, in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, the borders are open for the first time in twenty years, and the couple dare to return back to their home in Haifa. They are prepared - of course - to find someone else living where they once did. Yet nothing could prepare Said and Safyya for the encounter they both desire and dread: the son they had to leave behind, and what he has now become...

Coinciding with the 70th anniversaries of both the Nakba or "catastrophe" - the mass dispossession of the Palestinians in 1948 - and the foundation of the State of Israel, Returning to Haifa is a unique, deeply moving play of suspense and heartbreak, where humanity and vision combine with a frontline immediacy.

This adaptation was originally commissioned by New York's Public Theater who had committed to programming the play, but subsequently abandoned the production after political pressure from the board. It now receives its long-overdue world premiere at the Finborough Theatre, directed by Caitlin McLeod whose critically acclaimed production of Naomi Wallace's And I And Silence sold out at the Finborough Theatre and transferred Off Broadway.

Writer Ghassan Kanafani (1936-1972) is widely regarded as one of Palestine's greatest novelists, writing some of the most admired stories in modern Arabic literature. He was also an intellectual and political activist. His novellas and short stories, now translated into dozens of languages, are considered by many today as having been ahead of their time, both in form and content. Kanafani wrote the novella Returning to Haifa in 1969, a testament not only to Kanafani's principled commitment to the politics of liberation, but also his deep empathy for the 'other' as well as his modern approach to storytelling. Ghassan Kanafani was assassinated by a car bomb in Beirut in 1972 at the age of 36. Kanafani's obituary in Lebanon's The Daily Star wrote that: "He was a commando who never fired a gun, whose weapon was a ball-point pen, and his arena the newspaper pages."

Playwright Naomi Wallace's plays include In the Heart of America (Bush Theatre), Slaughter City (Royal Shakespeare Company), One Flea Spare (Public Theater, New York City), The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek and Things of Dry Hours (New York Theatre Workshop), The Fever Chart: Three Vision of the Middle East (Public Lab, new York City), And I and Silence (Finborough Theatre and Signature Theatre, New York City) and Night is a Room (Signature Theatre, New York City). Naomi has been awarded the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize twice, the Fellowship of Southern Writers Drama Award, the Obie Award and the Horton Foote Award. She is also a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts development grant. In 2013, Naomi received the inaugural Windham Campbell Prize for Drama, and in 2015 an Arts and Letters Award in Literature. Naomi's play One Flea Spare was recently incorporated in the permanent repertoire of the French National Theatre, the Comédie- Francaise. Only two American Playwrights have been added to La Comédie's repertoire in 300 years, the other is Tennessee Williams.

Playwright Ismail Khalidi was born in Beirut and raised in the United States. His plays include Truth Serum Blues and Sabra Falling (Pangea World Theater, Minneapolis), Tennis in Nablus (ALLIANCE THEATRE, Atlanta) and Foot (Teatro Amal, Chile). His writing has appeared in numerous anthologies as well as in The Nation, Guernica, American Theatre, Mizna and Remezcla. Ismail co-edited (with Naomi Wallace) Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora. He is currently under commission from Noor Theatre and Actors Theatre of Louisville and is a visiting artist with Teatro Amal in Chile.

Director Caitlin McLeod returns to the Finborough Theatre where she directed Facts, Northern Star and And I And Silence which subsequently transferred to the Signature Theatre, New York City. She is the Artistic Director of new-writing company The Coterie (supported by a Sky Academy Scholarship) and has formerly been part of the Old Vic 12, Artistic Associate with HighTide and Trainee Director at The Royal Court Theatre. Productions include One Flea Spare (Sheen Centre, New York City), A Further Education (Hampstead Theatre Downstairs), BRENDA (HighTide Festival Theatre and Yard Theatre), Polar Bears (West Yorkshire Playhouse), The Malcontent (Shakespeare's Globe), Commonwealth (Almeida Theatre), HomeTruths (Cardboard Citizens at The Bunker) and The Children's Hour (Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama). Caitlin has been Assistant or Associate Director for Dominic Cooke, Jeremy Herrin, James MacDonald (all at The Royal Court Theatre), Simon Godwin (National Theatre), Hamish McColl (Hampstead Theatre), and Dominic Dromgoole (Shakespeare's Globe).

Myriam Acharki | Safiyya
Theatre includes Kabeirol (Punchdrunk), Dionysos Unbound (Bridewell Theatre), Woyzeck (St Ann's Warehouse, New York City, and Gate Theatre), The Seven Year Itch (Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch), Macbeth False Memory (Actors Touring Company), Princess Sharon (Scarlet Theatre), and Peter Pan (West Yorkshire Playhouse).
Film includes City of Tiny Lights, 28 K, John Carter of Mars and The Beach.
Television includes Next of Kin, Doctors, Chasing Shadows, Silk, Sinbad, New Tricks, E20, Under Suspicion, Little Miss Jocelyn, Human Cargo, Paradise Heights and Holby City.

Leila Ayad | Young Safiyya
Trained at Rose Bruford College.
Theatre includes Elton John's Glasses (Palace Theatre, Watford) and Imogen (Shakespeare's Globe).
Television includes Doctors and Rellik.

Ammar Haj Ahmad | Said
Trained at The Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts, Damascus.
Theatre includes The Jungle (The Young Vic), Love (National Theatre), Goats (Royal Court Theatre), Kan Yama Kan (Cockpit Theatre) and Babel (Wildworks).
Film includes Wall, Round Trip, Maqha Almawt and Wada'an.
Television includes Agatha Raisin and Letters from Baghdad.

Ethan Kai | Young Said
Trained at Academy of Live and Recorded Arts.
Theatre includes A View From the Bridge (Octagon Theatre, Bolton).
Film includes Instrument of War, Alright Charlie and Double Think.
Television includes Doctors, Emmerdale and Mount Pleasant.

Marlene Sidaway | Miriam
Productions at the Finborough Theatre include A Bed of Roses, Foreign Lands and Susan which subsequently transferred to the Gielgud Theatre.
Trained at East 15 Acting School.
Theatre includes The Enchantment, A Prayer For Owen Meany (National Theatre), Kenny Morgan (Arcola Theatre), Enjoy, The Crucible (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Animals (Theatre503), Uncle Vanya (The Print Room), The Daughter in Law, Macbeth (Crucible Theatre Sheffield), Just Between Ourselves (Royal and Derngate Theatres, Northampton) The Lady in the Van (Salisbury Playhouse), A Cream Cracker for Under the Settee (Harrogate Theatre), All My Sons (Bristol Old Vic), We'll Always Have Paris (The Mill at Sonning), Kiss Me Like You Mean It (Soho Theatre), A Time and A Season (Plymouth Theatre Royal), The Madness of Esme and Shaz (Royal Court Theatre), The Dearly Beloved (Hampstead Theatre) and Hedda Gabler (Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester).
Film includes Sink, Me and Orson Welles, Venus, Oliver Twist, Tom's Midnight Garden, Beautiful Thing, I Want Candy and The Key.
Television includes Doc Martin, Doctors, Mum, Web Therapy, Cuffs, Wallander, Hustle 8, Being Human, Survivors, The Vicar of Dibley, Kindness of Strangers, Sensitive Skin, Foyle's War, Holby City, Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Sirens and Life Begins.
Radio includes After Wonderland, Rhapsody, The Moonflask, Murder is Easy, Our Woman in Norton Tripton, The Resistance of Mrs Brown, The People Next Door and Siege.

Finborough Theatre, 118 Finborough Road, London SW10 9ED
Book online at www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk

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