Coexistence My Ass by Noam Shuster Eliassi
developed with and directed by Sivan Battat
Coexistence My Ass is a tri-lingual one-woman biographical show starring Noam Shuster, an Israeli comedian, a former UN employee, a current Harvard fellow, and a forever activist. The show addresses the messiness of complex identities, using the power of laughter to interrogate a charged conflict, challenge societal narratives, and build peace. Through humorous stories about everything from growing up in a binational Israeli-Palestinian peace village, to her dating life, to politics, Noam centers her complex identity as an Iranian-Jewish-Israeli woman. She uses her experience navigating three languages and the geopolitical chaos of her upbringing to call into question assumptions about what it means to be Jewish, Arab, the Middle East, and how we build relationships with people who are cast as our enemies. The show challenges assumptions and misconceptions about Israel and Palestine, and calls into question what it means to break out of the rigid boxes that borders have created, all through fearless humor, bold investigations, and powerful womanhood.
Coexistence My Ass has been performed at numerous venues across the United States and abroad, in English, Hebrew, and Arabic, as well as in several online formats. Sivan and Noam have been collaborating since the spring of 2019, and the show was slated for a national tour spring & summer 2020. Stay tuned for tour dates and an upcoming NYC run.
Noam Shuster is a freelance comedian, performer, peacebuilder and activist. She has performed in a variety of venues, including East Jerusalem, Berlin, Tel Aviv and Rwanda. Performing fluently in three languages (Arabic, English, and Hebrew), she talks about growing up in Neve Shalom (Wahat al-Salam), a mixed Jewish-Arab community. Her content has gone viral in Arab countries. In 2018, she was named the “New Jewish Comedian of the Year” in London. The same year, she was also the first Jewish performer in the Palestine Comedy Festival. She was also the Director of the “Interpeace” program in Israel, a UN based Peacebuilding initiative aimed to engage populations normally excluded in the traditional peace camp (Orthodox Jews, religious leaders, Russian speakers, traditional right-wing voters, etc.). In 2016, she was the speaker at the Peace and Security plenary as part of “One Young World” conference, the largest young changemakers conference in the world in Bangkok. Noam studied at Brandeis University.
