Iman Aoun

In 1990, Aoun and Muallem’s daughter was born; they named her Ashtar. The following year, they cofounded ASHTAR for Theatre Productions and Training, the first formal institution in Palestine to teach drama for youth.

“Ashtar Theatre was born out of the spirit of the First Intifada,” Aoun reveals.2 She believes that the early 1990s was a new era of hope for a positive change in politics.

“Many people think that the theater was named after me, but it wasn’t. Both my name as well as the theater's name refer to the goddess in mythology,” daughter Ashtar explains.3 Ashtar (sometimes written as Ishtar) is the Mesopotamian/Canaanite (also Babylonian/Assyrian) goddess associated with “love and fertility, but also with war; these contradictory powers embody the paradox of life,” she adds. She works as a multidisciplinary artist in circus, dance, theater, and cinema, with exceptional skills in aerial acrobatics and contortion.

The couple also have a son, Melkar Muallem, a computer scientist and Clojure/creative software developer who also studied drama and has acted in several productions, including the award-winning feature film Amreeka (2009).

ASHTAR Theatre offers intensive theater training programs with acclaimed local and international professionals. Aspiring young actors trained by the theater have delivered many quality stage performances.

The intention of the school was to invest in the Palestinian community and to provide people with tools to face their problems and overcome constraints. And what better way to invest in individuals than to equip them with a sense of resilience as achieved by the empowering tool of theater.

“Theater can strengthen your inner soul; [it can shape] identity and dynamics, and your vision for the future,” Aoun asserts.4

ASHTAR Theatre took the lead in developing the drama curriculum for primary education in high schools and universities, with the endorsement of the Palestinian Ministry of Education. Birzeit University, Bethlehem University, and schools in Ramallah and Gaza took part in the process.

As access to Jerusalem became more restricted, ASHTAR Theatre moved to Ramallah in 1995. Still, it never lost its connection to Jerusalem.

Iman Aoun is considered among the top Palestinian actresses currently working. In 1996, she received the best actress award from the Cairo International Contemporary and Experimental Theatre Festival for her part in the play al-Shuhada’ Ya‘udun (The Martyrs Are Coming Back), a production of ASHTAR Theatre that shed light on the struggles of Palestinian women after the signing of the Oslo Accords. She described it as among her favorite roles.

Aoun acted in Kufur Shamma (1989), written and directed by François Abu Salem and Jackie Lubeck, which focused on the aftermath of the Nakba of 1948. It had over 150 successful shows in Europe and the United States. Women of Sand and Myrrh (1999), produced by ASHTAR Theatre in cooperation with the Swiss Maralam Theater, was adapted by Aoun from Hanan al-Shaykh’s novel of the same name. It was performed in Gaza in 1999 and was the last ASHTAR Theatre production there. Aoun had a leading role in the 2021 theater production based on al-Shaykh’s novel The Story of Zahra, which captured the civil war in Beirut and exposed the ways in which women are brutalized in times of violence.

Internationally, too, Aoun established a name for herself. In 2003, she directed and acted in Children of Hercules. I am Jerusalem was another play, written and directed by Nasser Omar, and conceptualized and performed by Aoun (2009). It dealt with the history of Jerusalem through the lens of a woman, offering a critical stance of the city in a span of over 5,000 years. The play represented Palestine in the Carthage International Festival of Theatre in Tunis in November 2009 and was performed at various festivals worldwide.

An especially prominent example of international collaboration was her role in Richard II in 2012, directed by Irish director Conall Morison. This play cast 13 Palestinian actors and actresses, including Aoun, performing in Arabic, at the Globe Theatre in London. The mere presence of the actors on the stage was significant:

Another important production was Oranges and Stones, conceived and directed by playwright Mojisola Adebayo, cocreated with ASHTAR Theatre, and featuring Aoun as the star. This play spans over 75 years of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. It was produced in 2010, reproduced in 2017, and performed over 200 times in more than 20 countries, touring the world for over 10 years with performances scheduled in the United Kingdom in 2025.6

In addition to the theater, Aoun has acted in national television series. She appeared in the popular comedy play Hubb ‘a al-Raff (Love on the Shelf, 2019), which was directed by Emile Saba and included the actors Aoun, Muallem, and Bayan Shbeib.

Her cinematic performances include Cherien Dabis’s short film Make a Wish (2006), as well as the well-known films Salt of This Sea (2008), Amreeka (2009), and Miral (2010). In 2013, she was in Rama Mari’s short film Izriqaq (Blued), mostly a silent film, which also received many awards.

She was able to lead the company and reach more than a million viewers in 62 countries and 500 cities around the world. In addition to the plays themselves, ASHTAR hosted important international festivals.

Aoun cowrote and published important books in theater training. She also wrote at least 10 short plays and manuals about theater for trainers. Additionally, she has provided consultation for different institutions, including the Palestinian Performing Arts Network and other Palestinian arts organizations.

As a prominent women’s rights activist, she was the main coordinator (between 2014 and 2016) in the “One Billion Rising” campaign in Palestine, a global initiative to end violence against women and girls.

She has been frequently invited as an honorary guest, panelist, and presenter at international conferences and world summits, such as the United Nations, UNESCO, UNRWA, CARE International, the American University in Cairo, La MaMa Theatre in New York, London’s Globe Theatre, Northumbria University, and Hamad Bin Khalifa University, among many others.

Aoun served as artistic director of ASHTAR Theatre from 1991 until 2021. To this day, she remains its executive director. The Palestinian director and actor Emile Saba, who himself had once been a student at ASHTAR, is the current artistic director.

Through Aoun’s leadership, ASHTAR Theatre brought to life the genre of the forum theater, an inclusive form that transforms audiences from passive spectators to involved participants. This genre successfully engaged students in active dialogue, instilling within them the drive for social change and acting as an agent of social change.

It also paved the way for what became known as the theater of the oppressed, a genre Aoun learned about as she studied the work of Augusto Boal, the Brazilian theater practitioner, drama theorist, and political activist, who is credited with developing the genre. This popular theatrical form uses the method of movement and expression of participations in a way that transforms audiences from passive spectators into enablers of action by actively involving them in the unfolding story on the stage.

Since 1997, Aoun has been recognized as a prominent expert and trainer of the theater of the oppressed in the Arab world. And in 2007, ASHTAR Theatre became the official Middle East Regional Center for Theater of the Oppressed in collaboration with Augusto Boal’s Center for the genre in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Thus, with the leadership of Aoun, ASHTAR began conducting regional trainings in Yemen and Iraq.

Aoun is proficient in drama therapy, which she considers “a very important tool in healing people . . . I wish I would’ve done more drama therapy,” she confesses.7 “I was probably the first person to introduce psychodrama in the West Bank about 40 years ago.”

Aoun’s interest in the use of art in healing motivated the project Gaza Monologues, which launched in 2009. The idea of this endeavor was to video record the messages of children in Gaza under siege in the form of letters, mainly through poetry, prose, and creative writing.

Through the Gaza Monologues, the voices of these children were shared at high-level sessions with various ambassadors and decision-makers and were even presented at the UN General Assembly.

In 2016, in response to the Syrian refugee crises, the Syrian Monologues project was also launched with stories gathered, documented, and performed publicly. The play was performed in 10 countries on June 21 of that year.9

“Thinking outside the box” is an expression Aoun frequently uses to describe the personal and collective work needed to bring about social change.

For one thing, the political turmoil caused by the Israeli occupation presents a major challenge for all aspects of theater production in Palestine.

On the other hand, working in theater has ultimately seen social and gender-related challenges, such as censorship of plays, rejection of shows, social disdain, and the hostile environment toward women. This is a theme that Aoun and her family struggle with. In certain incidents, the social pressure has led to direct attacks and physical harm.

With nearly four decades in theater, Aoun has been locally, regionally, and internationally acclaimed for her contributions to the education and production of arts and culture. She has influenced and trained hundreds of individuals.

Among the prestigious awards she received were from the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre (1996), UN-Equity-Now-USA (2000), Cairo Youth Regional Festival (2005), Algiers Arab Theatre Festival (2009), the Yemeni Ministry of Culture (2010), CEC ArtsLink (2013), the Palestinian Ministry of Culture (2014, 2017), and the Palestinian Ministry of Women’s Affairs (2016).

In 2015, Aoun was named “Woman of the Year” by the Palestinian Ministry of Women’s Affairs. In 2020, she was a finalist at the League of Professional Theatre Women’s Gilder/Coigney International Theatre Award, which acknowledged her key work in devising personal stories of marginalized youth and the global sensation of the Gaza Monologues. Her debut documentary film, The Gaza Monologues: Ten Years and the Dream Continues . . . also received multiple international awards.

In March 2025, in recognition of her work for social and political justice and equity in Palestine and worldwide through theater, she was honored with the Award for Sustainability and the Arts at Athena40/the Global Thinkers Forum in London as part of International Women’s Day 2025. In her acceptance speech, Aoun noted: “I am a bridge between possibility and voice.”13 She gifted the award to the Palestinian people, adding that “this award is really, really important at this time when all our women in Gaza and in the West Bank are losing their lives.”

Aoun continues to empower grassroots communities, indigenous groups, youth, and women against gender inequality and sociopolitical disparity. She remains committed to speaking up against occupation of all sorts.

According to her daughter, Ashtar, Aoun still has much to achieve. “She is working on creating a Performing Arts Academy in Birzeit,” she says.

On her Jerusalemite identity, Aoun sees that the Palestinian presence in Jerusalem “deepens our challenges and strengthens our resolve, and we must protect this city with our spirits.”

“The greatest challenge is to remain and to hold on to the land. As a traveling artist, I feel like I carry Jerusalem with me, wherever I go in the world. Despite my longing to be free and my ability to settle anywhere in the world, I find it impossible to stay far away from Jerusalem.”14

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“Aoun, Iman.” LinkedIn page. Accessed May 13, 2025.

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“Iman & Emile.” Impact: Transforming Conflict with Arts and Culture. Accessed May 17, 2025.

Irving, Sarah. “Shakespeare in Palestine: Theater Director Speaks on Arabic Version of Richard II.” Electronic Intifada, April 27, 2012.

“al-Jawla al-Malakiyya [The royal journey]: Accomplished Artist Iman Aoun—Episode Six.” [In Arabic.] Halawani-Art Production, July 2, 2020.

Khader, Sonia. “Pioneering, Diversity, and Distinction at the Palestinian Ashtar Theatre.” [In Arabic.] Diffa Thalitha, December 11, 2019.

Marinaccio, Ashley. “Peer Gynt in Palestine.” Arab Stages 9 (Fall 2018).

McGarry, Frances. “Iman Aoun: Breaking Down Walls and Cultivating Hope through Theater.” First Online with Fran, October 1, 2020.

Muallem, Ashtar. Interview with Arda Aghazarian for Jerusalem Story, May 12, 2025.

“Orange and Stones by ASHTAR Theater and Mojisola Adebayo.” Shubbak, June 26, 2024.

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“The Palestinian Theatre with Iman Aoun.” Kalam Podcast, November 22, 2024.

“Plays.” El-Hakawati. Accessed May 10, 2025.

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“Theatre as Testimony: The Gaza Monologues.” University of Toronto Scarborough, March 8, 2024.

“Theatre Spotlight: Ashtar Theatre.” Tamasha. Accessed May 17, 2025.

Totah, Ruba. “Performing the Collective. Al-Hakawati and Beyond.” Jerusalem Quarterly, no. 83 (Autumn 2020).

[Profile photo: Iman Aoun Facebook page]