Meet our Team
Kate Moore Heaney
ARTISTIC PRODUCER
Kate Moore Heaney (she/her) is a NYC-based theatre director, producer, and dramaturg of Lebanese & Irish descent. In addition to serving as Artistic Producer of Noor Theatre, Kate is also Associate Producer at Long Wharf Theatre and a founding board member of the Middle Eastern and North African Theater Makers Alliance (MENATMA). She has directed and/or developed new work with The Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, The Playwrights Realm, Premiere Stages, The Civilians’ R&D Group, New York Theatre Workshop, NYU Abu Dhabi Institute (NYC), The Amoralists, The Flea, The Shakespeare Society, The 24 Hour Plays: Nationals, and other NYC companies. She has assistant or associate directed with Ibex Theatricals/The New Vic, McCarter Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, Yale Institute for Music Theatre, and The 24 Hour Plays on Broadway. B.A.: Yale. katemooreheaney.com
ARIANA SARFARAZI
eXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Ariana is an Iranian-American transactional entertainment attorney specializing in theater and the Executive Director of Noor Theatre. As its Executive Director, Ariana leads overall operations at Noor, including artistic programming, fundraising, and financial planning, in addition to overseeing the theatre company's strategic planning, developing institutional partnerships, and managing Board relations. As a theatrical attorney, Ariana has been named a “rising star” in NYC by SuperLawyers and represents producers and investors in the development, production, and financing of live stage productions; counsels not-for-profit theater companies; and advises a wide range of creative talent including Tony Award-winning bookwriters, composers, lyricists, directors, choreographers, and actors. Ariana serves on the board of Broadway for Arts Education, is a member of Theatre Producers of Color (TPOC) and the SWANA Writers Co-Op (a dialogue-based group for writers of SWANA descent) and is a volunteer pro bono attorney with Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts. Once a proud “theatre kid” herself, Ariana enjoys singing, playing the piano/ukulele, writing, traveling the world every chance she can, and relishing in the healing power of music and the arts.
May Treuhaft-Ali is an Egyptian-American playwright, dramaturg, and teaching artist from Jackson Heights, Queens. (She comes by it honestly: according to family lore, her dad was a theater critic in Cairo before he moved to New York.) Community engagement is a vital part of her artistic practice, and she is particularly passionate about providing BIPOC, low-income, and marginalized audiences with access to and education about the new-play development process. She co-founded the SWANA Writers’ Co-op and served as Administrative Director for its inaugural two seasons. As a playwright, her plays have been developed at EST/Youngblood, Page 73, Rattlestick, Ars Nova, Clubbed Thumb, The Playwrights Realm, New York Theatre Workshop, The Movement Theatre Company, MCC Theater, Irish Repertory Theatre, Barrington Stage Company, South Coast Repertory, Cleveland Play House, and the Cape Cod Theatre Project.
To connect with Noor’s staff, please see Details below:
For artistic inquiries, please reach out to Kate at kate@noortheatre.org and Sivan at sivan@noortheatre.org.
For casting opportunities and postings, please write to opportunities@noortheatre.org.
For partnerships and/or cross-promotions, please write to Ariana at ariana@noortheatre.org.
For all other inquiries, please write to info@noortheatre.org
CATHERINE CORAY
AFFILIATE PRODUCING DIRECTOR
Catherine Coray has taught at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts since 1991, and has taught and collaborated with artists in Austria, Belarus, Chile, Cuba, Egypt and Lebanon. As an actor, she worked regionally and off-Broadway with directors such as Anne Bogart and Andre Gregory. She was the curator of the hotINK Festival at Tisch School of Arts and at The Lark, and was Director of The Lark Middle East-US Playwright Exchange. She curated and co-produced Arab Voices: here/there/then/now (Abu Dhabi, 2016), Arab Voices: Stories of Palestine (Beirut, 2018), and Arab Voices: Three New Dramatic Texts from Beirut and Berlin, at the NYU Abu Dhabi Institute in NYC (2019.) She recently produced, with Noor Theatre and the Foundation for Arab Dramatic Arts, the latest iteration of Arab Voices, Identities in Translation (Beirut, 2024.) Catherine is an Affiliate Producer with the Noor Theatre and serves on the advisory board of Golden Thread Productions in San Francisco, and on the Artistic Advisory Council of Playwrights Horizons and the Georgetown Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics Creative Core.
Board of Directors
President: Nilou Safinya, Entertainment Producer
Treasurer: ariana Sarfarazi
Secretary: ariana Sarfarazi
Hussein Khalifa, MVision, Founding Partner; Board Member
Laith Nakli, Actor/Playwright, Board Member
Heather Raffo, Actor/Playwright, Board Member