Noa Baum
Born and raised in Jerusalem, Noa offers a unique approach to storytelling in communities and organizations. Since 1982, she has inspired and educated audiences of all ages with her performances, keynotes, and workshops.
Noa holds a BFA in Theater from Tel Aviv University and was an actress with the Khan Repertory Theater of Jerusalem. She also studied with acclaimed acting teacher Uta Hagen in NY, and holds a Master of Arts in Educational Theater from New York University (NYU). Noa received a Graduate Fellowship to work in inner city schools from C.A.T., the Theater in Education Company of NYU.
She continued to combine storytelling and drama while working in a school for emotionally disturbed boys in Tel-Aviv. Noa also taught early childhood and special education teachers at several colleges, including Levinsky Teachers College.
Noa lives in the U.S. since 1990 and tours internationally. She has presented in Turkey, Sweden, the UK and in Israel and at hundreds of venues in the US including: The World Bank, The Mayo Clinic, The Kennedy Center, The US Defense Department, US Securities and Exchange Commission, AARP, GWU Law School, Brandies and Stanford Universities.
Her one-woman show for adults, A Land Twice Promised, received a grant from the National Storytelling Network. She has also received several Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County Maryland. Her CD, Far Away and Close to Home is a Parents’ Choice Recommended Award winner and her new recording Impossible to Translate but I’ll Try – True Life Israeli Stories won a Storytelling World Gold Award.
Noa’s recently published book, A Land Twice Promised – An Israeli Woman’s Quest for Peace, is a winner of the Anne Izard Storytellers’ Choice Award. An introspective memoir, it mines the depths of the chasm between the Israeli and Palestinian experiences, the torment of family loss and conflict, and the therapy of storytelling as a cleansing art. With her storytelling background, Noa captures the drama of a nation at war and her own discovery of humanity in the enemy.
Noa is a proud member of the National Storytelling Network. She lives in the Washington DC metropolitan area with her family.
Storytelling is the intersection of my work as a performance artist, educator, and diversity specialist. For me, story is both performance art and tool for change.
I love connecting with people through stories. I enjoy telling stories from cultures around the world as well as my Jewish heritage and use storytelling to entertain, build bridges of understanding, and offer pathways to dialogue and peace.
My art form can be described as Performance Storytelling – an emerging performance art that borrows from principles of traditional storytelling as well as using tools from theater through the mixing of narration and characterization to evoke a story in the audiences’ imagination.
In businesses and organizations, I use stories to harness the power of workplace diversity, foster collaboration, and promote innovation. I love to witness the transformational power of a workshop and experience the energy shift in a room full of executives as they discover the power of stories.
Noa Baum