Jennifer Jaieh in I Heart Hamas. Photo by Mareesa Stertz.

Jennifer Jajeh is a consummate impressionist as well as a dancer, actress, Arab, and a troublemaker. To be fair, trouble seems to follow her, as she recounts in her live show I Heart Hamas, extended 4 additional weeks at the Off-Market Theater until Nov. 21.  For those with good memories, this is the SF premiere of the same show that previewed here last summer.

Jaieh is a single, Christian, American, San Francisco native of Palestinian descent.  Her one-woman show uses a variety of characters to detail the year and a half she spent in Ramallah, her parents’ West Bank hometown just north of Jerusalem. She first went there in 2000 at the time of the Second Intifada — a violent Palestinian uprising against the Israelis.  But she loved Ramallah and felt comfortable in the area, and her show brings to life her experiences.  By the way, Jaieh is also a documentary filmmaker, and she filmed the confrontation at the Ramallah checkpoint. 

On a bare stage with minimal set pieces, Jennifer assumes a multitude of identities.  She uses a lectern sometimes and takes questions against a backdrop of a signboard with flashing lights, and images on an upstage-center projection screen provide atmosphere and further information.  Her self-referential central character seems to have identity problems, at least in the eyes of others.  With her non-white skin and her distinctive features, she confounds those who meet her and want to learn her ethnic identity.  At one point she professes to be Catholic, leading to the suggestion that she might be Irish.  “I’m an American,” she protests in her Arabic-inflected English.  Later, a crowd at a checkpoint begins chanting, “Espaniola” when they see her.  She shouts back at them, “I’m not Spanish.  I’m Palestinian.” 

As an actress she exhibits strong stage presence in the one-and-a-half-hour show, and is especially lithe when she mimes dancing at a club in Jerusalem.  Her writing uses humor in up-to-date situations, such as when she speaks teenage talk or when she takes her family into a club and discovers the entrance fee is 95$ for her family, but singles get in free.  Her deadpan in a bit about phone mail (that makes rue over misguided acts) is quite funny.  After leaving many excoriating messages, she finalizes with, “Just disregard those last messages.”

Although she begins the show with static staging and gestures, she soon moves into animated impressionism, demonstrating her wide range of movements, accents, and dialects.  And she shows keen insight via her clever use of facial expressions.  Her body gestures differentiate the characters with minimal distraction and subtle dynamism and are woven integrally into the tapestry of personalities she creates.  Her act gives a specific sense of place and situation, made all the more realistic by her choice of interesting subjects.

I Heart Hamas continues through Nov. 21 at Off-Market Theater, 965 Mission St., San Francisco. Tickets ($20 to $30) are available through Brown Paper Tickets at (800) 838-3006 or online at ihearthamas.com.