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Zephyr Teachout has carved a high-profile path on the state and national political stages. But lately, the 52-year-old law professor and politician has been spending his time on a small stage in Vermont, directing a play about the saga of Israelis and Palestinians.

Teachout, who grew up in Norwich, gained national attention in 2004 when she was director of Internet organizing for former Gov. Howard Dean’s presidential campaignand helps vault the small-state governor to briefly run at the front of the pack.

In 2014, Teachout ran for governor of New York against powerful incumbent Andrew Cuomo, winning a third of the popular vote (Cuomo resigned in 2021 allegations of sexual harassment). Two years later, Teachout ran for Congress. And in 2018, she ran for prosecutor in New York. She won the endorsement of the New York Times but lost to Letitia James, who later named Teachout a special adviser on economic justice.

Teachout is a professor of law at Fordham Law School. She is the author of “Break ‘Em Up: Recovering Our Freedom From Big Ag, Big Tech, and Big Money.”

Far from the halls of power in Albany or the bright lights of Broadway, Teachout has pursued another passion: acting and directing Unadilla Theater in Marshfield. When Unadilla founder Bill Blachly, who turned 100 this year, asked if she would direct the play “Returning to Haifa” this summer, Teachout quickly agreed.

“The more intensely one is involved in whatever it is professionally and certainly involved in politics, the more I seek and need art, whether it is visual art or music or theater as a way of being fully human, to experience both the joy and the grief that we are experiencing,” she said.

“Return to Haifa” connects two tragedies: Nakba (“catastrophe”) experienced by Palestinians when more than 700,000 of them fled or were displaced from their homes following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and The Holocaustwhere 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis during World War II. About 140,000 Holocaust survivors moved to Israel, many of them to homes suddenly abandoned by Palestinians.

The play is based on a short story by a Palestinian activist and writer Ghassan Kanafaniwho was murdered at the age of 36 in an operation by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. The story was adapted into a play by Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi. It was commissioned by the Public Theater in New York in 2016, but the production was canceled due to political pressure. It finally premiered in the UK.

“Return to Haifa” depicts a Palestinian couple who return to Israel in 1967 and visit their house and their son whom they abandoned 20 years earlier in a terrified escape from Israeli forces. The play is described by the Guardian as “a poignant family drama, as a plea for Israeli-Palestinian understanding, and as a warning of what will follow without any form of reconciliation.”

Teachout was moved to direct the play by a current disaster, Israel’s war in Gaza has killed around 40,000 Palestiniansaccording to the Gaza Ministry of Health. Israel invaded Gaza after the October 7 attack by Hamas that killed more than 1,200 Israelis.

“It feels very important right now to celebrate Palestinian culture, to introduce people to great writers like Kanafani” who understood “the critical role that literature plays in binding a community of people together,” Teachout said.

On the political stage, Teachout offered insights into the special challenges Vice President Kamala Harris and other women face when running for high office.

“It’s harder to express anger as a woman and not get fired,” the former gubernatorial candidate said. “Men who express anger on behalf of an angry public do not receive the same kind of scrutiny and, frankly, sometimes contempt or revulsion that women who express anger receive.”

“You’ve noticed that Harris has chosen to run like a happy warrior,” she said. “If you’re in politics, you know these things are choices. It’s also a choice that I made in my campaigns and that you see Elizabeth Warren make. There’s a lot more comfort with happy women than angry women… Harris, who a black woman in particular, faces extraordinary challenges, and she is doing an extraordinary job of not letting those challenges define her candidacy.”

Teachout credits Harris’ rise in the polls to the desire that people have “to look beyond the next two years, to see a collective future. What I think Harris has tapped into in recent weeks is a sense that a future is possible. . . . .We’re not stuck with these ancient politicians, and I think that’s not enough, she says.

Teachout, who has been a leading scholar and critic of corporate monopolies, said Harris must “take a lot of power.”

People “think everybody’s in the pockets of big money. There’s no point in politics (so) why don’t we just create chaos,” Teachout said. “There’s a kind of real nihilism for those who either don’t vote or decide to vote at Trump just out of a kind of irritation with what’s going on.”

Harris must show she is “willing to fight, to actually make enemies … (and) take on corporate power,” Teachout said. “For Harris to beat Trump, it’s critical to really lean into that populism.”