Heather Raffo
Actor
Playwright
9 Parts of Desire was first performed in August 2003
at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. It later moved to the Bush Theatre in London's Off-West End. It was selected both as "First Choice / The Best Shows in London" by The Times, and as one of the "Five Best Plays" in London by The Independent.
9 Parts of Desire was next developed and performed as a reading at The Public Theatre as part of their New Work Now festival in Spring 2004. In October of 2004 it had its New York premiere at the Manhattan Ensemble Theater where it ran for nine sold out months and was a critics pick for over 24 weeks in a row. It began touring the U.S. at the Geffen Theater in Los Angeles and is currently being translated for international productions in France, Brazil and Turkey. It was video-recorded by Lincoln Center for its Performing Arts Library on Jan. 12, 2005.
A portrait of the extraordinary (and ordinary) lives of a whole cross-section of Iraqi women:
a sexy painter, a radical Communist, doctors, exiles, wives and lovers. This work delves into the many conflicting aspects of what it means
to be a woman in the age-old war zone that is Iraq. An unusually timely meditation on the ancient, the modern and the feminine in a country overshadowed by war.
"It brings us closer to the inner life of Iraq than a thousand slick-surfaced TV reports. Yet her beautifully shaped one-woman play is a play, not a stodgily earnest piece of documentary theater, and therein lies its singular force and compulsion: it is persuasive precisely because it is beautiful."
—Wall Street Journal.
"POWERFUL, IMPASSIONED, VIVID, MEMORABLE!
The voices are a study in contrasts: vivid and subdued, sophisticated and naïve, seductive and standoffish. But they cohere to form a powerful collective portrait of suffering and endurance." —New York Times "The female half of Iraq has
come to America."
— GLORIA STEINEM
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About 9 Parts of Desire by Heather Raffo
When I was standing in the Saddam Art Center in Baghdad, I saw
rooms after room of portraits of Saddam Hussein. I then wandered up some stairs into a back room and saw a haunting painting of a nude woman clinging to a barren tree. Her head was hanging, bowed, and
there was a golden light behind her like a sun. I stood motionless in
front of the painting. I felt she had captured something within me.
I took a photo of the painting, came back to America and over the last
ten years have been digesting this painting and what it must mean to
be an Iraqi woman now.
As an American with a father who was born in Iraq, I naturally live
on both sides of the issues. The first Gulf War was the most defin
ing moment of my life. I was in school at the University of Michigan.
I remember watching many of my fellow students at the bar cheer-
ing the war as it played out on TV, while I was worried if my family
in Baghdad was even going to survive. Over a decade later, I think Americans are deeply questioning their place in Iraq, and wondering
about its history: Who are its people? What do they want? Why
are we there? Did we do the right thing
So if you could imagine going to Baghdad and getting to overhear a
Bedouin woman at her hairdressers telling her secrets about the man she loves and her heartache at why he doesn’t love her in the context of the above questions, my play becomes vitally immediate.
The material I gathered came from hours of gaining the trust of Iraqi women. I had the right mix: I was half Iraqi so they opened up to me immediately, but I was also Western so they felt they could express fears or secrets that might otherwise be judged more harshly by someone from their culture. And most importantly, I had to share as much of myself with them as they were sharing with me. My process was not one of formal interviews, but rather a process of living with, eating with, communicating compassionately and loving on such a level, that when I parted from their homes it was clear to all that we were now family. When an Iraqi woman trusts you it is because she has come to love you and that has been the process of finding and forming these stories.
With rare exception, none of the stories are told verbatim. Most are composites and although based in fact, I consider all the women in my play to be dramatized characters in a poetic story. I liken it to song writing – I listened deeply to what each woman said, what she wanted to say but couldn’t, and what she never knew how to say.
Then I wrote her song. -- Heather Raffo
I intended to write a piece about the Iraqi psyche, something that would inform and enlighten the images we see on T.V. However, the play is equally about the American psyche. It is a dialogue between east and west. The characters are deeply engaged in circumstances unique to them as Iraqis and yet through their passions seem to answer the concerns of the west. The audience plays a vital role in the show with each Iraqi character speaking directly to them in English as if they were a trusted western friend. I wanted the audience to see these women not as the ‘other’ but much more like themselves than they would have initially thought.
I felt it was important to create a safe environment to experience both horror and humor, but ultimately to see the play as a celebration of life. 9 Parts of Desire is also about
the need for feminine strength as a necessary part of any
culture's endurance.
con't. below...
Winner of a
2005 Susan Smith Blackburn
Prize Special Commendation
and a
Lucille Lortel Award for Best SoloShow.
9 Parts of Desire is "AN EXAMPLE OF HOW ART CAN REMAKE THE WORLD! In this remarkable one-woman show, Heather Raffo's performance is deft and vivacious; her writing,
like her playing, is marked with wit and by a scrupulous attention to the details of character."
—The New Yorker. dd text.
All photos by Irene Young.
High resolution images
are available upon request. Contact iyfoto@rcn.com
