Nine Parts of Desire

2004-2005 Outer Critics Circle Award Nominated
Nine Parts of Desire is written and performed by Heather Raffo. A portrait of the extraordinary – and ordinary – lives of a whole cross-section of Iraqi women, this solo work lifts the veil on exactly what it means to be a woman in the age-old war zone that is Iraq. This is a meditation on the oppression of women in a country overshadowed by war. Joanna Settle directs.

“HEATHER RAFFO, an American actress of American and Iraqi heritage, is the sole performer on the stage, but she’s far from lonely up there: she inhabits her characters with such compelling vibrancy that they do not entirely disappear when she moves from one to the next. 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 in Nine Parts of Desire, Ms. Raffo’s impassioned theatrical documentary about the lives of contemporary Iraqi women. Ms. Raffo’s portraits are all marked by vivid, memorable details, [and] a measure of lyricism is provided by her fluid and energetic performance, which has been sensitively shaped by the director, Joanna Settle.”
–Charles Isherwoord, THE NEW YORK TIMES

“A vivid, heartbreaking, living mosaic! HEATHER RAFFO fleshes out these women with such chameleon-like grace, with such a raging desire to tell the world about life in Iraq, let’s hope that, after the show’s SoHo stint, that she takes these women to stages around the world! JOANNA SETTLE’s keenly paced production and Raffo’s thoughtful, poetic writing brings a gallery of souls to life!”
–Michael Sommers, STAR-LEDGER