9 parts of desire

Nine Parts looks like it might be really good:

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.

I noted that the star of the show is, in fact, of Iraqi-American decent:

Originally from Michigan, Heather divides her time between New York and Los Angeles. Her father is from Iraq and her mother is American.

The reviews all seem to be favorable, like this one:

The birth of this play almost reads like poetry: In 1993, against the backdrop of gargantuan portraits of Saddam Hussein’s oppressive face, Raffo discovered in an art museum a painting of a nude woman against a barren tree. Her research revealed that the free-spirited and notorious artist Layla Attar had recently been killed in a bombing raid. Thus began a journey that brought her further into her homeland, back into the arms of her relatives and ultimately into the lives of the numerous Iraqi woman who form the backbone of the show. Some plays seem to slip out of a playwright; others clunk. The rare, exceptional ones seem to burst out as an intense gut reaction – Raffo’s Nine Parts of Desire is such a play.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.