9 Parts of Desire

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 can be performed as a one-woman show or with a cast of three to nine women

Winner of a 2005 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Special Commendation and Lucille Lortel Award for Best Solo Show

“ ... a triumph … thrilling … an example of how art can remake the world…In this remarkable one-woman show, [Heather Raffo’s] writing…is marked with wit and by a scrupulous attention to the details of character” ~ New Yorker

“It brings us closer to the inner life of Iraq than a thousand slick-surfaced TV reports. Yet [Raffo’s] 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

“The female half of Iraq has come to America” ~ Gloria Steinem