NOW Magazine: Iraqi women’s stories cry out for survival and freedom
22 May
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by Jon Kaplan
Heather Raffo’s 9 Parts Of Desire is a remarkable combination of poetry and visceral storytelling, in its individual elements if not its whole structure.
A series of nine Iraqi women, here portrayed by a multicultural cast, talk about their besieged country and their own histories, their lives affected by wars past or present.
Among them are an artist who becomes chummy with Saddam’s government (Christine Aubin-Khalifah), a revolutionary who fled to London (Deborah Grover), a young woman who loves NSYNC (Brittany Kay) and a doctor who realizes that the radiation in her country will taint it for centuries (Aviva Armour-Ostroff).
Photo Credit: Michelle Bailey, Nerdy Girl Design
Each has a unique, sometimes horrific, story to tell, and most deliver it strongly under Kelly Straughan’s inventive direction. Straughan plays up the intimate nature of the text, for each of the women speaks to the audience as if we were close friends.
There’s an intensity to the stories that’s cushioned by the lyrical quality of much of the writing, as well as by the music of Maryem Hassan Tollar. Tollar also plays the archetypal Mullaya, who functions as narrator/observer at the start and end of the show.
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