Seventh Stage Theatre Productions

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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.

To continue reading the article, please visit NOW Magazine here.

After waiting for an hour at the cozy “Green Tangerine” Cafe beside the Theatre Centre, I finally was able to go in and grab my seat with a close girlfriend of mine. At first glance the theatre is small and rickety, making one question how a play with such good reviews ended up on such a small stage.

The lights turn off, the crowd settles and the music instantly sends you to the ruins of modern Iraq where a woman sings mournfully in Arabic, making your hair stand on end. As the Iraqi woman sings, a procession of Islamic women slowly glide out from backstage and lay down a soft blue sheet, representing the river in which they wash their dead’s shoes . After just the intro you gain understanding that the size of the stage is of no importance to the great story about to be told.

A story taking place in US- invaded modern Iraq (governed by Saddam Hussein), 9 distinct women of different ages tell stories about love, war, culture and family. Considering how many females there are, there is no doubt that audience members were able to relate one to themselves or to another female they know.

Overall each woman had strong performances, but there were a few that were truly outstanding.

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FOUR STARS

Photo Credit: Michelle Bailey, Nerdy Girl Design

by John Coulbourn

When all else fails, we often take comfort in the maxim, “This too shall pass” — a maxim that conjures visions of lights burning, however timorously, at the end of the longest, darkest tunnels of despair.

But what if that light is merely the glow from an even worse conflagration than the one currently being endured — if the horror about to begin might make you think fondly of the horror you have just endured?

That’s the world of 9 Parts of Desire, a new play from Iraqi-American playwright Heather Raffo that opened Wednesday at the Theatre Centre, produced by Seventh Stage Theatre.

As its title implies, it is a play of nine parts — nine very individual women, connected only in shared desire for a better life, who endured the horrors of a brutal regime, only to see it replaced by a conqueror, unwilling or unable, to set the world to rights.

Under the direction of Kelly Straughan, 9 Parts begins on a highly theatrical note, as eight of the nine actors enter a simple, all-encompassing set designed by Robin Fisher and Lindsay R. Forde to evoke the excesses of war.

Meanwhile, the ninth — Maryem Hassan Tollar — carries us to Iraq on the wings of her own music and sets us down on the banks of the historic Tigris River, a river that once offered succor to the very beginnings of civilization.
In the past decades, however, it has born silent witness to mankind at his most uncivilized.

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by Kait Fowlie

Wow. I don’t think I’ve been so outwardly emotional in public since H&M had that crazy jacket sale a while back. I could try and play it off like it was the 3 dollar wine spritzers that tipped me off the emotional edge, but I can’t front – Heather Raffo’s masterful quilt of stories in 9 Parts of Desire totally robbed me of my ego. I went to the Theatre Centre on the opening night to witness a stunning manifestation of a few righteous females’ creative splendour.

The play brings a contemporary audience closer to the history of the suffering in Iraq. Many of the issues it sheds light on are incomprehensible in the context of a Toronto theatre, but the incredible cast, music, and smart symbolism all make this play an enlightening experience. Be warned, don’t take a date who will be scared away by an eye makeup disaster. The play will run till Sunday May 23, at the Theatre Center on 1087 Queen West at Dovercourt. Tickets are 25$ for an evening, 20$ for a matinee. Book at the theatre center 1 hour before the show, or call 416-538-0988 to reserve a spot.

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by Robert Crew

The key word, as someone says at the start of the play, is survival.

Whether you’ve fled Saddam Hussein’s Iraq for fear of your life, are working there as a doctor, a painter or trying desperately to sell goods by the side of the road, it’s all a matter of weathering the storm, of living as best you can and hoping against hope that things will improve.

In Heather Raffo’s harrowing, 80-minute play called 9 Parts of Desire, we meet nine women whose experiences weave a tapestry of fear, terror and love. (It is not accidental that a mosaic figures is a major symbol in the play).

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 by Miriam Cross

Photo Credit: Michelle Bailey, Nerdy Girl Design

When Aviva Armour-Ostroff first auditioned for 9 Parts of Desire, she was hesitant about taking part. The play, written by Iraqi-American playwright Heather Raffo, revolves around nine Iraqi women from various backgrounds who each have a story to tell the audience. But as a white woman, Armour-Ostroff wondered if it was her place to tell that story.

“We had a lot of conversations about that, Kelly [Straughan, the director] and I,” says Armour-Ostroff over the phone from her home in Toronto. “I asked her about her reasoning and her discussion with the playwright, and I really liked her answer, which was this story needs to be told, period. If it’s us that tells it, that’s not a bad thing.”

In the play (produced by Seventh Stage Productions in Toronto), Armour-Ostroff plays a doctor who contends with horrifying birth defects and illnesses in her patients as she struggles to work in an underfunded, rudimentary hospital setting. “She’s not asking you to feel sorry for her or for her country,” says Armour-Ostroff of her character, who, like the others, speaks directly to the audience as a ‘trusted friend.’ “She’s just stating the facts.”

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by Jon Kaplan

The battle cry of freedom resonates through 9 Parts Of Desire. It’s a cry of yearning by each of the play’s nine Iraqi women.

But in this series of monologues by Heather Raffo, each woman sees that freedom from a different perspective.

One is an artist who enjoys making portraits of her naked body in a culture that increasingly requires that women be covered; another is an exile who despairs of her revolutionary past; a third is a youngster who fantasizes about Justin Timberlake when she sees American soldiers.

All, though, must face the destructive war in their homeland.

“It’s an incredible play to stage, simply because much of the material is so hard to listen to,” says Melissa Jane Shaw, artistic producer of Seventh Stage Theatre.

“The through-line of freedom is a powerful one, but just as important is that each character decide what it is she wants. Each struggles to provide an answer to that question.”

Playwright Raffo played all the roles when she premiered the show. The Toronto staging is the first professional one to feature nine women from diverse backgrounds.

The impressive cast, which includes Aviva Armour-Ostroff, Deborah Grover, Lili Francks, Anusree Roy and actor/musician Maryem Hassan Tollar, is directed by Kelly Straughan.

“After Seventh Stage did Whale Music, we knew we wanted to stage a show that was political and made a difference,” recalls Shaw. “I went to New York three times and met with women-based companies like ours, asking them for suggestions.

“Though I ended up with 100 scripts, I decided on 9 Parts after reading only five pages. No other play offers nine such amazing parts for women, and it fits our mandate exactly.”

To continue reading the article, please visit NOW Magazine.

Highly Recommended

This one is guaranteed to blow your mind on a variety of levels. It’s an exploration of the troubles a young woman can still find in the glass-ceiling world of business, but it’s told through the framework of Alice in Wonderland, complete with Red Queen, Mad Tea Party and all the rest.

That’s enough to be intriguing, but then add Kelly Staughan’s inventive staging – which keeps tipping from stylized movement into dance and then back to reality – and couple with the fact that the script combines the freshness of ensemble creation with polish (thanks to editor Rachel Blair), and you have something well worth an hour of your time. No, it’s not perfect yet and some of the observations about piggish men, dried-up spinsters and ambitious women are a bit obvious, but the breezy pace and the smart, sassy cast make it work.

Monica Dottor is a briskly attractive Alice and Nicholas Campbell brings an air of 110% reality to his role as an offbeat business executive. I hope this show goes places and I can’t wait to see it again when it does.

– Richard Ouzounian

Photo Credit: Michelle Bailey, Nerdy Girl Designs

The Red Queen Effect
REVIEW BY KAORI FURUE
“It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place,” the Red Queen famously said in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Saw There. Inspired by the story, The Red Queen Effect is a brand new show produced by Seventh Stage Productions that uses elements of Carroll’s classic to present the nightmarish life of a lone female hedge fund associate named Alice. Working with only men, she desperately tries to make herself heard and navigate the underlying power game being played. The main roles are expertly acted, including frustrated Alice (Monica Dottor), her piggish colleague, Travis (Ted Hallett), and her first client/ticket-out-of-obscurity Leo (Gemini Award–winning Nicholas Campbell, best known for DaVinci’s Inquest), but the story itself, while vivid and believable, is a bit cliché. The idea that sexism exists in the workplace—and moreso in male-dominated fields—is hardly surprising. But, the production remains enjoyable due to its talented performers, stark visuals (particularly Melissa-Jane Shaw’s dramatic entrances and exits as the Red Queen), fun dance elements, and clever, obfuscating dialogue.

Photo Credit: Michelle Bailey, Nerdy Girl Designs