Heather Raffo’s 9 Parts of Desire debuted in August 2003 at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh before moving to the Bush Theatre in London’s Off-West End where critics hailed it as one of the five best plays in London. In the fall of 2004, it premiered in New York at the Manhattan Ensemble Theater, enjoying a sold out, nine-month run and high, critical acclaim. Since, Heather has toured the show across the country to continued, remarkable praise.

"POWERFUL, IMPASSIONED, VIVID, MEMORABLE!
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 Isherwood , NEW YORK TIMES 

"A TRIUMPH! THRILLING! AN EXAMPLE OF HOW ART CAN REMAKE THE WORLD!
In this remarkable one-woman show, Heather Raffo's performance is deft and vivacious; her writing, like her playing, is marked with wit and by a scrupulous attention to the details of character. Among the many felicities of the narrative is her ability to change not just character but tempo, which gives the play its particular thought-provoking wallop. Nine Parts Of Desire, directed by Joanna Settle, is an example of how art can remake the world." -- John Lahr, THE NEW YORKER

“A BEAUTIFULLY SHAPED ONE-WOMAN PLAY! IT IS PERSUASIVE PRECISELY BECAUSE IT IS BEAUTIFUL. SEE IT SOON! SEE IT TONIGHT!
Heather Raffo, the Iraqi-American playwright and performer of Nine Parts of Desire, directed by Joanna Settle, brings us closer to the inner life of Iraq than a thousand slick-surfaced TV reports. Yet her 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. Each character is wholly believable. We believe in their reality because Ms. Raffo inhabits each one so fully, both as actor and as author, and because we never feel, not even for a moment, that she is making them tell us what we -- or she -- want to hear.” --Terry Teachout, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 

"EXTREMELY MOVING!
An extremely moving, riveting and powerful piece of theater!" --Tina Brown, CNBC-TV

"POIGNANT! MOVING!
An indelible picture of the effect of the wars on very different Iraqi women." --Linda Winer, NEWSDAY 

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  

"PROFOUNDLY MOVING! RATED A!
We've been told of the inhumanity Iraqi women experience. Told by men. Coming from a woman's mouth – in this case, chameleonic actress-playwright Heather Raffo – the words cut bone deep. It took nearly 10 years of research to give voice to these profoundly moving stories, and we only need to listen. Rated: A" -- Melissa Rose Bernardo, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY


FULL REVIEWS
The New York Times
The Wall Street Journal
The New Yorker

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Heather Raffo’s 9 Parts of Desire is performed at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E Chicago Ave, Chicago IL 60611. Learn more about directions and parking at the MCA.