Free Performances of Award-Winning Play 9 Parts of Desire Set for February 15–16
February 13, 2008
Writer/performer Heather Raffo and musician Amir Elsaffar will present Raffo’s critically acclaimed 9 Parts of Desire, about the lives of nine “ordinary and extraordinary” Iraqi women, in two free performances at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, Feb. 15–16, at the Pavilion Theatre on the University Park campus. The performances are part of the Cultural Conversations new play festival, which will continue with a week of plays, student one-acts and dance performances, Feb. 27–March 5.
9 Parts of Desire, described by The New Yorker as “an example of how art can remake the world,” is the first full collaboration of Raffo and Elsaffar, who are both children of Iraqi and American parents. They met soon after the Iraq war began in 2003, with the war becoming a pivotal point in their careers. Both have large extended families still living in Baghdad, and their recent work reflects a vision of translating an Iraqi cultural experience for an American ear.
Raffo began her artistic career as an actor and has performed off Broadway, off West End, in regional theatre and in film. She began work on 9 Parts of Desire in early 2001, and her research took her deep into the Iraqi community both in and outside Iraq. The play premiered in Edinburgh at the Traverse Theater and was later seen at the Bush Theater in London’s Off West End, where critics hailed it as one of the five best plays in London. It was then developed in conjunction with the Public Theater’s New Work Now Festival and opened Off Broadway at the Manhattan Ensemble Theater, where it ran for nine sold-out months before beginning extended runs around the United States and internationally.
Elsaffar has performed extensively as a jazz and classical trumpeter with esteemed artists such as Cecil Taylor, Vijay Iyer and Daniel Barenboim. After a trip to Iraq in 2002, his focus shifted to the Iraqi santoor, a hammered dulcimer instrument, and the traditional music of Iraq known as the Maqam. He has now mastered a significant portion of the Maqam repertoire, and leads Safaafir, which is the only ensemble in the United States performing the Iraqi Maqam. His newest work, called Two Rivers, brings Maqam melodic structures into a modern jazz context.
The performances are free and no tickets are required. For more information on Heather Raffo and 9 Parts of Desire, visit http://www.heatherraffo.com/9parts.html. For more information on Cultural Conversations and a complete schedule of events, visit http://www.culturalconversations.org/.
Cultural Conversations is funded by the School of Theatre, the College of Arts and Architecture Diversity Committee, the Institute for the Arts and Humanities, and the Josephine Berry Weiss Chair in the Humanities Endowment.
Contact: Susan Russell, artistic director of Cultural Conversations, sbr13@psu.edu