F E B. / M A R. 2006
THE WILMA THEATER
Artistic Director
Blanka Zizka
Newsletter Editor
Walter Bilderback
Artistic Director
Jiri Zizka
Newsletter Designer
Aaron Immediato
Managing Director
Lynn Landis
THE NEWSLETTER OF THE WILMA THEATER
Contributing Writers
Walter Bilderback
Susannah Engstrom
Heather Raffo’s 9 Parts of Desire February 1 - March 12, 2006
In 1993, a recent college graduate
went to visit her father's family for
the first time in nearly twenty years.
Many people have made such trips,
but for Heather Raffo, the journey
would have momentous consequences. Her father moved to the
Detroit area from Iraq and married
an American woman. Heather had
visited her Iraqi family when she was
four; there were follow-up visits to
Michigan from Iraqi relatives
throughout that decade, then the
Iraqi border slammed shut, as
Saddam Hussein took the nation into
a prolonged war with Iran, followed
by international condemnation after
his invasion of Kuwait.
realization: "I'm not on one side of
this war. I can't sit in a bar with people cheering as bombs are going off.
My body, blood, and psyche want my
family to live. What if I never see
them again? What if they're just in
the wrong place at the wrong time?"
Two years later, she made her return
visit, riding a bus for 20 hours across
the desert to reach the Iraqi border.
During that 1993 visit, Raffo was
astonished at the efforts her family
went through to make her feel at
home. She describes the visit as "a
beautiful and profoundly life changing
experience." While in Baghdad, she
was inspired by a painting she discovered at the Saddam Art Center.
Amidst the many billboard-size porThe resulting Gulf War awakened
traits of Saddam Hussein was a paintRaffo's sense of her own heritage.
ing of a nude woman clinging to a
She later told an interviewer of her
barren tree with her
head bowed and a
"the play is...a celebration of the
light in front of her,
feminine and of women searching
like a sun. Raffo took
for what personal liberation
a photo of the paintmeans to them and what freedom
ing in hopes of finding
is and can offer them in their lives
the artist, only to discover she had been
no matter where they live."
killed during an
American-led bombing raid in
Baghdad earlier that year.
Raffo began to collect the stories of
dozens of Iraqi women, both inside
and outside of Iraq. "I did not do
formal interviews with people. I
went and lived with them and loved
them and collected their stories…. I
felt that we as Americans did not
have an honest understanding of the
ordinary Iraqi people and what they
thought, or what they were like or
what they wanted - especially Iraqi
women." She collected stories for
the following decade. In 1998, she
put some of them together for a
thesis project at the University of
San Diego, where she was completing an MFA in acting. This was the
beginning of what would become 9
Parts of Desire.
The writing process continued. In
2003, Raffo took her work to the
Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Its success there led to a run at London's
Bush Theatre, where The
Independent heralded it as "One of
the five best plays of 2003." This, in
turn, helped bring the play to New
(continued on page 2)
2
"I did not do formal interviews with people. I
went and lived with them and loved them and
collected their stories…. I felt that we as
Americans did not have an honest understanding
of the ordinary Iraqi people and what they
thought, or what they were like or what they
wanted - especially Iraqi women."
York, where it became a long-running Off-Broadway hit. (This story is
recounted in more detail in director
Kate Saxon's interview, following this
article.) Critical praise in New York
was unanimous. In The New Yorker,
John Lahr described 9 Parts of Desire
as "an example of how art can
remake the world and eloquently
name pain." Terry Teachout, writing
in the Wall Street Journal, went further: he said that Raffo "has done
what so few reporters have ever
thought to do, and done it with a
persuasiveness that fewer still could
hope to rival." 9 Parts of Desire
"brings us closer to the inner life of
Iraq than a thousand slick-surfaced
TV reports," and "is persuasive precisely because it is beautiful."
Raffo stresses that, although all nine
characters are based upon her
research, 9 Parts of Desire is not a
docudrama. Unlike the plays of Anna
Deavere Smith (Fires in the Mirror),
in which all the characters speak
words they've actually said in interviews, Raffo's characters "are all
composites and none but a few of
Hooda's [the expatriate living in
London] lines are verbatim. So the
play is fictional and all characters
3500 - 2000 BCE: Sumerian culture
flourishes in the southern region
between and around the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers; Sumerian inventions or innovations include bronze,
the earliest writing system, the first
civil laws, the first schools, mathematics, the potter’s wheel, and the
sailboat; among the major citystates of Sumer was Ur, the home
of Abraham
3500 BCE
Heather Raffo
have composite traits of people that I
met. … It is a celebration of the feminine and of women searching for
what personal liberation
means to them and what freedom is and can offer them in
their lives no matter where
they live."
2000 BCE: The Amorites, a semitic tribe, conquer
Sumer and establish a new capital, Babylon, south of
present-day Baghdad; Babylon’s most important ruler
was Hammurabi (ca. 179 - 1760 BCE), famous for his
legal code demanding “an eye for an eye”
3000 BCE
2500 BCE
2000 BCE
3
"Truffling out" the Inner Truth:
Guest director Kate Saxon talks about Heather Raffo's 9 Parts of Desire...
Q: You've known Heather Raffo
for some time now. How did you
get to know her?
The Wilma Theater welcomes guest director
Kate Saxon for this production. Saxon helped
author Heather Raffo develop the play before
its successful New York production. In a series
of e-mail conversations, she discussed her plans
for the production with Wilma Dramaturg &
Literary Manager Walter Bilderback.
A: I met Heather first in 2000, when
I cast her in the title role for the
World Premiere of the stage adaptation of The French Lieutenant's
Woman, which I was to direct not far
from here, at the Fulton Opera
House in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
During the rehearsal process we
realized we shared similar artistic
ambitions: to create art that pushes
beyond the expected, that is brave
and that speaks to the audience by
sharing the private human spirit
within. Heather was already working on 9 Parts of Desire and asked me
to look at it, hoping that we could
perhaps work together on it.
Q: Did you start working with
her immediately after that?
A: No. But Heather soon brought
the play to the UK, first to the
Edinburgh Fringe Festival, then to
The Bush Theatre in London (where
I live). This time in the UK allowed
Heather and I to begin work on the
script together. The Public Theater
in New York gave Heather the
chance to develop the script further
with support from their literary
department and a director. So I came
to New York to work with Heather
and we presented the play at The
Public as part of their New Work
Now! readings series. I then pitched
the play to Dave Fishelson at
Manhattan Ensemble Theater.
Fantastically, Dave said 'yes' straight
away. However, he wanted to produce it immediately, in the run up to
the Presidential election. I was
already committed to productions in
the UK, but Heather and I knew it
was an opportunity not to be missed,
so it went ahead with a new director
and was a brilliant success, playing to
rave reviews in New York and L.A.
(continued on page 4)
16th Century - 612 BCE: Flourishing
of Assyrian Empire, with its capital in
Nineveh, located north of present-day
Mosul, in the Kurdish area of Iraq
680 CE: Rebellion and death of Ali’s son, Hussein
ibn Ali at Karbala; Shi’ite Islam develops in
response to Hussein’s death, based upon the
leadership of Imams claiming descent from the
Prophet through Ali and Hussein
661 CE: Assassination of Ali ibn
Abi Talib, Fourth Caliph following
the death of the Prophet
Muhammd, in Kufa
539 BCE - 636 CE: Area
conquered in turn by
Persians, Greeks, Parthians,
and Persians again
636 CE: Muslim armies from Arabia
conquer Iraq
1000 BCE
500 BCE
500 CE
750 CE: Abbasid
Revolution destroys
the Umayyad
Caliphate; Iraq
replaces Mecca as the
center of Muslim rule
762 CE: Baghdad
founded by Caliph
Abu Jafar al-Mansur
786 - 809 CE: Reign
of Caliph Harun alRashid, the most
celebrated of
Baghdad’s rulers
(timeline continued on page 4)
4
Q: So now you finally get a
chance to stage a full production.
A: Yes. I can't wait!
Q: In England, you're the
Associate Director of a company
called Shared Experience that's
famous both for their productions of literary adaptations and
their physicality. Do you think
your work with Shared
Experience will affect your staging and direction of 9 Parts?
A: Shared Experience's aim is to create theatre which goes beyond our
everyday lives and redefines the possibilities of performance. The influence of the company certainly shows
in my freelance work, fundamentally
in the search for the hidden inner
lives within characters - the subtext.
It's the 'truffling out' of this inner
truth and the creative journey in
finding expression for this externally
in theatrical language that really fascinates me. It's an approach to the
exploration of the women of 9 Parts
that will be fundamental to my
rehearsal process.
they shared and the ways they differed. A key element was the struggle between the 'feminine' nature of
“There are nine women and they don't all live in
the same place or even the same country.
They're not all talking from the same time period.”
Q: The first comment of everyone who's seen the set design
and model has been "that's a lot
of set for one person." Can you
talk a little about the set design,
without giving away any secrets
for those who haven't seen the
play when they read this?
A: This has been a hugely challenging
play to design and I'm sure Anne
Patterson, the designer, would concur. There are nine women and they
don't all live in the same place or
even the same country. They're not
all talking from the same time period. And one woman, Jacqueline
Antaramian, plays them all. Anne
and I thought about the fundamental
beauty of these women, the truths
the land and the 'masculine' nature of
architecture and war and the interdependence of the two. Finally, most
powerfully, we needed the water
that divided and married them and
could give birth to renewed life. So
we've tried to create a landscape
that is suggestive of all of these
things, that incorporates the spirit of
all the women and the country of
Iraq, and which is also open enough
to be a playing ground for all of the
characters to explore and eventually
own. Certain areas belong more to
one character than another, and
we've also had to accommodate one
character living in London and one in
New York.
c. 900 CE: Population of
Baghdad estimated at 1.5 million, several times the size of any
European city of the time and
with better public sanitation
1258 - 1638 CE: Baghdad
invaded nine different times by
forces including Tamerlane the
Great, Turkomans, Ottomans
and Persians
1258 CE: Genghis Khan’s grandson Hulugu sacks Baghdad,
ending the Abbasid Caliphate; beginning of Iraq’s Dark Ages
900 CE
1050 CE
1200 CE
1350 CE
5
Q: What questions have been in
your mind while you've been
preparing to direct this play?
A: Many and varied. Firstly, how do I
ensure this play speaks to the audience? To do that, Jacquie and I will
need to come to understand these
women inside-out. Additionally, they
are also all part of a unified spirit. I
have to see and understand this spirit
to be able to direct the play. How do
I prepare for that? So far, by talking
to Heather about her inspiration, re-
these women tick? They are so
strong: how and why? Where are
they heading? These are questions
that Jacquie and I will be exploring in
rehearsal and none of the answers
can ultimately be found until then: it
has to be a personal journey for the
actress. Because this play is political,
it's easy to panic and for me to feel
that I need to know every fact and
figure, every stage of the War and
Iraq's history before it, every religion, every statistic and policy. But of
course, I can't. I'm a theatre director,
“The wonderful thing about Heather's writing
is it allows us a glimpse of the women from
within, not through the Westerner's
perspective or from the politician's mouths”
visiting the work Heather and I did in
developing the script, reading newspaper articles and books about
women of Iraq, talking to people
who've visited Iraq or who are Iraqi,
and also by bandying around ideas
with Anne, the designer. What I really want to know is: What makes
not a politician. And it's important to
remember that these women don't
have all that information either. Of
course, it's essential to undertake
thorough research and it's important
to try to understand what the characters know. But directors and writers in theatre can't have all the
answers. I think we can only ask
some questions. And the wonderful
thing about Heather's writing is it
allows us a glimpse of the women
from within, not through the
Westerner's perspective or from the
politician's mouths.
The other questions in my mind are
more theatrical: I know I want the
music and sound to be evocative
both of place and also of the internal
journeys of the characters, so what
does each woman 'sound' like? How
do I want the lighting to take us into
these different characters' worlds?
What is the physicality of these
women? How do we make each one
unique and ensure the audience isn't
confused? The exciting thing about
working in theatre is that most of
these questions can't be answered
until you're in the rehearsal room
and collaborating with the creative
team. And then many other questions appear that you'd never even
thought of….
1917 CE: British enter
Baghdad
1916 CE: Sykes-Picot Treaty: Britain and France agree to post-war division of Ottoman Empire; the
Ottoman province of Mosul is originally promised to France as part of Syria, but demanded by Britain
following the end of the war, possibly due to the potential for oil near Kirkuk; this contributes to the 1918 CE: WWI ends
splintering of the Kurdish homeland, which is additionally divided with Turkey and Iran
1723 CE: British East
India Company establishes
operations in Basra
1638 CE: Ottomans retake Baghdad
after lengthy siege; for the next three
centuries, the provinces of Mosul,
Baghdad and Basra remain part of
Ottoman Empire, with varying degrees
of control from Istanbul
1914 CE: WWI begins;
British forces occupy Basra
1908 CE: Oil discovered in Iran
1899 CE: Britain declares protectorate over Kuwait, formerly
part of Basra province
1921 CE: Faisal ibn alHussein, son of the
Sharif of Mecca, an ally
of Lawrence of Arabia,
enthroned by British as
King of Iraq; his brother
Abdullah is made king
of Jordan, where his
family still reigns
1869 CE: Opening of Suez Canal
1500 CE
1650 CE
1800 CE
(timeline continued on page 6)
6
Glossary
of terms in
Heather Raffo’s
9 Parts of Desire
Aa
"Yes"
Abaya
A garment worn in some areas in
the Persian Gulf region. In Iraq it is
usually a square shaped, longsleeved, floor-length, loose, usually
black garment worn over other
clothing. It is worn by both men
and women. Men wear it hanging
from their shoulders, women hanging off the top of their heads.
Alhumdol-lah
"God willing" or "Thank God"
Amiriya shelter bombing
U.S. “smart bombs” destroyed this
Baghdad shelter on February 13,
1991. The U.S. military has claimed
that the building was a command
center. Hundreds of Iraqi civilians
were inside, and over 400 were
killed. Most were women and children.
Apsu and Tiamat
Apsu and Tiamat play a central role
in the Enuma elish, an ancient
Mesopotamian creation epic written
in approximately 2,000 BCE. Apsu,
the fresh underground water, and
Tiamat, the salt water of the sea,
give birth to two gods, Lahmu and
Lahamu, representing the silt of the
sea, who in turn create the horizon-the rim of the heaven and the rim of
the earth--which then create An, the
god of heaven.
Bedouin
A term generally applied to Arab
nomadic groups, who are found
throughout most of the desert belt
extending from the Atlantic coast of
the Sahara via the Western Desert,
Sinai, and Negev to the eastern coast
of the Arabian desert.
Highway of Death
The Highway of Death is the stretch
of road between Kuwait and Basra,
on which the United States bombed
the retreating Iraqi army in February
of 1991 at the end of the first Gulf
War. Thousands of troops were
killed, most burned to death in their
vehicles.
Harram
"Sin" or "Forbidden"
Iran-Iraq War (1980-88)
In September 1980, following the
revolution in Iran, Saddam Hussein
launched an invasion of Iran, believing he would roll over the disorganized Iranian army and achieve a
quick victory. Instead, the war
stretched on for eight years, in conditions resembling the trench warfare of World War I, including the
use of poison gas on both sides.
Many nations in the West, including
the U.S., supported Saddam
throughout the war in the hopes of
destabilizing Khomeini's government.
1927 CE: Discovery of oil near Kirkuk
1932 CE: Formal independence of Iraq
proclaimed, with continued British
economic dominance
1936 CE: First military coup
1922 CE: Sir Percy Cox draws the modern
borders of Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia on a
blank map with a red pencil and a straight edge
1900 CE
1941 CE: British overthrow pro-German
government in Baghdad
1930 CE
7
The war ended with each country's
economy in shambles and a loss of
450,000 - 950,000 casualties on each
side.
La
"No"
Marsh Arabs
The inhabitants of the lowlands of
southern Iraq, who have lived in the
area for thousands of years. Marsh
Arabs live on the water by building
reed huts and dwellings and farming
water buffalo. Marsh Arabs participated in an unsuccessful rebellion
against Saddam Hussein immediately
following the First Gulf War. In
response, Saddam diverted the flow
of the Tigris River and the Euphrates
River away from the marshes. This
plan systematically converted the
wetlands into a desert, forcing the
Marsh Arabs out of their settlements
in the region. Only a few thousand
of the nearly half million original
inhabitants remain. Most of the rest
who can be accounted for are
refugees living in other Shi'a areas in
Iraq, or have emigrated to Iran.
Mulaya
"Adadda" or "naddabah" in classical
Arabic. Traditionally a Mulaya is a
hired woman who leads call and
response with women mourning at
funerals. She is considered very
good if she can bring the women to
a crying frenzy with her improvised
heartbreaking verses about the dead.
Nammu
According to early Sumerian mythology, Nammu was the mother of all
creation. She represented the
primeval sea. In one myth, Nammu
1956 CE:
Suez
Crisis
reveals
that
Britain’s
ability to
dominate
Mideast
militarily
is at an
end
1958 CE: Revolution under Abdul Karim Kassem
overthrows monarchy and declares a republic
1959 CE: Unsuccessful attempt on Kassem’s life
by group of young Ba’athists, including Saddam
Hussein; Iraq passes civil rights legislation for
women which combines the most liberal teachings on marriage, divorce, property rights, etc.
from Sh’iite teaching and each of the four main
schools of Sunni thought
1963 CE: Kassem overthrown and murdered
in coup led by military and Ba’ath Party
1968 CE: Ba’ath Party seizes sole
control of government
1960 CE
relieves the suffering of the toiling
gods by giving birth to mankind, so
that the gods may live at leisure
while humans serve them. Nammu
personifies the water that was
thought to surround the entire universe--on both sides, above and
below it.
Qurna, Eridu and Ur
Qurna, Eridu and Ur are all within
the boundaries of modern-day Iraq,
and all are thought to be possible
locations of the Garden of Eden.
RPG
Rocket propelled grenades are
Russian-designed, hand-held unguided shoulder-launched missiles. They
are low cost, low tech, portable,
rather inaccurate weapons. The
RPG, the Kalashnikov assault rifle,
and Improvised Explosive Devices
(IEDs) are the primary weapons of
the Iraqi insurgency.
Shatt al-Arab
"Stream of the Arabs" is the part of
the river formed by the confluence
of the Euphrates and the Tigris in
southern Iraq. It is also thought to
be one of the possible sites of the
Garden of Eden.
1972 CE: Oil industry nationalized; Iraq, especially Baghdad,
begins decade of great prosperity
1974-75 CE: War in Kurdistan
Feb. 1979 CE: Revolution in Iraq
July 1979 CE: Saddam Hussein
becomes President of Iraq
1980 CE: War with Iran begins
Dec. 1983 CE: Donald Rumsfeld visits
Baghdad and is photographed shaking
Saddam’s hand
(timeline continued on page 8)
8
“Che Mali Wali (Because I Have No Ruler)”
A traditional Iraqi song
che mali wali/buya smallah
mit'adhiba bi dinyay/ya baba/che mali walibe
battah w siditni/buya smallah
bein al juruf wil mayy/ya baba/battah w siditini
yal ma riditni/buya smallah/tiksir janahi leish/ya baba
yal ma riditni/kho tidri biyeh/buya smallah
mali gulub ithnein/ya baba, kho tidri biyeh
wa shdhall iliyeh/buya smallah
wahid w akhadhteh wiyak/ya baba, wa shdhall iliyeh
Because I have no ruler/I am tortured by my life
Like a duck you hunted me/Between the bank and the river
Oh, you who did not want me/You broke my wings, why?
You know me better/I do not have two hearts
And what am I left with/Now that you have taken my one heart?
English translation by Amir ElSaffar
There is, of course, a huge range of material written on the history and current state of Iraq. Any attempt by a non-specialist is bound to be limited.
Here are some of the books consulted in preparing this edition of Open Stages.
Thabit A. J. Abdullah, A Short History of Iraq. 2003; Joseph Braude, The New Iraq. 2003; David Fromkin, A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the
Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. 2001; Turi Munthe, The Saddam Hussein Reader: Selections from Leading Writers
on Iraq. 2002; Yitzhak Nakash, The Shi'is of Iraq. 1994; George Packer, The Assassin's Gate. 2005; Anthony Shadid, Night Draws Near. 2005; Micah
L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf, The Iraq War Reader: History, Documents, Opinion. 2003; Wilfred Thesiger, The Marsh Arabs. 1964; Charles Tripp, A
History of Iraq, New Edition. 2001
Kathy Spillman, director of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, has also been an invaluable resource. Check out the Middle
East Center's website for more information on Iraq and on Islam: http://mec.sas.upenn.edu/resources/teachers.html
Mar. 1988 CE: Iraqi forces use chemical
weapons on the Kurdish town of
Halabja, killing several thousand civilians
1988 CE: Iran-Iraq War ends
Mar. 1984 CE:
Rumsfeld again visits
Baghdad; the same
day, the UN releases report on Iraqi
use of chemical
weapons against
Iranian army
1990 CE: Invasion of Kuwait
1991 CE: Iraqis forced out of
Kuwait by coalition under U.S.
leadership; 16 of 18 Iraqi
provinces revolt, but are violently put down by Saddam’s
forces; the marshes at the
juncture of the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers are drained,
ending the culture of the
Marsh Arabs
1992 CE: Under allied
protection, elections are
held for an autonomous
Kurdish parliament in the
north
1980 CE
1997 CE: Oil for Food program
comes into effect
1998 CE: UN arms inspectors
thrown out of Iraq
Nov. 2002 CE: UN calls on Iraq
to re-admit international inspectors and disarm its chemical,
biological and nuclear weapons
programs; Iraq’s refusal
becomes a ground for growing
demand by U.S. and U.K. for
military action against Saddam
Mar. 2003 CE: U.S. and
Britain invade Iraq and
begin occupation
2000 CE