The intensely personal is also intensely political in Heather Raffo's 9 Parts of Desire. In this one-woman show, Iraqi-American playwright and actress Raffo becomes a forceful messenger to confront with many aspects to the moral morass that is the Iraq War.
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Playwright: Heather Raffo. At: Next Theatre at Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago. Phone: 312-397-4010; $23-$38. Through May 18
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Drawn from Raffo's interviews with nine Iraqi women, 9 Parts of Desire allows Raffo to embody these women in a tour de force performance. But it's not just an opportunity for Raffo to show off her amazing acting abilities.
What these very diverse Iraqi women have to
share from first-hand experience jabs with such shocking detail that you feel privy to information denied to you by the government and the media. And neither the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein nor the liberating American forces come off well.
Among the women, there's an artist who thrived under the Hussein regime ( but had to make enormous compromises ) . Another is a pro-war exile living in London who succinctly points out the glaring war-time flaws of the two Bush administrations ( even while she progressively gets drunker and drunker ) .
There's a bombing survivor from the first Gulf War who speaks of the ghastly American bombing, plus a bright young girl whose education and family life has been quashed due to both the war and the Hussein regime's intolerance for dissenting voices.
Of course, it's not all damning criticism. There's a lot of comic relief from a jolly Bedouin woman with a complicated love life, while all the women find ironic humor in their stories. And that even extends to what could be an autobiographical character of an American who obsessively watches 24-hour cable news channels for any sign of her relatives back in Iraq as the bombing begins.
If there's one constant theme throughout the interviews, it is the resiliency of these women to survive and make what they can of their unbelievably difficult emotional or physical situations.
One benefit of Next Theatre Company's joint presentation with the Museum of Contemporary Art of 9 Parts of Desire is that it allows more people to see it in a larger space. Director Joanna Settle and her designers showcase Raffo's amazing performance with Antje Ellermann's set that suggests both destruction and renewal, while the aural jolts of bombs are courtesy of sound designers Obadiah Eaves and Andre Pluess.
What Raffo leaves you with is an overwhelming sense of despondency and helplessness to the shattered lives left in the wake of living under a tyrant and a contentiously never-ending war. Walking back out onto Michigan Avenue is a humbling and angering experience when you contemplate the women's lives in 9 Parts of Desire compared to the seemingly blissful ignorance of shoppers all around.
