As topical as today's headlines, Nine Parts of Desire — written and performed by Heather Raffo — opened on October 9th to a torrent of critical raves and became one of the most acclaimed works of the 2004-5 season. The show ran for nine straight sold-out months in SoHo, before traveling to some of America’s finest theaters, including Los Angeles’ Geffen Theater, Berkeley Rep, Seattle Rep, the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia and, finally, D.C.’s Arena Stage in the fall of 2006. The play was published by Northwestern Press in 2006, and was still being produced around the US in 2008.

Directed by Joanna Settle, Nine Parts of Desire is a work so compassionate, so heartbreaking, so soul-shatteringly human, that it promises to change forever the way you'll think about the women (indeed, the people) of the Mideast.

A portrait of the extraordinary — and ordinary — lives of a whole cross-section of Iraqi women, this solo work lifts the veil on exactly what it means to be a woman in the age-old war zone that is Iraq.