Manhattan Ensemble Theater: 2004-5 Season

Home > MET's 2004-5 Season

Written and performed by unknown (but not for long) newcomer Heather Raffo — 9 Parts of Desire is a work so compassionate, so heartbreaking, so soul-shatteringly human, that it promises to be one of the most moving experiences of New York's 2004-5 theater season.

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.

An unbelievably timely meditation on the oppression of women in a country overshadowed by war, 9 Parts of Desire was selected last season by The Times as "First Choice/
One of the Best Plays in London", and by The Independent as one of the "Five Best Plays" in December 2003. Directed by another startlingly talented newcomer Joanna Settle, 9 Parts of Desire is a play that simply cannot be missed.

From the creators of MET’s runaway hit Hank Williams: Lost Highway — is a masterful blend of musical theater and oral history.

Drawn from interviews with Coal Miners from West Virginia and Kentucky, Fire on the Mountain's text is intertwined with some of the greatest traditional music and union songs to come out of America in the 20th Century. Actors and musicians (all from Appalachia) share the spotlight, with the latter made up of some of the finest pickers and strummers to ever grace a New York stage at one time.

Powerful social history, moving family drama, and incredible songs (think O Brother, Where Art Thou?) make Fire on the Mountain one of the most unusual and exciting entries of the upcoming Off-Broadway season.

One of the most famous novels of the ‘70s, Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976) was the source of both the 1985 Academy Award®-winning motion picture and the 1993 Tony Award®-winning Broadway musical.

Less well-known is the fact that in 1981, Puig himself turned his own novel into a play that was a smash hit in South America for over a decade.

Never performed in New York, on or off Broadway, Kiss of the Spider Woman arrives newly born in a completely reworked adaptation (and translation) for the American stage. This moving story of two men, trapped not only by the walls of their Argentine prison but by the oppression of politics and society, Kiss — the Play is a breathtaking pas de deux that, with the right cast (t.b.a.), just might have to open on Broadway instead of in our cozy SoHo space.


2004-5 Season:
	9 Parts of Desire
	Fire on the Mountain
	Kiss of the Spider Woman