Nine Parts – Film Screening & Conversation with Heather Raffo
Join Carver Community Cultural Center and KLRN for an an evening of cinematic exploration and engaging discussion with acclaimed playwright and actor, Heather Raffo. The evening will feature a screening of “Nine Parts,” – a new film adaptation of the internationally acclaimed one-woman play, Nine Parts of Desire.
Stay for tea and a community talkback with Heather Raffo immediately following the screening.
About Nine Parts – The Film
One woman. Nine stories.
Torn by her father’s death and a divided nation, an Iraqi American woman attempts to grieve at the site of the oldest Iraqi Church in North America. What starts in isolation becomes communal as Iraqi women—ordinary and extraordinary—come to and through her with her personal stories of love and resilience.
Based on the internationally-acclaimed solo show, Nine Parts revisits a groundbreaking play for the screen and for our current times. Newly set in Michigan at the height of the pandemic, Nine Parts is a first-of-its-kind bridge between the Midwest and the Middle East, offering audiences a unique window into the Iraqi female experience. Directed by Mike Mosallam, produced by Nilou Safinya, and airing nationally on PBS.
Watch the PBS Newshour feature on the film here.
History
Nearly 20 years ago Heather Raffo’s play, Nine Parts of Desire, premiered to widespread acclaim in London and Off Broadway, later becoming a global theatrical phenomenon. Championed by The New Yorker as “an example of how art can remake the world”, it became the first theatrical commercial success nationally and internationally by an Arab American playwright. It initially premiered in the U.K. in 2003, where critics hailed it as one of the five best plays in London’s Off West End theater season. Later, it ran Off Broadway for nine sold out months and was a critic’s pick (of The New York Times, Time Out, and Village Voice) for over 24 weeks in a row. Since 2005, Nine Parts of Desire has been produced in nearly every theater market in the U.S. and was one of the top five most produced plays of the 2007–2008 American Theater season with international productions in over a dozen countries, some being performed to this day. Now studied in universities across the nation, Nine Parts of Desire helped forge a whole new genre of Arab American theater and continues to impact new generations globally, offering audiences not only a deeper understanding of their relationship to the Middle East but to each other.
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