Hit Off-Broadway Solo 9 Parts of Desire to Play Seattle Rep

Seattle Repertory Theatre will present the hit of the Off-Broadway season, Heather Raffo's 9 Parts of Desire, Previews begin March 18, with opening night set for March 22. Najla Said, daughter of political activist, Edward Said, will star. Joanna Settle will direct.

Writer/performer Heather Raffo spent 11 years conducting dozens of interviews on over four continents with Iraqi women. Her resulting "theatrical mosaic" depicts the realities of life in Iraq both under Saddam Hussein and since his ouster for several of these unique women, whose individual worlds have been frayed and fractured, sometimes beyond repair, by their country's troubled history. While their stories share a theme of survival against shocking odds, Raffo's incisive distillation of their experiences shows us that both oppression and deliverance come with costs that may be too burdensome to bear, and their violent realities transcend something as simple as political polemic.

Raffo received the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize Special Commendation and the Marian Seldes-Garson Kanin Fellowship for 9 Parts of Desire. Most recently she was awarded the 2005 Lucille Lortel award for Best Solo Show as well as an Outer Critics Circle nomination and a Drama League nomination for Outstanding Performance. Raffo first performed 9 Parts of Desire in August 2003 at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh and later at the Bush Theatre in London's Off-West End where critics hailed it as one of the five best plays in London. Its New York premiere was in the fall of 2004 at the Manhattan Ensemble Theatre where the show ran for nine sold-out months. The show will now have productions in Berkeley, Seattle, Philadelphia, D.C., Brazil, France and Turkey. She dedicates 9 Parts of Desire to the many members of her family still living in Baghdad today.

Najla Said is a founding member of Nibras, the Arab-American theatre collective, whose inaugural production, Sajjil (Record) won best ensemble production at the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival. Theatrical credits include The Comfort And Safety Of Your Own Home, Love's Labours Lost, She Stoops to Conquer, and Salome. She trained at The Shakespeare Lab at the Public Theatre and The Actors Center in New York, and graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a degree in comparative literature and a certificate in Theatre and Dance.

9 Parts of Desire runs from March 18th to April 15h in Seattle Rep's Leo K. Theatre. For tickets call (206) 443-2222, or visit www.seattlerep.org

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