Screening Series
Feature Film:
Heather Raffo in Nine Parts
Screening and Discussion
Wednesday, March 12, 2025 – 7:00 p.m.
Macauley Honors College, 35 West 67th Street
2nd Floor Screening Room
Free Admission, Open to the Public
The Actors Center hosts a film screening and immersive discussion of Heather Raffo’s Nine Parts on Wednesday, March 12th at 7:00pm at Macaulay Honors College. 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. The event is free and open to the public. RSVP is required. Wine and beverages will be served.
Based on Heather’s internationally acclaimed solo-show, and now newly set in Michigan, Nine Parts is a first-of-its-kind bridge between the Midwest and the Middle East, and offers audiences a unique celebration of the Iraqi female experience. Directed by Mike Mosallam, produced by Nilou Safinya, the film is airing nationally on PBS in April 2025.
Currently a Social Practice Resident at the Kennedy Center, this film is part of Heather’s larger work leveraging the unique experiences of Arab Americans as guiding voices and bridge builders for our times. The immersive discussion following the film, is part of a new response tool Heather is creating to bring communities together around the theme of how we hold each other. Your participation will be the first in a larger national experiment in forging connection in times of grief, loss and resilience.
“An example of how art can remake the world”
— The New Yorker
“Powerful, Impassioned, Vivid, Memorable”
— The New York Times
“Persuasive, precisely because it is beautiful”
— The Wall Street Journal
About Heather Raffo
Heather Raffo is a singular and outstanding voice in the American theater whose work has been championed by The New Yorker as “an example of how art can remake the world.” A multi-award-winning writer and actress, her work has taken her from the Kennedy Center to the U.S./Islamic World Forum, and from the State Department into classrooms across the globe.
She is the author and performer of Noura (Weissberger and Helen Hayes awards) which premiered in D.C. before moving to Abu Dhabi, Cairo, Playwrights Horizons and theaters across the nation, and Nine Parts of Desire (Lucielle Lortel award, Blackburn commendation, Helen Hayes, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle nomination) which ran Off Broadway for nine months and has played across the U.S. and internationally for over two decades.
Nine Parts of Desire was the first national and international hit by an Arab American, reaching nearly every regional theater market in the US and helped birth a whole new genre of Middle Eastern-American theater. The play continues to be translated and studied in universities nationally and internationally.
Heather is also the librettist for the opera Fallujah, the first opera about the Iraq war, which received its world premiere at Long Beach Opera and opened at NYC Opera in 2016 accompanied by a PBS documentary titled Fallujah: Art, Healing and PTSD.
Her current work, The Migration Play Cycle: A New Theatrical Platform, her most ambitious theatrical imagining in scale and scope, situates themes around migration and the global economy and aims to be the first ever-evolving, multi-locational, theatrical platform. Supported by Creative Capital, NPN and APAP grants, she is currently researching and building this work as Social Practice Resident at The Kennedy Center.
An anthology of her groundbreaking work, The Iraq Plays: The Things That Can’t Be Said, was published in early 2021, synthesizing the contribution Heather has made to helping shape cultural and national conversations on some of the most pressing issues of our times.