 | Heather Raffo is an award-winning playwright and actress who has spent the last decade performing off Broadway, off West End in regional theater and in film. She is the author and solo performer of the play 9 PARTS OF DESIRE (Lucielle Lortel and Susan Smith Blackburn awards, Drama League, OCC, Helen Hayes nominations), which The New Yorker called “an example of how art can remake the world”. The play ran off Broadway for nine months and has played across the U.S. and internationally for over a decade. In 2009, Heather created a concert version of the play for The Kennedy Center with renowned Iraqi maqam musician, Amir ElSaffar. Most recently, her libretto for the opera FALLUJAH, detailing the life of a US Marine who served in the Iraqi city in 2004, was heard as part of Kennedy Center’s International Theater Festival. It then received it’s world premiere at Long Beach Opera in March of 2016 and opened at New York City Opera in November 2016. Currently, Heather is developing a new play, NOURA, which just won Williamstown’s prestigious Weissberger Award. NOURA, came out of three years of workshops with Epic Theatre Ensemble where Heather explored the impact of Ibsen's iconic A Doll's House on Arab American women living in New York City. Her personal response is her new play, NOURA, told from inside the marriage of an Iraqi refugee family now living in New York. NOURA was further developed at Georgetown University with refugee and Middle East policy experts. It will receive it’s world premiere at the Shakespeare Theater in D.C. in February 2018. www.heatherraffo.com |