Heather Raffo
| Heather Raffo | |
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| Born |
Heather Raffo Michigan, United States
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| Alma mater | University of Michigan |
| Awards | 2005 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Solo Show in 9 Parts of Desire |
Heather Raffo (born in Michigan, United States) is a Lucille Lortel Award-winningIraqi American playwright and actress, best known for her leading role in the one-woman play 9 Parts of Desire.
Her father is Iraqi, a civil engineer and her mother is American, who are both of Christian faith and Heather is a Roman Catholic who grew up in Okemos, Michigan. Heather holds a BA from the University of Michigan, an MFA from the University of San Diego and she also studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Having been born in the United States, she and her family visited Iraq in 1974 when she was a little girl and again in 1993.
Raffo credits Ntozake Shange as her most significant artistic influence and has noted her as an inspiration to writing her own work after reading For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.
Heather Raffo is most famous for her notable role in the one-woman play 9 Parts of Desire. The play focuses on the lives of women in her father's homeland, and was originally conceived in 1993 after a visit to her Iraqi relatives. It was also inspired by Raffo's trip to the Saddam Art Centre in Baghdad where she saw only billboard sized portraits of Saddam Hussein. Later, in a back room, she saw a painting of a nude woman clinging to a barren tree. She took a photo of the painting, returned to America and devised a way of replicating the painting into a play. A decade later she completed the play, which features monologues by nine highly distinct Iraqi women, all played by herself.
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