Heather Raffo

Heather Raffo is an award-winning playwright and actress who's work has taken her from the Kennedy Center to the Aspen Ideas Institute and from London's House of Lords into classrooms across the nation. Her work has been seen off Broadway, off West End in regional theater and in film. She is best known as the author and solo performer of the play 9 PARTS OF DESIRE, which The New Yorker called "an example of how art can remake the world". 9 Parts of Desire was the first commercial hit on a national and international stage by an Arab American playwright helping to birth a whole new genre of Middle-Eastern American theater. It was first produced in London where critics hailed it as one of the season's best plays. Within a year it moved Off Broadway and ran for nine sold-out months, garnering a Lucielle Lortel award, Susan Smith Blackburn commendation as well as Drama League, OCC and Helen Hayes nominations. Since 2005, 9 Parts of Desire has been produced in nearly every major regional theater in America, with international productions ongoing in over a dozen countries. Raffo's most recent performing credits include the plays :The Profane (Playwrights Horizons), Food and Fadwa (New York Theater Workshop), In Darfur (The Public Theater), Palace of the End (Drama League Nomination/Epic Theater Ensemble), Macbeth (The Acting Co.), Over the River and Through the Woods (Houseman Theater) and the feature film, Vino Veritas with Carrie Preston, Bernard White and Brian Hutchison. Although Raffo began her career as an actor and trained classically, her work has taken her into new genres. Raffo was chosen by the Annenberg's Explore foundation to author the libretto to Fallujah, the first ever opera about the Iraq war. Fallujah was developed as part of Kennedy Center's International Theater Festival, it then received its world premiere at Long Beach Opera in March of 2016 and opened at New York City Opera later that year. A film was made of both the opera as well as a documentary titled Fallujah: Art, Healing and PTSD. Raffo's recent focus is on her newest play, NOURA, which recently won Williamstown's prestigious Weissberger Award and is on the Kilroy's List. NOURA had its world premiere at the Shakespeare Theater in Washington D.C. in 2018 before moving to Abu Dhabi in the spring of that year. Its New York premiere will be at Playwrights Horizons in their 2018/19 season with Raffo performing in the title role.