Nine Parts of Desire

Phenomenal one-woman show by Heather Raffo that I saw at the Berkeley Rep last night.

I woke up this morning with the voices of the characters chanting around me. A doctor delivers babies with no heads, or two heads. Finds breast cancer in 9-year olds. Umm Reydah points to the walls of the Al-Amariyah bomb shelter, plastered with melted skin and hair from her children, boiled alive when US bombs sliced open hot water pipes. A woman fishes shoes out of a river. An Iraqi exile in London downs whisky to drown memories of torture. An artist turns her body into a living testament, a defiant, seductive affirmation of life, for all the women who have vanished.