Iraqi-American Playwright Serves as Cultural Bridge
After decades of bridging the two cultures through her plays, Heather Raffo is getting ready to teach her community about theater, writes Saideh Jamshidi.
Heather Raffo, a blonde, Midwestern — and half-Iraqi — playwright and actor, was a fully assimilated American with little connection to her Iraqi heritage until she saw her father sob after watching the graphic details of the first Iraq war on the news.
“My dad would come back home after a long walk, his eyes were red and puffy,” Raffo told Al-Monitor.
She attended the University of Michigan during the war and as her fellow students cheered the troops and the war on television sets in bars, Raffo, worried that her family in Baghdad might not survive.
This was a turning point for Raffo, who began to grow into her Iraqi identity and use her art to bridge the two cultures. Her play "Nine Parts of Desire" earned her accolades on Broadway in 1994 and in September 2012, she staged "Fallujah," about the second Iraq war.
