Heather Raffo

Heather Raffo (Alice) is a singular and outstanding voice in the American theater whose work has been championed by the New Yorker as “an example of how art can remake the world”. Having helped forge a new genre of Arab American theater, she’s spent her career writing and embodying stories of Iraq: from the lives and dreams of Iraqi women in her seminal work 9 Parts of Desire (2003), to the suicidal ideation of an Iraq war veteran in the opera Fallujah (PBS film 2012), to the restless longings of an Iraqi refugee architect, in Noura (2018). A film adaptation of Nine Parts, released on PBS in 2023, is a radical reimagining of her groundbreaking play from the vantage point of 20 years after the war.  A recent Creative Capital, NPN and APAP grantee, Raffo is currently building an ambitious new theatrical platform following migration and the global economy which aims to be the first ever-evolving, multi-locational theater platform.