It’s been over a decade since Iraqi-American playwright Heather Raffo’s play, “9 Parts of Desire”, premiered in 2003, but the raw urgency and brutal reality of its stories has not dulled. On the Indian stage, the play has been directed by Lillete Dubey and performed by Ira Dubey. The last in the line-up of shortlisted plays for the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards (META) 2014, “9 Parts of Desire” was quite fittingly staged on March 8, International Women’s Day. The play, a capsule look at the lives of Iraqi women during the two Gulf wars and after them, asks hard-hitting, unflinching questions about the tyranny of Saddam Hussein’s rule as well as the fallout of American intervention. It brings together nine true stories from nine very different women; an artist, an elderly Communist, a mother, a Bedouin woman, a doctor, a teenage girl and an Iraqi expatriate in America among others.
Ira Dubey, slipping in and out of these nine roles, comes under unapologetic scrutiny, the weight of the performance’s success resting almost entirely on her. When the play begins, the stage a hauntingly beautiful play of lights and shadows, she’s Layla, a liberal artist who talks to the audience in restive, frustrated bursts, a bundle of nervous, animated energy. She dresses bohemian and paints nudes, along with portraits of Saddam. She loves Baghdad and is afraid of it. In short, she is quite, quite different from the women we meet later: The deep, age-weary voice of a communist who’s seen her Iraq change and transform into her worst nightmare; the teenager who wilts in front of us as she reads her father’s diary and realises the unintentional role she played in his disappearance, and the doctor who is consumed with helpless guilt and disgust as she watches an entire generation of Iraqis crumble under the after-effects of uranium radiation from American bombs. Each role and each story demands a different emotional response, and it is this switch that makes Dubey’s performance so powerful. While her accent might seem a tad overdone at times, it is still believable, and also takes a backseat in the face of her ability to engage the audience in a way that makes each woman real and her grief palpable.
The script, conversational and gripping, complements Dubey’s performance, allowing for even those unfamiliar with Iraqi civilian life to feel invested. The facts, interspersed with glimpses of human experiences, paint a picture that spells out the pity and futility of war.
Dubey makes do with quick, almost negligible costume changes, relying more on her voice, body language and expressions to essay each character. The stage is used effectively, a space assigned to each character. While some stories and roles are certainly more effective than the others, eliciting a greater response from the audience, the entire play comes together quite seamlessly, the common thread of a war torn country’s human condition underlined in every story.
