On Monday, the Museum of Contemporary Art hosts a panel discussion entitled “Political Acts: The Emerging Arab-American Theater Movement” featuring three notable Arab-American playwrights who will discuss their works and careers as catalysts for bridging the East and West cultural divide. One panelist and playwright, Heather Raffo, explains, “The Arab-American movement has been ongoing since September 11, I think, simply because American audiences have become hyperaware of the need to understand the Middle East and Middle Eastern artists have become more charged to tell the story of their people.” Raffo, an American-Iraqi, recalls her start writing plays at a time when Iraqi roles didn’t exist in the theater, a possible motivator for her newest work, “9 Parts of Desire,” which focuses on the lives and feelings of Iraqi women on a “humanistic and spiritual” level rather than a political one. She adds, “My political involvement is being an American with Iraqi blood in the middle of two wars in Iraq—I think that just by the nature of having fifty family members in Baghdad, I’m concerned.”
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