Englert to present the All in a Day Play Festival. And now as summer comes to a close, they are back with 9 Parts of Desire by Heather Raffo, a collaboration with the Iowa City Community Theatre, the oldest theatre in town. Presented at the Riverside Stage in Lower City Park, the show was originally performed as a one woman show, chronicling the effects of war on the women of Iraq. ICCT board member and director Rachel Korach Howell has chosen to cast the show with nine women. We had a chance to talk to talk to Rachel as well as three of the actresses in the show, Jen Gerbyshak, Mary Haaf Wedemeyer and Kathy Maxey.Thank you all for taking the time to answer questions about your show. I know that each of your characters presents a unique perspective. What can you tell me about your character?
Mary: Nanna is a street vendor selling anything she can find on the street corner. She can be scrappy and shrewd. She is resilient, with strength, a survivor. She brings wisdom. She is street smart, the human real side of Iraq. She has seen it all for many years. She has suffered inner spirit, personal loss, terror and horror. I believe her to be an educated woman that has succumbed to this lifestyle. She desires to live. She has to sell; she has to eat.
Kathy: My character is Umm Ghada and her role is to recount the true story of the bombing of the Amiriyah bomb shelter on February 13, 1991. She was a witness to the event and has personally taken on the duty of informing people of the tragedies that occurred.
Jen: I play Amal. In her, there's joy, there's tragedy, and there's a whole lot of humanity. I just love Amal.
How difficult was to get inside of her and create a woman from another country so different from our own?
Mary: In my readings and places I have been, I have found women that like Nanna everywhere. Nanna experiences every day doing what she has to - selling, hustling, watching, having a voice. My connection to Nanna... I personally experienced a deep loss. I found that in order to stay "alive", stay healthy, I had to move on, embrace life. I had to be resilient for me, for my children. That's where we find our basic human needs.
Kathy: Umm Ghada does exist and was a mother who lost her family in the U.S. bombing of the shelter. This is a true story and I believe that the suffering of a parent for the loss of a child is universal and timeless.
What is your favorite moment for your character?
Kathy: I have to say I found my entire monologue to be a very powerful and emotional experience.
Rachel: You know, everyone has "moments" in their pieces. Their different "moments" all do different things for the onlooker. Every time I get choked up, or even guffaw to some extent...yes, it will be possible to smile at times while watching this show... I am reminded of someone I know. The person I see changes every night, and that alone warrants a smile, because somewhere, you know her too.
Mary: For me, I like the tender almost child-like moments of Nanna when she is talking about her mother's dress. Those cherished humanistic, thoughtful moments of her mother. And the end of the last monologue where she feels Layal is the only one who truly "saw and understood" her... "I let her paint me," she says. She loves that painting... she rescues it, but realizes again... she has to...
Don't give it away! To see what she does, we'll just have to see the show. Can you talk a little bit about the space you're performing in?
Rachel: Everyone walked away from rehearsals bit-the-hell-up by the mosquitoes and spiders and such. People brought in citronella candles, herbal and super chemical-ed bug spray, itch relief products, and a lot of will power to refrain from scratching their skin off while maintaining a character through the burn!
So audience members should bring bug spray?
Brian Tanner (Dreamwell board member): We'll have it available for the audience at the box office.
That's great news. So aside from bugs, what was your experience performing outside in this space?
Jen: Well, the play is based on interviews that the playwright conducted - presumably in a private, indoor space. It can be challenging to recreate that kind of intimacy in an open-air environment. On the other hand, there's something magical about a wooden stage under the stars that I think will lend itself very nicely to the timeless human themes of the play.
Kathy: Yes, performing outside in nature seems perfectly fitting for this drama.
How is everyone working together?
Mary: It has been an honor and joy to participate in this production with such amazing, talented, kind and sensitive women.
Jen: We all work together amazingly well. Rachel and Josh picked nine ridiculously strong women, but none of us are divas; everyone has been incredibly generous throughout the rehearsal process. The result is that, even though our interaction in the play is minimal, I think the audience will feel the bond we share so that when we do interact, there will be a continuity that you wouldn't expect from a series of monologues.
Kathy: I have to agree. It has really been an honor to participate in this production with talented and sensitive women.
Rachel, what have been the challenges in directing this show?
Rachel: As it is a show compiled of monologues, scheduling was an interesting challenge. We are all pretty familiar working with other bodies on stage for a fair chunk of the performance material, but we had to approach this in a very different way. I met with each of the women independently for the first few weeks. When we finally put it all together, we were presented with a whole new set of issues. We had to create one full thought out of the many and everyone put in a lot of effort to make each woman unique within a single body.
And how difficult has it been in changing a one woman show into a show for nine actresses?
Rachel: Before auditions, I had no intention of casting more than five women for this show. Knowing it was originally a one woman show, and wanting to do right by the playwright and all the phenomenal women she'd interviewed to create this incredible piece, I felt that keeping the similar idea of the one being the many was essential. But when I had all these women audition for me, I saw so much talent and realized that this show was for all women, so giving so much talent the opportunity to portray all these incredible characters was just reiterating a driving message for the show. All that was already there. Having nine different women instead of one also allowed for some interaction that doesn't appear in the script.
Should we expect to see a political play when we take out seats?
Jen: I think "politics" is a misnomer. We think
about war as a political thing, because most of us haven't experienced it first hand. All we know of war is what our politicians and political activists tell us. To these nine women, war is a daily reality. Most of them have no political ideologies, but none of them had a choice: war found them, again and again and again. It has shaped their lives in ways that we cannot comprehend, and that's where the emphasis of this play lies - in the lives of Iraqi women, and the forces and choices that led them to where they are today.Kathy: Dreamwell’s 2010 season is Taboo Bijou... Theatre should be challenging and give the audience something to think about and discuss long after the show has ended. To that end, I believe 9 Parts of Desire will not disappoint audiences.
What has been the most rewarding part of this experience for you?
Mary: Being a part of the whole... sharing and enriching the lives of our audience.
Jen: This is the most nuanced role I've ever gotten to play, and I am thrilled at the challenge and the experience it offers.
Kathy: It has been an interesting and emotional journey watching the other actors develop their characters. The support from everyone involved in this production has been wonderful.
What else do you want the audience to know before they arrive?
Jen: I think most people will expect the play to either be hugely political or heavy and depressing. What I really hope that it will be is a learning experience. I hope everyone who sees the play will come to see a new point of view - maybe even nine! - about the Iraqi people. This play is a beautiful piece of art, and I hope people are moved by it, but the eye-opening perspectives are what I want people to take home from this experience.
The show opens Thursday night and runs August 19, 20, 21, 26, 27 and 28 at 8 pm. Tickets available at the door. Cash or check only. For more information go here.
(Cast photo by Dennis Lambing.)
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