Biography
Heather Raffo is an acclaimed playwright and actress whose work has been showcased at venues ranging from the Kennedy Center and Aspen Ideas Institute to London's House of Lords and classrooms nationwide. Her plays have been performed off-Broadway, off-West End, in regional theaters, and in film. She is best known for writing and solo performing the play 9 PARTS OF DESIRE, which The New Yorker praised as "an example of how art can remake the world."
9 Parts of Desire marked the first commercial success on national and international stages by an Arab American playwright, paving the way for a new genre of Middle Eastern American theater. Premiering in London, the play was acclaimed by critics as one of the season’s best. Within a year, it moved Off-Broadway, running for nine sold-out months and earning the Lucille Lortel Award, a Susan Smith Blackburn commendation, and nominations from the Drama League, OCC, and Helen Hayes Awards. Since 2005, 9 Parts of Desire has been produced in nearly every major regional theater across the U.S. and continues to be staged in over a dozen countries worldwide.
Raffo’s recent acting credits include The Profane (Playwrights Horizons), Food and Fadwa (New York Theater Workshop), In Darfur (The Public Theater), Palace of the End (Drama League nomination/Epic Theater Ensemble), Macbeth (The Acting Company), Over the River and Through the Woods (Houseman Theater), and the feature film Vino Veritas, starring Carrie Preston, Bernard White, and Brian Hutchison.
Though Raffo began her career as a classically trained actor, her creative pursuits have expanded into diverse genres. Selected by the Annenberg Foundation’s Explore initiative, she authored the libretto for Fallujah, the first opera centered on the Iraq War. Developed through the Kennedy Center’s International Theater Festival, Fallujah premiered at Long Beach Opera in March 2016 and later opened at New York City Opera that same year. A film documenting both the opera and its themes, titled Fallujah: Art, Healing and PTSD, was also produced.
Most recently, Raffo has concentrated on her new play, NOURA, which won the prestigious Weissberger Award at Williamstown and earned a spot on the Kilroy’s List. NOURA premiered at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington D.C. in 2018 before traveling to Abu Dhabi that spring. Its New York premiere is scheduled for Playwrights Horizons during the 2018/19 season, with Raffo performing in the title role.
