One of the nine characters Heather Raffo channels in her one-woman show is herself (I didn't count but I assume the title suggests there are nine characters). In that section, Raffo talks about her obsession with watching Iraq fall to pieces as the American and British invasion swings into action. As she obsessively watches the coverage on television, everyone else around her in New York says they're obsessed but they say so while getting their nails done. Raffo, of course, is also getting her nails done at the time. This is a reminder that American wars are never fought on American soil and thus we're spared from feeling the human impact of our imperialism. The Iraqi people we want to save from Saddam aren't really people to us. We might see them on television but we know nothing about them. Raffo's engaging play is not an argument for or against the war but an opportunity to get to know some Iraqis, the people deeply affected by our decision to wage war on Saddam.
One-person shows are always entertaining if for no other reason than the skill it requires to play a number of different characters convincingly is often dazzling to watch. One of Raffo's accomplishments is that her acting skills, which are impressive, become secondary and it's her characters who are compelling. And the characters all tell us something about what life is like in Iraq, both under Saddam's regime and under American occupation.
One character is an artist who sees freedom in her sexuality. She is unfaithful to her husband and takes other lovers. She argues that Western women aren't necessarily free and finds evidence of that in their sexual repression. Over time we come to realize that her sexual freedom is rather more complicated than it seems at first. Another character is a precocious young girl whose self-assuredness lands her father in Saddam's jail. Another character tells us that she throws the shoes of the dead into the river -- that the river is a collector of souls (soles). There are no martyrs under the water, she says, only the soles of dead people.
As with the Anna Devere Smith plays of the 90's, Raffo allows us to recognize the wisdom of her characters. Like Smith, Raffo interviews subjects and weaves their interviews into a performance. The performance allows us to witness the humanity of her subjects in a way that seems possible only with theater. Her representations of her subjects are never sentimental. Instead, she discovers the natural poetry of their voices and the wisdom of their thoughts. The character I loved listening to the most is a fat woman who says she sees with her heart. When Raffo allows her to tell her story, the woman finds so much joy in that connection, in being able to put her feelings into words for Raffo.
Near the end of the play, Raffo tells a story about her Iraqi relatives' attempts to reach her in New York after 9/11. Due to the overloading of the phone system in New York, they weren't able to get trough. They called her mother in Michigan for news of her well-being. Having gotten assurance that she wasn't killed in the explosions, they still keep calling until they finally hear her voice. They tell her how sorry they are that this has happened to her city. They empathize with the pain of 9/11 and worry about her. And they end their conversations by telling her "I love you." As Raffo echoes the voices of the Iraqi relatives who called, we get a succession of I love you's in similar and sometimes slightly different accents. Raffo's point is well made. There is great irony in the empathy of the Iraqis for Americans after 9/11 when 9/11 becomes the occasion for the war against their country. Her string of I love you's points out that irony but it's also a message to her Iraqi relatives, or maybe the women she portrays in the play.
It would have been a good ending for the piece, I think. After that, we learn more about characters we've seen before, much of it sad. I do think that it was largely unnecessary, though, and the performance started to feel a little long. I will say, however, that while I wanted the string of I love you's to end the play, the final image of an Iraqi woman whose life has been momentarily illuminated for us through Raffo's performance now fading into black is an apt closing image. We've come to see these women for a moment and then they fade back into obscurity. Maybe it's really a caution more than description of what is inevitable, though. A few nights later, the women are all still clear to me.
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