Thought-provoking show by Seventh Stage Theatre Productions.
9 Parts of Desire is just one of hte pieces created by Seventh Stage Theatre Productions.
Courtesy photo
The show 9 Parts of Desire gives people a glimpse into the lives of nine Iraqi women and their experiences living in a place that's ravaged by war.
Staged in May by Toronto theatre company Seventh Stage Theatre Productions (SSTP), this show offered audiences a look into what it was like for these women to try and exist in these challenging circumstances.
"This show gives you a complete picture of what it means to be an Iraqi woman...and it debunks the myths we have of these women we see in the full abayas and hijabs," said Kelly Straughan, SSTP's artistic director and who also directed the show. "It completely takes all your assumptions and systematically pulls them apart as they reveal their lives."
Playwright Heather Raffo compiled the play from hundreds of interviews she did, intending to not only expose the darker aspects of these women's lives, but also to tell the inspiring and uplifting aspects of it as well.
Straughan said while it was a somewhat difficult to sit through a hour of nine women talking about the sometimes very horrible experiences in Iraq, the overall message was relayed and received, winning them a Dora nomination.
The play is also an example of the types of shows SSTP wants to produce, and speaks to the company's mandate of producing socially and politically conscious, thought-provoking and entertaining works by and about women.
Launched in 2006 by Toronto actress MJ Shaw, this professional not-for-profit theatre company was born out of her own experiences of being an actress in Toronto.
"In this country if you're a woman, the odds are just sort of stacked against you. There are such limited choices on the types of roles you can play and the opportunities," Shaw said.
So she decided to create SSTP for her and other women who work in the theatre field to generate opportunities for emerging and established female artists both on and off stage. Shaw said it was clear by the response they got when they announced their premiere show in 2007 that others felt the same.
"We were a totally unknown company and we had 600 women from across the country apply to audition, and these were Canada's professional actors saying 'Thank you for doing a play with roles for women, this is incredible, I want to be a part of this work,' it's been overwhelming," Shaw said.
In a world where Shaw said feminism is still the 'F word' and despite the fact the company has a strong mandate aimed at promoting women in theatre, the shows are not meant to exclude men. In fact, Shaw said their audiences are mixed, about 70/30 women to men, which is comparable to all theatre companies.
Straughan said they've had male directors and male actors in their show, and at the end of the day it's really about staging great theatre.
"That's the most important thing to us, bringing entertaining, thought-provoking theatre to people," she said.
That being said, Straughan said studies show there are less roles available for women and less female directors and artistic directors are getting hired and working in Canada.
Besides Nightwood Theatre in Toronto, which has a similar mandate and who Straughan and Shaw consider their big sister company, there aren't many theatre companies dedicated to producing work by woman and for women theatre artists.
"With this kind of theatre ecology, there will be less and less female directors and playwrights," Straughan said. "Most of the theatre companies in Toronto, besides Nightwood, are run by male artistic directors... we're still in a time where it's 75 per cent men running the theatres,"
Shaw said another show they staged earlier this year, The Red Queen Effect, was performed at the Next Stage Theatre Festival and showed the theatre world isn't the only place with a boys club.
Also earning them a Dora nomination, Shaw, Straughan and five other women created this original show by interviewing powerful women in the business world to find out how they survive and thrive in a world that is still predominately a man's domain.
Straughan said it was shocking to see how some of these women changed in order to be accepted into the boy's club and didn't think there was anything wrong with it.
"What was more shocking is the way women OK'd it," Straughan said. "...how they prided themselves on getting into the boy's club and will look at other women who can't get in and they look down on them."
Shaw said each of their shows has this element of exposition and while some of the content may push the traditional envelope, she said she hopes it ideally encourages people to think critically about issues they already know about or expose them to completely new ones.
"For me it's about inciting people to change," Shaw said. "I don't want people leaving feeling passive, I want people to leave discussing, thinking, arguing and potentially making different decisions as a result of seeing a different point of view."
For information on their next show visit www.seventhstage.com