"New film 'Nine Parts' explores lives of Iraqi women after U.S. invasion"

by Jeffrey Brown, Anne Azzi Davenport, and Alison Thoet 

[The report below, “New film ‘Nine Parts’ explores lives of Iraqi women after U.S. invasion,” discussing the new film version of Heather Raffo’s 2003 play, Nine Parts of Desire, was written, presented, and produced by Jeffrey Brown, Anne Azzi Davenport, and Alison Thoet.  It aired on PBS NewsHour on 30 March 2023.

[Nine Parts of Desire, the play, recounts the lives of nine Iraqi women (one of whom is based on Raffo, herself) after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in mid- and late March 2003.  (The film has come out on the 20th anniversary of that invasion.  The film version is set in Michigan, home to the U.S.’s largest Arab-American population, and relates the experiences of Iraqi women now living in the United States.)

[Raffo was born and grew up in Okemos, Michigan, part of metro Lansing, ca. 1970.  She’s a Lucille Lortel Award-winning (for her solo performance in her play Nine Parts of Desire), Iraqi-American playwright and actress.  Her father, a civil engineer who died in 2014, was Iraqi—born in Mosul but lived in Baghdad—and her mother is American.  Raffo has lived in New York City for 30 years.]

After the U.S. invaded Iraq 20 years ago, Iraqi-American playwright and actor Heather Raffo created and starred in an acclaimed play “Nine Parts of Desire” about the lives of Iraqi women. She’s returned to the subject on film and through a distinctly American lens, setting a new version in Michigan. Jeffrey Brown went there to see the work for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.

Geoff Bennett: Twenty years ago, after the U.S. invaded Iraq, Iraqi American playwright and actor Heather Raffo created and starred in an acclaimed play titled “Nine Parts of Desire” about the lives of Iraqi women.

Now she’s returned to the subject, but on film and through a distinctly American lens, setting a new version of the work in Michigan.

Jeffrey Brown went there to see how this work lands for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: The setting, a church on the Flint River in Michigan.

Heather Raffo, Writer and Actress: The year ISIS took Mosul [2014], dementia took my dad. He spent 80 years carrying and six years forgetting money.

Jeffrey Brown: In the midst of the pandemic, an Iraqi-American woman mourning the loss of her father is visited by a series of women.

Heather Raffo [in film scene]: We didn’t know if our neighbor was Sunni or Shia. It was offensive to ask. But here now people demand to know what I am.

Jeffrey Brown: Many lives.

Heather Raffo [film scene]: I have not been to school since America came.

Jeffrey Brown: Many stories.

Heather Raffo [film scene]: We have you chained to the desert.

Jeffrey Brown: All played and told by writer and actor Heather Raffo.

Heather Raffo: Even my son, he said yesterday, he’s like: “So, were they really there?”

Jeffrey Brown: Yes.

Heather Raffo: “Or were they all in her head?” And he’s like . . .

Jeffrey Brown: Right. I mean, I was thinking the same thing, right?

Heather Raffo: Right? And he’s like: “Well, did it happen or didn’t it?”

And I’m like: “Well, I think that’s just up to you, how you feel about that,” because that’s how I felt oftentimes during the pandemic. Am I connected to my ancestors? Am I connected in my grief to all these things that have happened across the world throughout time, or am I just isolated and alone?

And I think it’s both, right?

Heather Raffo [film scene]: There’s a whole generation today, they want to think for themselves without Iran, without America.

Jeffrey Brown: At Detroit Public Theatre recently, Raffo screened her new film, “Nine Parts,” for family, friends and community members.

Heather Raffo: This is absolutely meant to be in Michigan.

Jeffrey Brown: It was a homecoming on several counts.

Heather Raffo: Adapting it was wanting to be in conversation with my dad, was what the film was, and wanting to be in conversation with my country.

Jeffrey Brown: She lives in New York now, but was raised in this area amid the largest Arab American population in the country. And this was also a chance to mourn our own Iraqi-born father, a member of its minority Christian, or Chaldean, community, who died during the pandemic, when his family couldn’t hold a public funeral.

Heather Raffo [film scene]: Who is going to be left to inspire the people?

Jeffrey Brown: And the film itself is a kind of return to her critically acclaimed 2003 play, “Nine Parts of Desire,” that explored the lives of Iraqi women through a decade of war and upheaval.

Heather Raffo: The original impetus for “Nine Parts of Desire,” the play, was to reach Americans with the humanity of Iraqis.

Jeffrey Brown: Which meant what?

Heather Raffo: Which meant, they are real people.

Jeffrey Brown: Right.

Heather Raffo: They have deep and complicated feelings, both politically and personally, and that we can’t pigeonhole them to one side of an issue. And, of course, once the kind of civil strife started happening, it was just showing the huge diversity and depth of their thinking.

Jeffrey Brown: Twenty years later, the impact of the American invasion continues to be felt in Iraq, a country still torn by sectarian divisions, beset by economic woes and political corruption.

An estimated nine million Iraqis are internally displaced or live abroad, including most of Raffo’s extended family, many of whom left when ISIS took over Mosul in 2014 and targeted Iraqi Christians.

Heather Raffo: I had about 100 family members living in Iraq in 2003. I now have one cousin left in the country. So that’s a thousands-of-years-old family and community that has been displaced in less than 10.

Man [in audience at film screening]: There’s a lot of talk about homeland. And I have been struggling with that the older I get.

Jeffrey Brown: The reverberations also continued to be filled in the Iraqi-American community. Among those attending the Detroit screening was 24-year-old Fatima Al-Rasool.

Fatima Al-Rasool, Public Programming Coordinator, Arab American National Museum: Watching the film just brought up so much emotion.

The struggles and the hardships that Iraqis go through and that Iraqi-Americans feel and also go through are something that isn’t talked about quite often. I think that . . .

Jeffrey Brown: It isn’t talked about even in your community, you and your friends and family?

Fatima Al-Rasool: It’s talked about, but I think, with big traumas like that, things tend to be buried deep.

Jeffrey Brown: Al-Rasool, from a Muslim American family, came to the U.S. as an infant in the period just before the war. Many relatives remain in Iraq.

She now straddles these worlds, in part through her work as public programming coordinator at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn, which features exhibitions of both past and present, including showcasing the work of contemporary artists.

What’s your sense of your friends, other people in your generation? How important are the traditions and the history?

Fatima Al-Rasool: Because, for the most part, we were raised in America, we really try our hardest to keep in touch with our heritage, even further than just hearing the stories of our parents or visiting.

We really want to define being Arab-American and what that means to us. And I think the museum is a place that allows us to do that by uplifting Arab-American stories, encouraging conversations through art.

Heather Raffo [on stage in a play reading]: You a politician? You know I hate politicians.

Actress [in reading (Kathleen Chalfant)]: Wow.

Jeffrey Brown: Heather Raffo is now artist in residence at the museum, a chance to develop a new play that expands her canvas, looking at migration around the world, and featuring musicians and actors from a variety of countries.

Heather Raffo [film scene]: I very much feel this void. I have no peace.

Jeffrey Brown: But it is this country that seems most on her mind, especially by setting the new film version of “Nine Parts” here in Michigan in 2020, sectarian division and anger all around reminding her of Iraq’s plight.

Now the Flint River and the city’s ongoing water crisis stood in for the Tigris. The pandemic brought epic loss of life on a scale of war.

Heather Raffo: From a Michigan point of view, there were armed militias in our government buildings [30 April 2020, in protest of the governor’s COVID-19 stay-at-home order]. And the way the country was increasingly tense was something that almost every Arab-American, but particularly Iraqi-American, goes, OK, warning signs are really clear.

Jeffrey Brown: You see that happening in the U.S., those kinds of divisions? Are you red? Are you blue?

Heather Raffo: Are you red? Are you blue? How you going to talk to your family member over Thanksgiving, right? How’re you going to — what are you going to say?

It’s hostile. It’s hot. As an artist, we go toward the heat.

Heather Raffo [in reading]: Can you ski without risk?

Actress [in reading (Kathleen Chalfant)]: I always land on my feet.

Jeffrey Brown: Iraq, she says, could be a bellwether for the U.S.

Heather Raffo [in reading]: Everything bounces back, the market, the weather. It will all bounce back.

Jeffrey Brown: Unless we address where we are 20 years later.

Heather Raffo [in reading]: Money doesn’t move. It bounces.

Actress [in reading (Kathleen Chalfant)]: Will a rock bounce back?

Jeffrey Brown: For the “PBS NewsHour,” Jeffrey Brown in Detroit.

Geoff Bennett: Heather Raffo’s new play, “Tomorrow Will Be Sunday,” opens at Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center on April 13.

[According to Wikipedia, Raffo conceived her play, Nine Parts of Desire, during an August 1993 trip to Baghdad to see family.  She visited the Saddam Art Center, and a painting by Iraqi artist Layla al-Attar (1944-93) entitled Savagery, depicting a naked woman from behind hugging a tree trunk among a stand of trees, moved her.  The impressionistic, sepia-colored, monochromatic canvas inspired Raffo to compose Nine Parts.  

[The dramatist was curious about the life of al-Attar, and in the play she placed the al-Attar character prominently.  The artist, who became director of the Iraqi National Art Museum. expressed recognition of the importance of women in all spheres of society.  On 27 June 1993, al-Attar, her husband, and their housekeeper were killed by a U.S. missile attack on the Iraqi Intelligence headquarters just behind her house; two rockets misfired and hit her house.

[Raffo spent ten years interviewing Iraqi women from various social backgrounds, and she used this information to write the play.  Some of the women were strangers to her and some were relatives.  In 1998, she staged a 20-minute performance of the play at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, California, as part of her Master of Fine Arts thesis at the University of San Diego. 

[The final version of the play was completed in 2003 and premièred in August at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland.  It débuted in London at the Bush Theatre in September of that year.  From October 2004 to May 2005, it had its U.S. première Off-Broadway at the Manhattan Ensemble Theatre on Mercer Street in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood.  It ran for 246 performances.

[At the 2005 Lucille Lortel Awards (for excellence in New York Off-Broadway theater), Nine Parts won two awards, one for sound design and one for Outstanding Solo Show, shared by Raffo (for acting and writing) and MET (as producer); the play was nominated for another Lortel (scenic design) and an Outer Critics Circle Award (Outstanding Solo Performance).

[In his more than 30-year career with the PBS NewsHour, Jeffrey Brown has served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues, with work taking him around the country and to many parts of the globe.  

[As arts correspondent he has profiled many of the world’s leading writers, musicians, actors and other artists.  Among his signature works at the NewsHour: a multi-year series, “Culture at Risk,” about threatened cultural heritage in the United States and abroad; the creation of the NewsHour’s online “Art Beat”; and hosting the monthly book club, “Now Read This,” a collaboration with the New York Times.

[As Senior Coordinating Producer of CANVAS, Anne Davenport is the primary field producer of arts and culture pieces and oversees all coverage.  She’s been leading CANVAS since its beginning, collaborating with Chief Arts Correspondent Jeffrey Brown for most of her 21 years at PBS NewsHour as well as with others.  Alison Thoet is a writer and a CANVAS associate producer and national affairs associate producer at NewsHour.]

Music & Moods – Poetry & Pain

 

[I’m posting two transcripts from segments of the PBS NewsHour from last month.  The first one, below from 24 October 2022, is from two student reporters who explored the connection between music and our moods.  (“Music,” as I’m sure you’ve heard, “has charms to soothe the savage breast” – William Congreve, The Mourning Bride, 1697.) 

[I’m pairing it with the text of a slightly earlier segment on Afghan poets and how they find hope through their poetry even in exile from Afghanistan.]

“EXPLORING THE CONNECTION BETWEEN OUR BRAINS, OUR MOODS AND MUSIC”

Have you ever wondered why a piece of music makes you feel a certain way? As part of our Student Reporting Labs’ ongoing look at youth mental health, student journalists John Barnes and Brigitte Bonsu explore the connection between our brains, music and our moods. It’s for our arts and culture series, “CANVAS.”

Judy Woodruff:  Have you ever wondered why a piece of music makes you feel a certain way?

Well, as part of our Student Reporting Labs’ ongoing look at youth mental health, student journalists John Barnes and Brigitte Bonsu explore the connection between our brains, music and our moods.

That’s for our arts and culture series Canvas.

John Barnes:  Hey, Brigitte. How was your day?

Brigitte Bonsu:  I don’t know. I feel like I never have time for myself.

John Barnes:  Haven’t you been playing the cello?

Brigitte Bonsu:  No. How about you?

John Barnes:  My day wasn’t too bad. I was actually playing this really peaceful and calming song last night.

Brigitte Bonsu:  I know how that feels. I always felt that way when I played the cello.

John Barnes:  Wait. You were there the whole time?

So, how does rhythm affect our mood? That is, why does me talking like this feel different emotionally than me talking like this?

Dr. Bruce D. Perry, Northwestern University:  That probably starts in utero, when the little fetus is developing.

There’s this rhythmic input. Our maternal heart rate, the aorta and the heart sort of tap on the diaphragm. And so three different sensory routes, vibration, touch and sound, have this syncopated rhythm that is continuous.

And so the brain essentially comes to connect pattern, repetitive, rhythmic, sensory input with being safe and regulated.

John Barnes:  That may be why we pace around before giving a big speech or tap our feet to a rhythm when we’re nervous.

Brigitte Bonsu:  So, what about lyrics? How do they affect us?

Dr. Adenike Webb, Temple University:  When I work with clients to write songs, I often start with the words first with them before we get into the music.

Brigitte Bonsu:  This is Dr. Webb and Dr. Thomas, music therapists I spoke to about the significance of lyrics.

Dr. Adenike Webb:  You know, when there’s a song that’s like, I am so sad right now, I don’t have words for it, but this singer does, or reminding us we’re not alone in whatever were feeling.

Brigitte Bonsu:  So how do we use music to make us feel better in our daily lives?

John Barnes:  Try taking breaks to do little rhythmic activities throughout the day.

Dr. Bruce D. Perry:  Calligraphy or doodle in a lecture, graphic use of your hands, it’s rhythmic, and it has the same rhythms as conversation, the same rhythms as being rocked as a baby.

Brigitte Bonsu:  And you can also try what Dr. Thomas calls the tunnel playlist.

Dr. Natasha Thomas, Purdue University:  A lot of times, in our, like, anxiety spirals or depression episodes, there’s a moment when you know you are going into it.

Then we think about, OK, when you’re in the tunnel, when you’re in those deepest, darkest moments, what music can help affirm where you are and not make you feel like there’s pressure to get out of it, but just sort of be with you?

John Barnes:  Our last tip, try playing some music yourself.

When the pandemic happened, I spent a lot more time learning guitar and songwriting. Music can help us make sense and relate to events, and when we know that other people are going through it. So it kind of helps us feel seeing. When everything comes together perfectly, it’s just euphoria.

(CROSSTALK)

John Barnes:  Thank you. Thank you so much.

Brigitte Bonsu:  When I play and I really focus on a note or a section in a piece, I feel like, actually, I play 10 times better, and I really like that experience. and it just makes me feel more empowered.

Music lets me know that I can get better.

Judy Woodruff:  Some of us would never play an instrument, but it is so inspiring to watch these young people.

[John Barnes, a member of the Class of 2025 at the University of Virginia, is a filmmaker, songwriter, and actor from Arlington, Virginia.  He has completed two fellowships with PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs.

[In 2021, Brigitte Bonsu was one of eight students from the Washington, D.C., area to join the PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs for its annual Homegrown fellowship.  She is now studying English as a member of Roanoke, Virginia’s Hollins University Class of 2025.]

*  *  *  *
“AFGHAN POETS FIND INSPIRATION IN EXILE, USING ART TO CHANNEL THEIR PAIN”
by Ali Rogin 

[The transcript below is from a 14 October 2022 segment of the PBS NewsHour broadcast.]

Judy Woodruff:  Poetry has a special place in the heart of Afghans. It has played a prominent role from the country’s ancient history to its present day.

But when the Taliban took over, many of Afghanistan’s most popular poets had to flee. They are now figuring out how to find inspiration in exile.

Ali Rogin talked to several masters of the art for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Ali Rogin:  In post-Taliban Afghanistan, the new constitution was written in prose. But the idea of the new Afghanistan, peaceful, pluralistic and democratic, was cloaked in poetry, starting with the lyrics of the new national anthem written in 2006.

Abdul Bari Jahani, Author, Afghan National Anthem:  This is Afghanistan. And this is the honor of every Afghan. This is the home of the soul. And this is the home of the peace.

Ali Rogin:  It’s such a hopeful message.

Abdul Bari Jahani:  Thank you.

Ali Rogin:  Was that intentional?

Abdul Bari Jahani:  Yes.

Ali Rogin:  Abdul Bari Jahani is one of Afghanistan’s most prominent contemporary poets. He’s spent most of his adult life in the United States, fleeing Afghanistan after the Soviet invasion in 1979. Since then, he’s wielded his most powerful weapons, his pen and his voice.

Abdul Bari Jahani:  This was – all the artists and the poets and the writers were doing their part in the jihad or in the – in fighting against occupiers. In the same role, deeply against the civil war after the Soviet withdrawal, poets were opposed to the Taliban too.

Ali Rogin:  Above all, Jahani wrote about the need for Afghans of all ethnicities to unite, a theme that the then new President Hamid Karzai wanted to promote in the new anthem.

Abdul Bari Jahani:  It’s about the pride we have taken in our country, in our history, in our – our present.

Ali Rogin:  Karzai’s choice of a well-known Pashto-language poet was also deliberate. Poetry is central to Afghanistan’s past and present, not just as a storytelling method, but as part of the story.

One of the most famous examples, Malalai of Maiwand, the namesake of Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai. In 1880, Afghans were fighting their second war against the British. During the battle of Maiwand, the soldiers grew demoralized. Malala roused them with a stirring short poem in the Pashto language known as a landay.

Person (reciting off screen):  “Young love. If you do not fall in a Battle of Maiwand, by God, someone is saving you as a symbol of shame.”

Ali Rogin:  These types of verses [i.e., landays], usually written by women, are what drew Shafiqa Khpalwak to poetry.

Shafiqa Khpalwak, Poet:  It’s a way of resistance for women. It has been throughout the history against patriarchy.

Ali Rogin:  But patriarchy was part of the Taliban. When it came to power in the mid-1990s, women were largely erased from public life.

So too were modern music and poetry, except for the Taliban’s own, which fixated on war and martyrdom. When the Taliban fell in early 2002, Khpalwak was 8 years old. As a student and poet, she flourished. In 2014, Khpalwak recited a poem at the presidential palace, paying tribute to another symbol of Afghan national unity, the flag.

Shafiqa Khpalwak:  I kind of glorified the flag as the flag of a land where there was love, it is free, it is prosperous, it is flourishing, it is youth, it is beautiful.

The Taliban website wrote about that, that this is a very erotic poem, and [that] she actually disrespected the Afghan flag.

Ali Rogin:  The poem, “My Flag Is Made of Colors,” became a surprise hit, catapulting Khpalwak to fame.

Shafiqa Khpalwak:  I was not expecting that it would go that viral.

I think it was one of the most important events of my life.

Ali Rogin:  In those years, the poetry scene that Khpalwak was part of embodied modern Afghanistan. Men and women took part in sher jangi, a traditional game that’s a mix between a poetry slam and a rap battle, like this one Kabul University in May 2021.

Just three months later, all of those forms of expression and the drive for gender equality were lost when the Taliban took over Kabul and the Americans withdrew. Khpalwak escaped Afghanistan and is now in Canada. One year on, she feels no more settled.

Shafiqa Khpalwak:  I think I’m not only exiled from my country, but I’m exiled from myself.

Ali Rogin:  For now, she has put down her pen.

Shafiqa Khpalwak:  This grief is so – it’s like an ocean. It’s drowning me. And I don’t know how to swim.

Ali Rogin:  Sometimes, though, grief inspires, as it did for poet and singer Goodar Zazai. Now living in Pakistan, he wrote “Akh Watan Watan,” “Oh, Homeland,” after celebrating his first Eid holiday away from loved ones.

Goodar Zazai, Musician:  We had lost our homeland. So, in a very disturbed and crying state, I wrote the poem “Akh Watan Watan,” and then I was able to sing it with music.

Ali Rogin:  Back under Taliban rule, popular music is once again considered sinful.

Jahani’s national anthem no longer plays, nor does the tricolor flag fly. But Jahani says that’s just Afghan history running its course.

Abdul Bari Jahani:  This is the luck of the – of the Afghans. Whichever party comes to power, they change the flag, they change the coins, they change the banknotes, they change the constitution.

Ali Rogin:  What remains is the desire for knowledge and freedom. Some women have opened unofficial schools to teach girls beyond grade six, when the Taliban says they must stop learning.

And a favorite act of public protest, gathering to read.

Do you believe that will continue, despite the Taliban being in power again?

Shafiqa Khpalwak:  Oh, yes, of course. This is how we survive. This is how we survive. And we will survive.

Goodar Zazai:  Those who think they can destroy our identity, culture and music by removing artists and poets should think again. No one can take Afghanistan from us. And each of us can work for our people in our professions from any corner of the world.

Ali Rogin:  The Taliban may have reconquered the country, but, in Afghanistan, history shows that the pen always outlives the sword.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Ali Rogin.

Judy Woodruff:  It’s an enduring reminder the pen does outlive the sword.

Thank you, Ali.

[Ali Rogin is a correspondent for PBS NewsHour Weekend and a foreign affairs producer at the PBS NewsHour, writing and reporting pieces for TV and the web.  Her reports have also appeared on MSNBC, ABC, SiriusXM, and nationally-syndicated FM radio shows..  Rogin joined NewsHour from ABC News in 2019, where she spent five years covering Congress and other beats in Washington, D.C.]

"Smithsonian and U.S. Army join forces to save works of art and culture threatened by war"

by Jeffrey Brown and Anne Azzi Davenport 

[The report on the present-day work of the U.S. Army’s Monuments Officers, posted below, was broadcast on the PBS NewsHour on 7 September 2022.  An extension of the World War II operation to secure art stolen by the Third Reich in occupied countries and from Jews and other disenfranchised and imprisoned people in Germany and Austria that became known as the Monuments Men, the task of the modern version has become the protection of art and ancient artifacts from damage by acts of war.

[The efforts of the World War II predecessors were chronicled first in the non-fiction book by Robert M. Edsel and Bret Witter, The Monuments Men: Allied Heroes, Nazi Thieves and the Greatest Treasure Hunt in History (Center Street, 2009), and then in the subsequent 2014 film The Monuments Men, directed and co-written by George Clooney (who also starred), produced by Columbia Pictures in association with 20th Century Fox, and Studio Babelsberg in Potsdam, Germany.]

A new collaboration between the U.S. Army and the Smithsonian Institution is expanding the numbers and capabilities of monuments officers in times of war. Their mission is to advise military commanders on how to minimize damage to art and key sites and to aid foreign allies whose cultural heritage is at risk. Jeffrey Brown reports for our arts and culture series, “CANVAS.”

Judy Woodruff: They’re known as monuments officers, and a new collaboration between the U.S. Army and the Smithsonian Institution is expanding their numbers and capabilities in time of war.

Their mission, advise military commanders on how to minimize damage to art and other key sites during conflict and aid foreign allies whose cultural heritage is at risk.

Jeffrey Brown reports for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Monuments Officer: I have got the base of the mask right here to secure it.

Jeffrey Brown: The National Museum of Pinelandia faces imminent attack, and its precious artifacts must be documented, photographed, packed, and moved to a new location within two hours, amid quickly changing circumstances.

On the scene to help, the U.S. Army’s Corps of Monuments Officers, Colonel Scott DeJesse.

Col. Scott DeJesse, Cultural Heritage Preservation Officer, U.S. Army: You have to be able to speak both languages. You have to be able to speak the language of protecting cultural property, and you must also have your military language and understand the processes.

Jeffrey Brown: People have one or the other often, right?

Col. Scott DeJesse: Have one or the other. And we’re bringing those world’s together in a way that has not been done before.

Jeffrey Brown: Pinelandia, of course, is a fictional country. And this was a simulated training exercise in a large hall at the National Museum of the U.S. Army in Fort Belvoir, [Fairfax County,] Virginia.

The precious art gathered from garage sales, flea markets, even dumpster diving, nothing worth more than a few dollars. But the military officers were the real thing, 21 specialists in art history, archaeology, curation, and other cultural heritage areas, six of them international officers here to train and network, the rest the first cohort of a joint initiative of the U.S. Army and the Smithsonian Institution.

Some were reserve officers moving to this new unit, including Captain Sonia Dixon, who’s also a doctoral candidate in art history.

Capt. Sonia Dixon, Cultural Heritage Preservation Officer, U.S. Army Reserve: I’m passionate about learning about so many different people and their cultures. And I am passionate about the military.

And to get the opportunity to do both of them at the same time and to show people, even if you come from an academic background, you can still have practical ways to help people in the real world.

Jeffrey Brown: There were also six civilian cultural experts new to the military, having completed physical and other requirements, among that group, Hayden Bassett, an archaeologist and curator at the Virginia Museum of Natural History [Martinsville], where he’s been using satellite imagery to document destruction in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Now he’s also Captain Bassett in the U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command.

Hayden Bassett, Cultural Heritage Preservation Officer, U.S. Army Reserve: This is our opportunity to engage with cultural heritage on another level.

I have always had a respect for the military. I never thought I would have the opportunity to take my particular skill set and apply it in a military context and serve in that capacity.

Jeffrey Brown: This was not the career path you were on.

Capt. Hayden Bassett: Certainly not.

Matt Damon, Actor (in film clip): Monuments Men.

Jeffrey Brown: It’s a new take on an idea that goes back to World War II popularized in books and film.

Matt Damon (film clip): So, you want to go into a war zone with some architects and artists and tell our boys what they can and cannot blow up?

George Clooney, Actor (film clip): That’s right.

Jeffrey Brown: And a group then called the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Task Force, often referred to as Monuments Men, scholar-soldiers rescuing artworks and other cultural treasures seized by the Nazis throughout Europe.

In more recent wars, however, the story has at times been less heroic, most notably in 2003 with the looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, when the military was criticized for failing to heed warnings about the value of the collection and the need to protect it.

Cori Wegener, Director, Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative: That was a moment in time that really galvanized public opinion even more about the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and it really impacted our mission as well.

Jeffrey Brown: Cori Wegener, a museum curator, was then an Army reserve officer, deployed to the Baghdad museum to assess the damage and salvage what was possible.

Cori Wegener: Walking into those galleries and seeing smashed objects on the floor, even though I was an art museum curator, I didn’t really know how to go about evaluating or salvaging objects. And I felt a little bit lost. I wanted to make sure nobody was placed in that position again.

Jeffrey Brown: Today, Wegener heads the Smithsonian’s Cultural Rescue Initiative. And it was she and Colonel DeJesse who designed the intensive 10-day training program that included courses in forensic documentation and practical problems like drying out damaged artifacts, and briefings from international partners, such as a Ukrainian museum director working to secure objects there.

There was a symbolic moment at Arlington National Cemetery, with a wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, including the nephew of a monuments officer killed in action in World War II, and the simulated museum evacuation, which included a jolting moment after one of the role players, acting as a security guard, accidentally, on purpose, put his foot through a painting.

That was just one moment of chaos amid constantly changing circumstances.

Capt. Sonia Dixon: It is not just we are looking at the art objects. Cultural heritage is so diverse, so dynamic, and, depending on the culture, it changes. It can be an object, and it can also be an intangible thing.

Jeffrey Brown: For his part, newly commissioned Captain Bassett was suddenly officer of the day, in charge of this operation, and found himself facing a commanding officer who arrived on the scene to ask some tough questions.

Commanding Officer: Cultural artifacts, they are important, but they are number two to human life. That’s the priority for our combat forces, OK? So if you need me to divert combat forces to protect the site, then I need to know that. Is it a company? Is it a platoon? What is it?

Jeffrey Brown: We’re you surprised by his questions?

Capt. Hayden Bassett: Oh, absolutely.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes?

Capt. Hayden Bassett: Part of my job during that was to be able to effectively communicate why cultural heritage is important, why, in this case, the Army or the coalition forces were expending resources to invest in cultural heritage protection.

Jeffrey Brown: And that, of course, remains a question. Why and how much should the U.S. care about preserving culture in situations when lives are at stake?

Colonel Scott DeJesse, who, by the way, is also a painter in civilian life, is a veteran of cultural protection in a military context. And he puts the issue in military terms.

You’re not suggesting that sending art historians out into the battlefield will win victories? Or you are?

Col. Scott DeJesse: I would say it’s a strategic imperative.

The part that we're moving into is the — not only a justification for doing it, but a validation for doing it, to validate the success for the mission. If the commander says, our lines of effort are to build partnerships, strengthen our partnerships with the host nation, well, we’re the experts that know, hey, this is how you build a partnership, by working, by protecting each other’s — what our societies mean.

Jeffrey Brown: Cori Wegener frames it from the civilian side, as a responsibility for museum and other professionals.

Cori Wegener: How can you ask the military to perform their duties for a treaty about protecting cultural heritage, if we don’t tell them what cultural heritage is? We’re teaching them how to do it, not just why they have to do it.

Announcer’s Voice (at “pinning ceremony”): Captain Hayden Bassett.

Jeffrey Brown: The training program’s end was marked by a pinning ceremony for these official newly minted monuments officers, now ready to deploy as needed around the world.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown at Fort Belvoir in Virginia.

Judy Woodruff: Redefining the U.S. military.

[In his more than 30-year career with the NewsHour, Jeffrey Brown has served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues, with work taking him around the country and to many parts of the globe.

[As arts correspondent he has profiled many of the world's leading writers, musicians, actors, and other artists. Among his signature works at the NewsHour: a multi-year series, “Culture at Risk,” about threatened cultural heritage in the United States and abroad; the creation of the NewsHour’s online “Art Beat”; and hosting the monthly book club, “Now Read This,” a collaboration with the New York Times.

[Anne Azzi Davenport is the Senior Coordinating Producer of CANVAS at PBS NewsHour.]

"Deaf cast challenges musical theater norms in production of 'The Music Man'"

by John Yang, Anne Azzi Davenport, and Alison Thoet 

[The transcript below is from a report on “Canvas,” the segment of PBS NewsHour that covers arts and health features.  This story aired on 5 July 2022.]

The classic American musical “The Music Man” has been a big hit this year with its revival on Broadway and on many regional and local stages across the country. John Yang went to the Olney Theatre Center in Maryland to see a novel take on the standard, and how art can be a model for a more inclusive society, where deaf and hearing communities live side by side.

Judy Woodruff: The classic American musical “The Music Man” has been a big hit this year with its revival on Broadway and on many regional and local stages across the country.

John Yang went to see a novel take on the standard and how art can be a model for a more inclusive society.

A note that American Sign Language interpreting was done simultaneous to the interview. That live process may affect the complete accuracy of the English interpretation.

The story is part of our arts and health coverage on Canvas.

John Yang: The spirited musical numbers, the sly scam, the Midwestern Americana, all the familiar touches of “The Music Man” are on display in this production at the only theater center in Maryland.

But [take] a closer look. This isn’t your grandfather’s River City. It’s envisioned as a place where the deaf and hearing communities live side by side, and not being able to hear isn’t the barrier. Half the cast is deaf or hard of hearing.

There were see-through COVID masks, so the non-hearing actors could read lips and facial expressions. American Sign Language interpreters were positioned across the stage. The set was created by a deaf designer with a minimum of stairs, so deaf actors don’t have to take their eyes off their signing castmates.

And a special lighting system let the nonhearing [sic] cast members know when there was a problem.

Jason Loewith, Artistic Director, Olney: There is going to be a surtitle screen . . .

John Yang: Screen.

Jason Loewith: . . . which will be particularly helpful for those in the balcony.

John Yang: Jason Loewith is in his 10th year as artistic director at Olney, one of the country’s leading regional theaters. His philosophy? Let the art lead.

Actor [in a scene]: We heard there’s a pool table in town.

Jason Loewith: The words are almost nonsense, but listening and watching the words be translated into ASL was revelatory. I thought, this is a brilliant new way to experience the musical.

And then, of course, our desire to create a community that is more inclusive by doing theater that is more inclusive, it felt like the sky was the limit.

John Yang: He wasn’t quite so enthusiastic about six years ago, when first approached by James Caverly.

James Caverly, Actor (through interpreter):

So it was akin to Frankenstein’s monster approaching the scientist and saying, make me a new wife, right? Same concept, I think, in my pitch.

(LAUGHTER)

James Caverly (through interpreter): But I would say that the pitch itself was different.

John Yang: Deaf from birth, Caverly was working as a carpenter in the theater scenery shop. After seeing Deaf West Theatre’s production of “Spring Awakening” on Broadway, he went to Loewith with an idea.

James Caverly (through interpreter): Let’s do “The Music Man.” Let’s do this!

And I don’t think that he was totally convinced on the idea at the moment. It took a few, maybe three odd-years of really pursuing it to convince him. Hey, hey, “The Music Man.” Hey don’t forget “The Music Man.”

John Yang: “The Music Man” is an American musical theater classic. It tells the story of Harold Hill, a charming traveling salesman, in early 20th century Iowa who dupes countless people into buying instruments for a nonexistent children’s band.

Marian Paroo, the town piano teacher and librarian, sees through him immediately, but then begins to see another side of him. By the time the final song is sung, they have each been transformed by love.

James Caverly (through interpreter): What I really wanted was, let’s shatter that perception that disabled people can only play roles that are designed or written for disabled people.

The world that is River City and “The Music Man” is a perfect choice for that.

John Yang: After testing the idea in a 2019 workshop with a hearing actor as Harold Hill, another twist: What if he was deaf?

James Caverly (through interpreter): So if you compare Harold Hill as a hearing man, he’s selling musical instruments. That’s believable. He doesn’t have to work additionally or extra hard to convince people that he could lead a musical band.

Now, a deaf Harold Hill is a different story. He’s a guy who really has to turn it up, really become a charmer to be able to convince a community of people that, hey, you should buy these musical instruments because, guess what, I can lead a musical band, right? Hah-hah.

So I think it amplifies the character in a way, and you have to really, really increase that art of deception.

John Yang: It makes Harold Hill not only the ultimate con man, in a way, but also what you were saying before, the ultimate salesman of dreams.

James Caverly (through interpreter): Absolutely. Absolutely.

John Yang: Caverly, fresh from his breakout role in Hulu’s “Only Murders in the Building,” was cast in the lead role.

Artistic director Loewith estimates this production cost about 40 percent more than a traditional staging. Among the added expenses? The [dozen] sign language interpreters, a director of artistic sign language, or DASL, and two directors, one hearing, one deaf.

The deaf director is Sandra Mae Frank, a star of the 2016 Broadway revival of “Spring Awakening.” She wanted this staging to be different.

Sandra Mae Frank, Co-Director (through interpreter): I wanted to include American Sign Language, but I didn’t want it to be anything that I’d seen done before. We have had deaf and hearing mixed productions in the past, but they’re usually shadow hearing individuals voicing for deaf individuals, speaking their lines in English.

And actors would then sometimes SimCom, which is speaking and signing at the same time, speaking English and signing at the same time. And that’s very commonly what you see in the world of theater. And, with this, I wanted to do something different.

John Yang: So while all musical numbers are sung aloud, some scenes have dialogue only in sign language, with supertitles to aid hearing audience members.

For Frank and director of artistic sign language Michelle Banks, who had the same job for this year’s Broadway revival of “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” it’s that combination of signed and spoken words to tell a story that’s both groundbreaking and promising.

Michelle Banks, Director of ASL (through interpreter): This is not just a one-off. This is not just for the arts. This can be a part of who we are as a humanity, a society, that this is how we can interact and engage with each other to look at one another fully, completely, as our intersectional identities present, how we each navigate the world.

Yes, this is beyond theater. You have to attend to the show. You may not know what’s coming next. You’re going to constantly have to be attuned, and your eyes, it’s going to be a lot to absorb, right? Your eyes are a muscle, and they may feel stretched, but that’s what the experience should be.

John Yang: Do you hope directors, producers and casting directors will take something away from this too?

Sandra Mae Frank (through interpreter): Absolutely. My hope is that, through this, this is not the last.

John Yang: As this diverse cast of actors unites their voices and hands in harmony.

The show is to run through July 24.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m John Yang in Olney, Maryland.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

Judy Woodruff: What a treat. And let’s hope we see a lot more just like it.

[The Music Man (book, music, and lyrics by Meredith Willson from a story by Willson and Franklin Lacey) opened at Olney on 17 June; it’s scheduled to run through 24 July 2022.  Caverly stars as Professor Harold Hill and Adelina Mitchell as Marian “The Librarian” Paroo.  (Christopher Tester plays Winthrop Paroo, Marian’s little brother.)

[The current Broadway revival of The Music Man began previews at the Winter Garden Theatre on 20 December 2021 and opened on 10 February 2022.  The production, under the direction of Jerry Zaks, has run for 46 previews and 165 regular performances as of 3 July 2022.  It stars Hugh Jackman as Hill and Sutton Foster as Marian.

[(I’m old enough to have seen the original production with Robert Preston and Barbara Cook.  I must have seen the show between its opening on 19 December 1957 at the Majestic Theatre and 9 January 1959, when Preston left the production, because I saw the opening-night cast, including young Eddie Hodges, 10-11—about two months younger than I was—as Winthrop Paroo.)

[The Olney Theatre, forerunner of the Olney Theatre Center, was founded as a summer theater In 1938.  Located in Olney, Maryland, in Montgomery County, 19 miles north of Washington, D.C., it became the Olney Theatre Center in 1994, and now operates year round, with additional programs, many of them family-oriented, and expanded facilities and performance spaces.

[The revival of Spring Awakening (music by Duncan Sheik and lyrics and book by Steven Sater; based on Spring’s Awakening [Frühlings Erwachen, 1891] by Frank Wedekind), a co-production of Deaf West Theatre of Los Angeles, ran from 27 September 2015 to 24 January 2016.  It had a cast of both deaf and hearing actors who performed the show in American Sign Language and English simultaneously.  (Sandra Mae Frank, the deaf director of Music Man, played Wendla.)

[Only Murders in the Building, a mystery-comedy streaming television series created by Steve Martin and John Hoffman, premièred on Hulu on 31 August 2021.  The series, currently in its second season, stars Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez; Caverly played Theo Dimas in Season 1.

[In the fall of 2019, New York City’s Public Theater revived Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf. The production was directed by Leah C. Gardiner and featured a deaf actress, Alexandria Wailes, in the role of Lady in Purple.  The show transferred to Broadway on 1 April 2022 and officially opened at the Booth Theatre on 20 April; it closed on 5 June 2022 after 23 previews and 51 regular performances.

[John Yang is a correspondent for the PBS NewsHour.  He covered the first year of the Trump administration and is currently reporting on major national issues from Washington, D.C., and across the country.  Anne Azzi Davenport is the Senior Coordinating Producer of “Canvas” at the NewsHour.  Alison Thoet is an Associate Producer at NewsHour for “Canvas.”]

Actors On Their Work

[The backstory of “Brief But Spectacular,” a weekly series that premièred on NewsHour in 2015, begins with creator Steve Goldbloom, the creator and host of the original comedy news show for PBS, “Everything But the News,” and his longtime producing partner Zach Land-Miller who conduct every interview off-camera and off-screen.  (The segments are all two to four minutes long and there are no cutaways to reporters or interjections of questions.)  Each Thursday, “Brief But Spectacular” introduces NewsHour viewers to original profiles; these short segments feature some of the most original contemporary figures, offering passionate takes on topics they know well.  These have included household names like actors Alec Baldwin and Carl Reiner, artist Marina Abramović,  and activist Bryan Stevenson.  Topics have included comedian, writer, and director Jill Soloway (Amazon’s original series Transparent) on gatekeepers in Hollywood, journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates on police reform in America, Abramović on the art of performance, author Michael Lewis on finding disruptive characters, performers Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer on the rise of their hit Comedy Central series Broad City, engineer Jason Dunn on creating the first 3-D printer in space, and many more.]

“BRYAN CRANSTON ON BEING READY FOR LUCK”
by Bryan Cranston

[Actor Bryan Cranston delivered this “Brief But Spectacular” essay on the PBS NewsHour on 1 November 2018.]

Oscar-nominated actor Bryan Cranston, best known for his role as Walter White in “Breaking Bad” [2008-13 on American Movie Classics (AMC)], didn’t get his big break until age 40, when he was cast in the family TV sitcom “Malcolm in the Middle” [2000-06 on the Fox Network] Now, he’ll be playing the role of Howard Beale in the upcoming Broadway production of “Network” [Belasco Theatre, 6 December 2018-8 June 2019, for a limited run; 2019 Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play]. He shares his brief but spectacular take on an unusual career trajectory and the role of luck.

Judy Woodruff: Oscar-nominated [2016, for playing Dalton Trumbo in Trumbo] actor Bryan Cranston is best known for his Emmy-winning role as Walter White in the TV series “Breaking Bad.”

But, as he explains in tonight’s Brief But Spectacular episode, it took him some luck to get there.

Starting next Saturday, Cranston will be playing the role of Howard Beale in the Broadway production of “Network,” based on the famous [1976] film.

Bryan Cranston: The first thing I look for when I read a script is, does the story move me?

What I truly love about this, and when I talk to audiences about anything I have done or any other movie or stage piece, is that the audience is always right. However you felt, however you reacted to something is always right. That’s how you felt.

And it’s remarkable how you can sit next to someone and watch a movie. I could be weeping, and they’re like, eh. It’s like, really? They say, yes, it missed me.

The only failure is if you move an audience to nothing, to boredom. If they are indifferent about what they just experienced, whether it’s a painting or a recital or a singer or a dancer or a play, if they are, I feel nothing throughout, then we failed. Then we failed.

Actors come to town, to New York or Los Angeles or London, and they say, you know, I’m going to give it a shot. I’m going to give it a year and see if I can become successful.

And to those, I want to say, I can save you a year of your time. If you think that this is something that you can carve out some arbitrary amount of time to achieve certain things, this is not for you. This is a lifetime.

When you first start out as an actor, your answer to any question is yes. Do you want to? Yes, I want to do that.

I started out in 1979 doing background work as an extra. Angry mob. Drunken frat boy. Reckless driver. And then, when you first get that break where you actually have a name, Steve, wow, I actually have a name, I’m Steve, you feel like you have progressed to some degree.

There’s no career that has ever been achieved in entertainment — I truly believe this — without a healthy dose of luck. Someone said, OK, kid, I will read your script, or, all right, you want to audition? Come in. Do it right now.

And then you got to be ready. Celebrity is a byproduct of what I do and what I like to do. It’s not what I was after. I was a working actor. Things were fine. I was paying my bills, leading a very middle-class economic life. And then I got a lucky break at age 40 and was cast in “Malcolm in the Middle.”

At 50, I got an even bigger break when I was cast as Walter White on “Breaking Bad.”

That was my trajectory. It came when it was supposed to come. And that’s the interesting thing about luck. It doesn’t work on your timetable. It works on its own.

My name is Bryan Cranston, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on being an actor.

[After appearing in this “Brief But Spectacular” segment, Bryan Cranston starred in the TV miniseries Your Honor in 2020-21 on the Showtime cable network.  For his performance, he received a 2021 Golden Globes nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series, Anthology Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television.  Cranston also starred as President Lyndon Johnson in All The Way on Broadway from 6 March to 29 June 2014.  He later performed the play on HBO as a TV movie in 2016.]

*  *  *  *

“ADRIENNE C. MOORE’S BRIEF BUT SPECTACULAR TAKE ON THE CHARACTERS IN HER LIFE”
by Adrienne C. Moore 

[Actress Adrienne C. Moore’s “Brief But Spectacular” appearance on the PBS NewsHour was on 27 November 2019.] 

Adrienne C. Moore is an actress best known for her role in the Netflix TV series “Orange is the New Black.” [The series streamed on Netflix from 2013 to 2019.] During her first theater performance, she immediately noticed the way the show affected the audience emotionally. Moore opens up about drawing inspiration from her upbringing in Atlanta, the impact her father had on her and her Brief But Spectacular take on the characters of her life.

Judy Woodruff:  Tonight’s Brief But Spectacular features performer Adrienne C. Moore, an actress best known for her role in “Orange Is the New Black.”

She opens up here about pulling characters from her upbringing in Atlanta and the impact her father had on her.

This is part of Canvas, our continuing covering of arts and culture.

Adrienne C. Moore:  What I love about acting and being in front of people is, honestly, seeing their expressions.

My first production that I can remember was “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” in Nashville, Tennessee. [Moore is referring to a stage adaption by the author of Barbara Robinson’s 1971 novel of the same title.  Moore was six when she appeared in the production.]  I had no lines, just the little chorus parts. But that gave me a chance to look at every single person in the audience during the show and seeing them smile, and laugh, and have feelings and emotions.

And from that moment on, I said, I want to do this for the rest of my life.

“Orange Is the New Black” came about just like any other audition. They called me in for Black Cindy. Immediately, when I read it, I said, oh, my gosh, I know this girl. To me, she represented a lot of girls that I had run across when I’d moved to Atlanta, just very fiery and speak their minds, and pop their fingers, and roll their eyes, and roll their heads, and just tell their truth.

And so, when I read her, I said, I think I could embody her pretty well.

[A scene from the show:] Of course she ain’t smiling. She got screwed by me, by — by everybody. Suzanne, everything is broken and life is unfair. When are you going to learn that?

The play that I did in Shakespeare in the Park was called “Taming of the Shrew.” [The Public Theater production, in which Moore played Tranio, was in June-July 2016.] I got to work with Phyllida Lloyd, who is a phenomenal director. And I was always afraid of Shakespeare, iambic pentameter, and just going up on a line and all that kind of stuff.

But she really taught me how to own the language and, in that ownership, how to own the character. And once I got past that fear, I had the most amazing time.

What was so revolutionary about that experience was that I lost my dad literally in the same time that I was doing that show. And so I was experiencing incredible highs and incredible lows at the same time.

But one of the things that my dad taught me and told me before he passed was happiness. And so that’s the thing that I always try to embody in my work and in my life and in who I am.

I feel like, when I’m in the pocket with something, I will sometimes hear this little chime or this a little ding somewhere off in the distance, and I feel like it’s my dad being like, you got it. You’re on the point, girl.

My dad was very proud of me, of his children, because one of the things he always said was, do what makes you happy. And a lot of times, when I get in very confusing places in my life, and I don’t know what choice to make, I always think about what he said, which is, do what makes you happy.

And so that’s how I make my decisions. I don’t question. I just go inside of myself. And I say, well, what will make me happy in this moment? Because that’s what my dad taught me.

My name is Adrienne C. Moore, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on all the characters of my life.

Judy Woodruff:  And you can watch additional Brief But Spectacular episodes on our Web site, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/brief/.

[Adrienne C. Moore appeared in Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf at the Public Theater in October-December 2019, which won the 2020 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Revival, Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play, and Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of a Play.]