4B - Thursday, October 16, 2008 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com 48 - Thursday, October16, 2008 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom RENT From Page 1B with the Tompkins Square Park riot. These two consecutive days of protest, violence and police brutality led the city of New York to wage a full-scale war on homelessness, led by Rudolph Giulani. The Internet also provided cast members with some unconventional research. School of Music junior Mark Ayesh has been reading blogs where people post their feelings about and experiences with AIDS. Ayesh plays Roger, an HIV-positive musician and Mimi's love interest. Ayesh called the epidemic a Sept.11 of the '80s and '90s. "I can't even wrap my head around (AIDS) happening. The lack of scientif- ic research done in medicine, a disease going around that people don't know about - that would be crazy." The cast made a quilt for the show in cooperation with the Names Project, an organization with the goal of spread- ing awareness by recognizing those who've lost their lives to AIDS. The Memorial Quilt, currently in Atlanta, is comprised of more than 40,000 three- by-six-foot panels and growing. The cast made eight of these panels filled with the names of friends, family mem- bers and influential figures with HIV. Yet throughout these challenging experiences, or perhaps because of them, the show manages to rock. The vibrancy and revelry of the LGBT com- munity is evoked with daring color and costume, electric guitar melodies and entertainingly uninhibited sexuality - all with the uncompromising "fuck you" attitude of idealistic youth. That's what makes this cast so per- fect for "RENT." Unlike most plays done in college, these students don't have to play grandfathers or farmers or little kids - the actors get to play char- acters who are supposed to be their age and have the same intensity in every- thing they do. There's a certain energy that comes with being a 20-something artist, desperate to change the world, that these actors bring to the stage. "It's really hard not to bring part of yourself into the characters because they're so close to the heart," Ayesh said. Overshown feels the same way: "If you asked me, I could sing the show backwards, word for word. It's so much Sa part of our generation it's only natural to feel magnetized to it," he said. Director and Associate Professor of Musical Theatre, Mark Madama, is taking this energy to form the play. Instead of controlling the creative pro- cess, Madama is making sure to push egos aside and tell the story to the best of his ability, expressing many of the show's darker issues; but more impor- tantly, creating a celebration of life, a dominant theme he has instilled in the cast. School of Music senior Cary Tedder, who plays Mark - an aspiring film- maker and Roger's roommate - has embraced these values wholeheart- edly. "Death and disease and homeless- ness and poverty - these things exist, but it's no reason to not live in love, live for today," Tedder said. "Give into love or live in fear." Blanchet agreed. "The message isn't about drugs or AIDS. The message of the show is no day but today." 0 Mark Ayesh as Roger in "RENT" FINE ARTS PREVEW Desire,' as seen, 0 1 through many eyes By NORA FELDHUSEN ing of a nude woman clinging to Daily Arts Writer a barren tree" in a back-room of the Saddam Art Center. Raffo col- With a single performer on one lected stories from Iraqi women small stage in Ann Arbor, "Heath- and "listened deeply to what each er Raffo's 9 Parts of Desire" leads woman said, what (they) want- a journey ed to say but couldn't and what through the (they) never knew how to say. physically Heather Then (Raffo) wrote her song." and men- Rffo's9Prts The analogy, to songwriting tally ravaged extends to the melodic nature psyches of of Kamoo's performance. A play nine Iraqi Through Oct.26 is never anything without its women. At Performance actors, and this is particularly Sarab Kamoo Network Theatre true of a one-person show. Hav- fluidlytransi- ing performed "Desire" in two tionsbetween other venues, Kamoo says she is Layal, the curator at the Saddam "more comfortable in the skin of Art Center; a young Iraqi girl who these women" and it's abundant- loves 'N Sync; and an American- ly clear that Kamoo understands Iraqi gripping a rosary while what she's doing on stage. watching CNN and praying for Walking from an upscale liv- her family. ing room to the wasteland of Sound like a lot of person- a bombed-out shelter, Kamoo alities to balance? There's also travels through time and space Umm Ghada, a survivor of a without ever leaving the stage. bombed shelter where 431 civil- She switches between regular ians were killed, including her contemporary clothing and an entire family. In one heart- abaya - traditional garb for Arab wrenching scene, Kamoo plays women -that she occasionally a doctor who desperately and alters. The minimal scene change viciously laments the genetic only accentuates her natural deformities and cancer caused transitions between characters. by depleted uranium. Raffo first performed "9 Parts Raffo's playwriting, Kamoo's performance and the direction of Edward Nahhat infuse this show with all varieties of human emo- Actress Kamoo tion. Layal comes on within the first few minutes of the show to transitions tell the audience, "I love it, but I hate it here." There is pain, yes, between nine but the women Kamoo plays dem- onstrate an incredible capacity characters. for understanding, compassion and love. Raffo, whose father is Iraqi, was inspired to write the show of Desire" in Edinburgh in 2003, after a trip to Iraq in 1993 where and since then it's been onstage in she found a "haunting paint- London, New York and elsewhere in the United States. She has periodically adapted the show ccording to current events. An Iraqi expatriate living in Lon- don, she voices the most politi- cal opinions about Saddam. and his regime. Clearly conflicted, she both embraces and rejects the war. She speaks of the mas- sacres committed by Saddam yet asks what this war means for Iraqis and Americans alike: "If you want to sculpt a nation, you cannot hack away at it without a E E plan for the human being." The human being lies at the center of this emotion- * * ally charged show. The women speak of war, love, rape, mem- 75 Pitchers Of ory, traveling, death and birth, and as the Iraqi-American char- / acter says, "we just keep going." * P a 'n W5-' War is a part of life, and of these P women's lives in particular, but If Pints- All 28 Drafts here we take an opportunity to Heineken & Amstel light look at "another side ofthe war": & 6 Wings $4.99 The human side. Raffo is a "songwriter" of - V stories and Kamno acts out these stories for the audience. f Al Sandwich Platters In regards to playing the role, K995.0100 Kamoo voiced her love for this S "3 tiftwi rare opportunity. "I feel so incredibly blessed," Kamoo said. "It's something I have to do."