Catherine Filloux
Catherine Filloux is a French-Algerian-American playwright. She has received awards from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, the O'Neill, the Rockefeller MAP Fund, and the Asian Cultural Council. In 2003 she was a Fullbright Senior Specialist in playwriting in Cambodia.
Filloux's plays have confronted the issue of genocide in many nations. She was first drawn to the subject on reading of the psychosomatic blindness suffered by a group of Cambodian women after witnessing the massacres of the Khmer Rouge, a story that formed the basis of her 1996 play Eyes of the Heart. She continued to work with survivors of the Cambodian genocide, developing the oral history project A Circle of Grace with the Cambodian Women's Group at St. Rita's Centre for Immigration and Refugee Services in the Bronx, New York.
Her 2005 play Lemkin's House is based on the life of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jew and American immigrant lawyer who invented the word genocide in 1944 and spent his life striving to have it recognized as an international crime.
Filloux states "For a while, these crimes were the 'best-kept secrets,' but they're not even secrets. They happen all the time, and nobody cares. And that's the problem on some level with doing this kind of theater. There's just a little wall that's been built up against these things, and to write theater about them is part of the challenge." [1]
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[edit] Biography
Of her parents, Filloux says, "My dad was born in the center of France, and he became an adventurer," who boated from France to New York in a catamaran. "My mom was a very literate person who loved literature" and wrote poetry in both French and English. As a child, Filloux moved with her family to San Diego, where she grew up. She says, "We grew up ... in this kind of schism of Algeria, France, and San Diego. So it made for a background of not really knowing where one belongs..." [2]
Filloux received her M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU) and her French Baccalaureate with Honors in Toulon, France.
[edit] Works
- PLAYS (SELECTED PRODUCTIONS)
LUZ
-2012 La MaMa, 50th Anniversary Season, New York, NY
-2011 NYU Gallatin, “Series: Remapping September 11th Ten Years Later”, New York, NY
DOG AND WOLF
-2010 59E59 Theaters, New York, NY
(Developed at The Playwrights’ Center, Minneapolis, MN & New York Theatre Workshop, New York, NY)
-2010 Dog and Wolf Community Outreach Project (Watson Arts): Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens, NY http://www.culturehub.org/video/2011/3/11/dog-and-wolf.html
KILLING THE BOSS
-2008 Cherry Lane Theatre, New York, NY
LEMKIN’S HOUSE
-2007 Season, Rideau de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium
-2006 McGinn-Cazale Theatre, New York, NY; Producers: Vital Theatre Co. & Body Politic Theater
-2006 Season, 78th Street Theatre Lab, New York, NY
-2005 Season, Kamerni Teatar 55, Sarajevo, Bosnia; & Roxy Art House, Edinburgh, Scotland
-2005 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, (Reading co-sponsored by Theater J)
THE BREACH
(with Tarell McCraney and Joe Sutton)
-2008 Season, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle, WA
-2007 Season, Southern Rep, New Orleans, LA (Premiere/Commission)
THE BEAUTY INSIDE
-2005 Season, New Georges, New York, NY (Co-produced with InterAct Theatre Co., Philadelphia, PA)
EYES OF THE HEART
-2004 Season, National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO), New York, NY
-2002 25th Bay Area Playwrights Festival, San Francisco, CA
ESCUELA DEL MUNDO
-2006/2005 Seasons, The Ohio State University Theatre Department, Columbus, OH, with the Office of International Affairs; Toured high schools in Ohio (Premiere/Commission)
SILENCE OF GOD
-2002 Season, Contemporary American Theater Festival, Shepherdstown, WV (Premiere/Commission)
MARY AND MYRA
-2002 Season, Todd Mountain Theater Project, Roxbury, NY
-2000 Season, Contemporary American Theater Festival, Shepherdstown, WV
(Videorecording of CATF Production in NY Public Library for Performing Arts, Lincoln Center)
ARTHUR’S WAR
-2002 Theatreworks/USA, New York, NY (Commission) (Music by Jenny Giering)
PRICE OF MADNESS
-1996 Season, Emerging Artists Theatre Company, INTAR, New York, NY
ALL DRESSED UP AND NOWHERE TO GO
-Ongoing development for musical with Composer Jimmy Roberts (I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change) and John Daggett
-2009 Lyman Center for the Performing Arts, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT
-1994 Season, Playwrights Theatre of Baltimore, Baltimore, MD
VENUS IN THE BIRDBATH
-1990 Season, Alleyway Theatre, Buffalo, NY
CUT TO: THE DEAL
-2002 Season, Theater X, Milwaukee, WN
-1988 Season, Brooklyn Playworks, Brooklyn, NY
THREE CONTINENTS
-1998 InterAct Theatre Co., Philadelphia, PA (Reading)
-1997 New Georges, New York, NY (Reading)
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM S-21 (A Short Play)
-Produced in the U.S. and around the world, including Cambodia (in Khmer), Singapore, Thailand, India, Denmark, England and France.
PASSION.COM, MARRIAGE À TROIS, THE G WORD, LESSONS OF MY FATHER, STORKS, THE SUN ALWAYS ROSE, THE RUSSIAN DOLL, WHITE TRASH, VISITING HOURS
These short plays were produced at Play2C Studio Berlin, Germany; HB Playwrights Theatre, New York, NY; Immigrants' Theatre Project/Women Without Borders, New York, NY; New Georges, "Watch This Space: A New Georges Anthology", HERE, New York, NY; Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab & Culture Project's "Brothers Karamazov", New York, NY; Women's Project, New York, NY; Yale Cabaret, Yale University, New Haven, CT; University of California, San Diego Theatre Festival, San Diego, CA
- OPERA (SELECTED PRODUCTIONS)
NEW ARRIVALS -2012 Season, Houston Grand Opera, Song of Houston: East + West, Houston, TX, Composer John Glover (Premiere/Commission)
WHERE ELEPHANTS WEEP -2008 Chenla Theater, Phnom Penh, Cambodia and CTN TV Broadcast, Composer Him Sophy (Commissioned by Cambodian Living Arts)
THE FLOATING BOX: A Story in Chinatown -2001 Season, Asia Society, New York, NY, Composer Jason Kao Hwang (Premiere/Commission); New World Records CD Release (Aaron Copland Fund)
- CURRENTLY IN DEVELOPMENT
-2012 A one-woman play for actress Marietta Hedges (Commission)
- SCREENPLAYS
-2000 Play EYES OF THE HEART: Developed for Lifetime Television
-1999 PRISCILLA'S STORY: Screenplay Treatment, Malvina Douglas Productions, New York, NY
-1990 ALTAR EGO: Based on the Novel, "Vestments", by Alfred Alcorn
-1988 PRODIGAL SON: Optioned by Justine Bateman, Bateman Co., Los Angeles, CA
[edit] Awards
-2012 Manhattan Community Arts Fund grant, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York, NY
-2012 The Fund for Creative Communities grant, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and NYSCA, New York, NY
-2012 Local Arts Support, Brooklyn Arts Council/NYSCA, Brooklyn, NY
-2012-11 Artist in Residence, La MaMa, New York, NY
-2011 Lambent Foundation grant, Tides Center, New York, NY
-2011 Henry Smith Artist in Residence Programme in Belfast’s Woodvale Cambrai Community Centre and Holy Cross/Wheatfield Primary Schools, The Playhouse Derry~Londonderry, Northern Ireland
-2010 Voice Award for Artistic Works (Voices of Women), San Diego, CA
-2010 Hermitage Artist Retreat, Englewood, FL
-2010 Manhattan Community Arts Fund grant, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York, NY
-2010-2007 Core Writer, The Playwrights’ Center, Minneapolis, MN
-2009 New Generations-Future Collaborations Award, Mellon Foundation/TCG, New York, NY
-2006 PeaceWriting Award (Omni Center for Peace), Fayetteville, AR
-2006 MAP Fund, New York, NY (The Breach/Southern Rep)
-2006-1998 Five-time Heideman Award Finalist (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Louisville, KY
-2006 The William Inge Center for the Arts Playwright-In-Residence, Independence, KS
-2005 The Joe A. Callaway Award, New Dramatists, New York, NY
-2005 Critic’s Choice, Opera News, New York, NY
-2004 Jury for 44th MES International Theater Festival Sarajevo, Bosnia
-2004 Fulbright Senior Specialist, Higher Institute of Drama & Cultural Animation; Rabat, Morocco
-2003 Fulbright Senior Specialist, Royal University of Fine Arts; Phnom Penh, Cambodia
-2003 James Thurber Playwright-In-Residence, Columbus, OH
-2001 Asian Cultural Council Artist’s Residency Grant in Asia (Cambodia), New York, NY
-2001 L. Arnold Weissberger Award Finalist, New York, NY
-2000 MAP Fund, New York, NY, and NEA grant, Washington, DC (The Floating Box/Asia Society)
-2000 Community Arts Grant, Bronx Council on the Arts, Bronx, NY
-1999 Roger L. Stevens award:The Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays, Washington, DC
-1996 Eric Kocher Playwrights Award, National Playwrights Conference, O'Neill Theater Center, CT
