With more than 20 plays to her name, playwright Catherine Filloux tackles tough topics that range from psychosomatic blindness in Cambodian refugee women in her critically-acclaimed play Eyes of the Heart, to her most recent play about gender-based violence in such countries as Guatemala, the U.S. and Haiti, called Action Hero.
Action Hero will be produced at La Mama E.T.C. in 2012. Filloux’s plays have been produced in the U.S. and around the world, and her music theater pieces, Where Elephants Weep and The Floating Box, premiered in Phnom Penh, Cambodia and New York City. Her many honors, awards, fellowships and grants include the Voice Award for Artistic Works (Voices of Women), LMCC Manhattan Community Arts Fund, New Generations-Future Collaborations Award (Mellon Foundation/TCG), PeaceWriting Award (Omni Center for Peace), Roger L. Stevens Award (Kennedy Center), Eric Kocher Playwrights Award (O’Neill), Callaway Award (New Dramatists), Fulbright Senior Specialist (Cambodia and Morocco), William Inge Center for the Arts Playwright-In-Residence, Thurber Playwright-In- Residence, Asian Cultural Council Grant, Rockefeller MAP Fund (for The Breach and The Floating Box), five-time Heideman Award Finalist (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Juror for 2004 MES International Theater Festival, Sarajevo, Core Writer of The Playwrights’ Center and New Dramatists alumna.
An Artist in Residence at La Mama E.T.C., Filloux created the Dog and Wolf Community Outreach Project to bring theater to neighborhoods where theatergoing is not necessarily a part of everyday culture, as well as to focus on community members’ concerns and feelings surrounding issues presented in the plays. She is a cofounder of Theatre Without Borders, a volunteer- based organization that engages in international theater exchange and collaboration.
Filloux received her French Baccalaureate with Honors in Toulon, France, and her graduate degree from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Dramatic Writing Program. Her play anthologies, Silence of God: And Other Plays and Dog and Wolf & Killing the Boss, are available through their publishers: