Silence of God: And Other Plays by Catherine Filloux

by Catherine Filloux

 Filloux's plays explore social justice from a global perspective, with a focus on Western liberalism. Themes of 'honour killing', the Khmer Rouge genocide, human responsibility in the face of lawlessness, and women's rights are treated with a lyricism that is at once anguished, brutal and poetic. In her plays, Filloux places the personal in the political using imaginative and evocative theatricality. Her characters look through to other worlds, illuminating the complexity of different cultures and the difficulty of seeking justice. A collection of five new plays by Catherine Filloux, with introductions for each play by the leading scholars who provide context and commentary on the range of Filloux's drama. Lemkin's House is a surreal portrait of Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the word genocide. In The Beauty Inside , Filloux places the audience in the midst of a culture war after an attempted 'honour killing'. In Eyes of the Heart , a Cambodian refugee woman suffers from psychosomatic blindness. Silence of God depicts America's complicity through the eyes of a journalist, at the end of the Pol Pot leadership. Mary and Myra is a play about one woman (Mary Todd Lincoln) damned by her reputation, saved by one (Myra Badwell) who was damned into obscurity.

314 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 2009

About the author

CATHERINE FILLOUX is an award-winning French American playwright who has been writing about human rights and social justice for over thirty years. Her plays have been produced around the U.S. and internationally. Catherine has been honored with the 2019 Barry Lopez Visiting Writer in Ethics and Community Fellowship; the 2017 Otto René Castillo Award for Political Theatre; and the 2015 Planet Activist Award. Filloux is the librettist for four operas, produced nationally and internationally; her most recent “Orlando” is the winner of the 2022 Grawemeyer award. Recent plays include: “Under the Skin” commissioned by INTAR in New York City, her livestream web drama about deportation and children “turning your body into a compass”, and “whatdoesfreemean?” produced in New York City by Nora’s Playhouse. Filloux’s more than thirty plays have been widely published, anthologized, and written about. Her new musical “Welcome to the Big Dipper” with composer Jimmy Roberts (I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change) is a National Alliance for Musical Theatre finalist. Catherine has traveled the world for her plays, including to Bosnia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Haiti, Morocco, Northern Ireland, and South Sudan. And in Iraq she collaborated with ArtRole’s production of her play The Beauty Inside and in ArtRole’s Women in Action conferences. She is the Board President of CultureHub, a global art and technology community, and has served as a screenwriting mentor for Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) Reentry program for incarcerated people. She received her M.F.A.at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts’ Dramatic Writing Program and her French Baccalaureate in Philosophy, with Honors, in Toulon, France. She is a co-founder of Theatre Without Borders, a Fulbright Senior Specialist, and an alumna of New Dramatists.
www.catherinefilloux.com

Reviews

[Brendan Ryan]

I only read Silence of God bc I'm in Cambodia and it centers around a journalist and Pol Pot.

A good read, I was iffy on some of the romance, but still was okay

[darcy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Opening Line: When it came time to pay me, the customer took acid and threw it in my face.