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.
