ORIGINAL THEATER WITH A PARTICULAR EMPHASIS ON WOMEN

Luz, Helene and Zia, survivors of rape and torture from Guatemala, Haiti, and Sudan, seek asylum in US Immigration courts. Alexandra is their lawyer. She works for a corporate law firm, which represents corporations responsible for wreaking the environmental destruction and economic privation that underlie appalling violence perpetrated against her clients. A PR executive for one such corporation, Oliver, derides the hypocrisy of those who romanticize a world without oil, but cannot escape his son’s condemnation. From the garbage dump in Guatemala City, to the tent cities in Haiti, to the toxic ponds where birds expire, all search for hope in the unlikeliest, in-between places.

La MaMa presents

A Watson Arts Project

LUZ

by Catherine Filloux

directed by Jose Zayas

September 28 - October 14

WORLD PREMIERE

CATHERINE FILLOUX...about Playwriting: The Personal and the Political

“To embrace hope is a challenge, of course, in a world plagued by violence and pain. However, that is what theater is for me: a valuable art form that can help make political, living change and can build community. Theater can allow audiences to become witnesses, and through this communal act of witnessing, there can be re-imagination and even revolution.” - Catherine Filloux

 

JOSE ZAYAS...about LUZ:

"Catherine Filloux's LUZ is a necessary play. It is a play that takes a hard look at gender based violence on a global scale and makes shocking connections between corporate and human rights law practices. It's an intelligent, passionate and fiercely political play that never loses its narrative drive and refuses to polemicize or victimize any of its characters. As a director I am fascinated by the challenges presented by Catherine's text- it is a large scale work, panoramic in its view of its subject and people, poetic and surreal, tender and violent and ultimately clear eyed but hopeful.  The technical challenges are a gift to a director and I am excited to work with Catherine on shaping the production and finding exciting and innovative solutions to telling this story.  We plan on using a variety of devices- from puppets to video and live music to immerse the audience in a world where the rules of narrative and logic keep shifting subtly.  Over the past couple of years I have been working on a series of theatrical adaptations of novels- 'The House of the Spirits' by Isabel Allende and 'In the Time of the Butterflies' by Julia Alvarez- where the epic meets the personal and LUZ feels like a natural extension of this work.  I believe in what this play has to say, I think it is important but I also think that it’s deeply humorous and entertaining- Catherine’s triumph is in crafting poetry out of horror and finding ways to show us something that we think we know about in a new light."

 

LUZ Community Outreach Project

 

LUZ exposes the global scale of gender based violence and how collusion between corporate and human rights law practices serves to perpetuate these crimes.   The LUZ Community Outreach Project is an initiative to engage and connect individuals from all over the world through theater. Interested groups are invited to hold excerpted readings from LUZ, followed by discussions among the participants. It is our hope that these readings and discussions will propel audience members to take action.
 
Actions can range from a research project about a local human rights issue, to writing a letter to a representative concerning a relevant topic in the play, to sharing a personal story, to submitting art, all of which will be  posted on LCOP’s blog, as well as in La MaMa's theatre lobby during the production of LUZ. We hope to build a community around the issues raised in LUZ  that will help people to connect, to build awareness, to inspire hope and to bring change. 

For more information on how to become a participant in the LUZ Community Outreach Project, please contact us at http://luzcop.com

Please join us!

Sunday, February 5, 2012 2PM-4PM

for

An Excerpted Reading of:
LUZ

at
Still Waters in a Storm

To be read by members of the Still Waters in a Storm Community
Discussion and Writing Project to follow

The Room, 286 Stanhope St., Ground Floor, between Irving and Wyckoff, Bushwick, Brooklyn
http://www.stillwatersinastorm.org/hours-and-location/