Pollylogue:

Season 08-09 No1

Catherine Filloux’s plays masterfully fold

political ideas into dynamic characters,

creating engaging stories that defy

expectation. In Dog and Wolf, Catherine

carefully reveals the complex relationship

between a Bosnian refugee and an American

asylum lawyer. The play examines identity,

law, sexuality, family and the choices that we

make to achieve asylum. Catherine is a

co-founder of Theatre Without Borders, a

volunteer organization engaged in

international theater exchange, and she has

served as a speaker at playwriting and human

rights conferences and organizations around

the world.

—Polly K. Carl, Ph.D.

Curator, Ruth Easton New Play Series

Producing Artistic Director, The Playwrights’ Center

What is your play, Dog and Wolf, about?

Joseph, a U.S. asylum lawyer, wants to win asylum for Jasmina, a Bosnian refugee; and,

on some level, Jasmina wants to win asylum for Joseph. An emblem for the play

might be this line from it: “Everything we do is right before the bullet. Right after the

fall that saves us from ourselves.” Jasmina gives Joseph opportunities along the way,

but he can’t see them until the end. The play creates a staggered poetry of the

effort to connect and articulate. Jasmina has been to the bottom of death, through

the witnessing of mass graves, and she lives in this darkness, which is ultimately her

redemption. Joseph is afraid to go there, to the bottom, living in a steel cell, his

wheelchair, always playing by the rules, until finally Jasmina manages to help change

that. Jasmina is the rebellious wolf, Joseph is the trained dog. She is a shape shifter,

not consistent. She poses the play’s question: “How can you live your life in fear?”

Joseph controls his world with force, through his job. 

You made a reference to the title of the play. Talk a little about

the title and its meaning.

Entre chien et loup [between dog and wolf] is a French expression I grew up with.

The expression describes a time of day, before night, when the light is so dim you

can't tell a dog from a wolf. It also speaks to the limit between the familiar and the

dangerous, between the domestic and the wild. In Naked Translations, Céline Graciet

defines it as “an uncertain threshold between hope and fear.” That’s what the play is

about. I’ve written a lot about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, because for the

past 20 years in my work with survivors of genocide, especially Cambodians, I’ve

seen the various symptoms before me, often. The legacy of genocide and human

rights abuses is PTSD. Inherent in that PTSD are intrusive memories that come out

in the form of nightmare: memories and hauntings that are more real than actual

night and day.

How did you conduct research for this play?

From a personal standpoint I have lived through “a fall that saved me from myself.”

The play is about survival. It’s about falling so low that one questions living. I, at

points in my life, have reached that level and wanted to explore it as a playwright, as

well as one’s struggle to climb back up, which involves transformation. Dog and Wolf

gave me that opportunity. It’s obviously a dramatic and intimate revelation, but

important to talk about in terms of what you ask.

In 2007 I traveled to Srebrenica, where my play Lemkin’s House (about Raphael

Lemkin who invented the word “genocide”) was performed in Sarajevo by the

Kamerni Theater. I attended the annual memorial at the cemetery in Srebrenica. The

visit to the cemetery was part of a genocide conference. This visit to Srebrenica

changed my life and inspired Dog and Wolf.

I was also in Bosnia in 2004 and became very enamored of the culture and the

people there. Zlatko Topcic, Artistic Director of the Kamerni Theater in Sarajevo, is

a playwright and screenwriter I greatly admire and I have had the luck to work with

talented Bosnian actors there. I served on the jury of a Theater Festival in Sarajevo

with Bosnian professor Nirman Moranjak-Bamburac and Croatian scholar Sanja

Nikcevic, who taught me more about Bosnian culture. Then in 2005 a political

asylum lawyer from California, Jayne E. Fleming, introduced herself to me after a

performance of my play about an honor killing, The Beauty Inside, in Philadelphia.

Jayne had a client who feared such an honor killing. I have followed Jayne’s work as

an asylum lawyer, and she also contributed to me embarking on this play, Dog and

Wolf. I was also fortunate to meet the filmmakers of the documentary Well-Founded

Fear, Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini, who were generous and helpful to me. 

At the genocide conference in 2007, Carla Del Ponte was the Keynote Speaker, and

I could see the painful reality that the Bosnians were deeply disturbed by the lack of

indictments at The Hague. After the Srebrenica memorial, a group of Bosnians

spoke who were either involved in the genocide or had family that had been killed. I

began loosely thinking about “Jasmina” then. 

How do you manage the different languages spoken by the

characters in the play?

When Jasmina speaks English she speaks with a Bosnian accent. When she speaks

Bosnian she speaks unaccented English.

How did you learn that Bosnian dialect?

I worked at a refugee center in the Bronx in the 1990s, primarily with a Cambodian

Women’s Group, but I also taught ESL to Bosnian Muslim refugees who came to

New York during the genocide. I listened to the way they spoke. In Bosnia, I also

enjoyed the challenge and sometimes the humor of my encounters. 

How did you get involved in playwriting?

I was a bad actress in high school and college; however, I never could have been a

playwright without knowing what it’s like to be onstage. I love actors and feel they

are the true heroes of the theater. I wrote very long “inner monologues” for my

roles—backstage! I applied to NYU Dramatic Writing Program to “stay out of

trouble.” It’s hard to know if I’m still in trouble or not!

Your plays involve a wide range of characters and situations, but

you frequently return to (and are perhaps best known for) your

treatment of the topic of genocide. How did that evolve as a

recurring interest for you?

I guess I would say the common denominator is “human rights” not necessarily

genocide. And often it includes violence against women. I seem to be led to my plays

by obsessions, experiences, collaborators, and issues that emotionally grab me.

Joseph, the amnesty lawyer in Dog and Wolf, seems to have

become somewhat jaded from the horrific stories that he

encounters from his clients every day. Has working with the

subject of atrocity affected your view of humanity since you

started?

Joseph is skilled at his job and knows what his clients need to do in front of an

adversarial judge to win asylum. His behavior is less about being jaded than it is about

seeing if he has a client whose case can be won and how he can shape his client to

stand up against the difficulties of winning asylum after 9/11. In order to do so he

must be a tactician, not a “teddy bear.” I’m more of a teddy bear because I get very

caught up in the emotion of these subjects. I think sometimes I’m traumatized. But

my engagement is stronger than ever. I’ve always been an “outsider.” I grew up in

Southern California with French parents who learned English late in life. As an

outsider, I have a clear view.

What are your goals for developing Dog and Wolf while at The

Playwrights' Center?

I’m looking forward to working with Michael Dixon on the reading at the Playwrights’

Center and making my way through the script with him and the three actors, to see

how it lives in space, off the page, and then ultimately in front of an audience. I did a

workshop of my play Killing the Boss at The Playwrights’ Center last year; and it was

indispensable. During rehearsals for the production of Killing the Boss I kept on

thinking, “What a miracle I got that workshop.” Michael and Polly’s words are etched

in my mind—their comments were so succinct. When I think of them, their faces

retain a halo of light.

Is there a play or playwright that inspires you, and why?

Albert Camus, although he was not only a playwright, has inspired me. My mother,

who is also French-Algerian, and I found Camus to be an engaged human being.

Unless you believe in reincarnation, we only have one lifetime to work for change.

Camus speaks about the beauty of his home country and I know very well what is

the loss of country and the love of country and family. 

Any other comments?

I hope that the play inspires people to ask themselves: How do we negotiate living in

a world that sells real estate rights for space above buildings (air rights) while below

us are countless unnamed bodies strewn in muddy trenches?

Have you found a way to negotiate living in that world?

Well, come see the play!