ORIGINAL THEATER WITH A PARTICULAR EMPHASIS ON WOMEN

LUZ

BY CATHERINE FILLOUX

DIRECTED BY JOSE ZAYAS

World Premiere at La MaMa

Fall 2012

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.

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/

 

Study Suggests Alarming Levels of Rape in Haiti Linked to Lack of Basic Resources
Report Documents Continued Insecurity in Camps, Calls for Immediate Action

(New York and Port-au-Prince, January 23, 2012)—High levels of sexual violence against women and girls in Haiti’s tent camps correlate with their inability to find adequate food, clean water, and sanitation, according to a new report released today by the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) and the Global Justice Clinic (GJC) at New York University School of Law.  The report—published just weeks after the two-year anniversary of the January 12, 2010 earthquake—reveals that in an alarming 14 percent of camp households surveyed, at least one person had been a victim of rape or sexual assault since the earthquake.  Fully 70 percent said they were more fearful of sexual violence since the earthquake.   
 
The Center’s new report, Yon Je Louvri: Reducing Vulnerability to Sexual Violence in Haiti’s IDP Camps, examines how shortcomings in the humanitarian response to the 2010 earthquake may have made women and girls more vulnerable to sexual violence, and offers recommendations for immediate steps to reduce risks now and into the future.  The title, taken from a Kreyòl proverb about the need for those without safety to sleep with “one eye open,” speaks to the climate of fear in which many displaced women and girls live. The study responds to reports from Haitian women’s rights organizations of an upsurge in cases of rape after the earthquake. It reflects a year and a half of intensive research, which included a survey of 365 households spread across four of Haiti’s IDP camps.  Quantitative analysis of the survey data identified significant correlations between limited access to adequate food, water, and sanitation, and increased vulnerability to sexual violence.  These findings were confirmed by qualitative data from 18 focus groups and nearly 50 interviews with experts in Haiti.   
 
“Our report supports what Haitian women’s groups have been saying since shortly after the earthquake: that women who have difficulty accessing the basic necessities of life, such as clean water, functioning latrines, and adequate food, are especially vulnerable to sexual violence,” said Margaret Satterthwaite, a Faculty Director at CHRGJ and the Principal Investigator for the study. “Humanitarian best practices for preventing and responding to sexual violence need to be implemented immediately in Haiti’s remaining IDP camps.  Simple measures like installing lighting in camps and locks in latrines must be coupled with long-term strategies for women’s economic empowerment.”
 
More than half a million people continue to live in tents or makeshift shelters in IDP camps throughout earthquake-affected zones of the country, the majority concentrated in the densely populated capital city of Port-au-Prince.  Despite the massive humanitarian response to the disaster, living conditions in the temporary settlements are dire and appear to be deteriorating as IDPs face forced evictions and dwindling humanitarian assistance.  Accessing adequate food, water, and sanitation constitutes a daily struggle for camp residents. Tents and other makeshift shelters provide little protection against the elements, let alone against intrusion by assailants. In addition to harsh physical conditions, socioeconomic marginalization and lack of participation of IDPs in governance decisions regarding security and the management of essential resources have heightened the risk that displaced women and girls will experience sexual violence.   

“Many women and girls lost the family and community protections they had before the earthquake, making them particularly vulnerable targets for sexual assault,” said Nikki Reisch, a principal author of the report and a law student advocate with GJC who traveled to Haiti with the investigative team. “Victims of violence not only fear reprisal for reporting attacks; they find themselves re-victimized by a system that often silences them and denies them access to justice. The government of Haiti and the international community need to improve security patrols in the camps and ensure free and immediate access to alternative shelter, medical services, and legal assistance for IDPs who have been sexually assaulted.”
 
The GJC Study suggests that those most vulnerable to sexual violence are likely to:

• Be young and female
• Reside in a household with three or fewer members
• Have limited access to food   
• Have limited access to water   
• Have limited access to sanitation
• Live in a camp without participatory and responsive governance structures
  

Yon Je Louvri presents this “Victim Profile” alongside a set of concrete recommendations about how the government of Haiti, the international community, and organizations providing relief and development assistance can reduce the vulnerabilities of those fitting the profile.  Specifically, GJC calls on the government of Haiti and its partners to: provide IDPs who have been sexually assaulted in camps with free and immediate access to alternative shelter, medical services, and legal assistance; expand security patrols in and around camps and install lighting and locks in sanitation facilities in camps; prioritize creation of income-generating activities for women; ensure all IDPs have access to free or affordable clean water; and stop forced evictions of IDPs.

The report is available online at:
http://www.law.nyu.edu/news/SATTERTHWAITE_MARGARET_CHRGJ_GJC_HAITI_REPORT