Organizer: PEN America
Type/Location: Virtual
Description:
Please join us for a free, member exclusive webinar with Catherine Filloux, award-winning French Algerian American playwright and librettist who has been writing about human rights for thirty years. With a deep commitment to craft and changemaking, her Cambodia-America rock opera Where Elephants Weep follows the story of Sam, a refugee from the Khmer Rouge genocide who is committeed to finding his roots in his native culture. 2025 marks fifty years since the Khmer Rouge regime began its devastating rule, making this conversation both timely and essential.
Filloux will be joined by her collaborators on Where Elephants Weep, renowned composer Him Sophy and performer and policy analyst Amara Goel, for an enriching discussion on creating art across cultures. The conversation will be moderated by Executive Director of the Artists at Risk Connection Julie Trébault. An audience Q&A will follow.
Where Elephants Weep is available to rent on Broadway on Demand here. A link to a free viewing will be included in the confirmation email upon registration.
About the Speakers:
Catherine Filloux is an award-winning French Algerian American playwright and librettist, who has been writing about human rights for decades. Her plays and operas have been produced nationally and internationally. In New York City, Filloux’s new musical, Welcome to the Big Dipper (composer Jimmy Roberts), premiered Off-Broadway at the York Theatre, and her play, How to Eat an Orange, premiered at La MaMa Downstairs Theatre. Filloux is the librettist for Orlando(composer Olga Neuwirth), the first opera at Vienna State Opera by a woman composer-librettist team (2022 Grawemeyer Award); and Where Elephants Weep (Chenla Theatre, Cambodia, composer Him Sophy), broadcast on Cambodian national TV and Broadway on Demand. Filloux has traveled for her plays to conflict areas including Bosnia, Cambodia, Guatemala, Haiti, Iraq, Morocco, Sudan and South Sudan.
Amara Goel is a Cambodian American performing artist and policy analyst. Amara has appeared in Where Elephants Weep, Sun and Sea, and Winds of Angkor. She has worked as a researcher and writer for World Vision on the global hunger crisis and the Sudan crisis and is a consultant at the United Nations International Labour Organization working on the eradication of child and forced labor.
Him Sophy is a Khmer Rouge survivor with a PhD degree from the Tchaikovsky Conservatorium in Moscow, combining Western classical music with traditional Khmer as well as rock and roll (going back to Cambodia’s roaring sixties.) His acclaimed “Where Elephants Weep: a Cambodian Rock Opera was performed in Lowell, Massachusetts and in Phnom Penh: “a rock opera that wouldn’t look out of place in London’s West End or New York’s Broadway. It could mark the rebirth of Cambodian theatre.” (Guy Delauney, BBC World News).
Julie Trébault is the Executive Director of Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) – an independent organization that defends and advances the right to artistic freedom, providing practical resources and support to ensure that artists and cultural professionals can live and work safely without fear. A highly respected leader in the art world, she previously served as director of public programs at the Museum of the City of New York, where she built a robust roster of panel discussions, performances, screenings, and symposia spanning New York City’s arts, culture, and history. Prior to that, she was director of public programs at the Center for Architecture. Before moving to New York, she worked at the National Museum of Ethnology in The Netherlands, where she built a network of 116 museums across the globe that shared a virtual collection of masterpieces and developed an innovative array of online and mobile applications and exhibitions to make the collection as widely accessible as possible. From 2004 until 2007, she was Head of Higher Education and Academic Events at the Musée du quai Branly (Paris), where she conceived and implemented a policy for higher education by creating an international network of universities, graduate schools, and research institutes. Trébault holds a Master’s Degree in Arts Administration from the Sorbonne University, a Master’s Degree in Archeology from the University of Strasbourg, and taught at Fordham University. She speaks French, English, and Spanish.
Registration:
To attend the event online, please register here.