Sarah Holtzman, an American journalist, scores the interview of her career with Pol Pot, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge leader, but when he throws her out she learns instead of the secret plan to capture him. In 1998 the United States prepared to imprison Pol Pot to try him for crimes against humanity and his Khmer Rouge adversary Ta Mok, known as "The Butcher", made overtures to hand him over. Inspired by a close and early contact with a poet Heng Chhay, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge atrocities, Sarah became a journalist to answer the question of why evil flourishes in the world. What she discovers the day she meets Pol Pot raises more questions than it provides answers. Transformed by the poet Heng Chhay’s love, the lines blur between writing and living a story that is darker and bigger than she imagined. Can she reverse the cycle of violence, or is she too implicated?
“SILENCE OF GOD, directed by Jean Randich, is a brave attempt to come to grips with the Cambodian holocaust, something that has largely failed to penetrate the American consciousness…SILENCE OF GOD is a brave play, with a compelling story to tell.”
- T.L. Ponick, The Washington Times
“Over everything hangs the Cambodian tragedy and America’s complicity or inaction. That Pol Pot proves so banal in person accentuates the mystery of evil.”
- Christopher Rawson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2002
“The single female author in the group, Catherine Filloux, is a returning festival playwright. SILENCE OF GOD is a fictional account of Cambodia, Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, imagined through the eyes of a journalist at the end of the Pol Pot leadership. The lighting and set initially establish a reverence and awe for the material of a history too rude to be imagined. The play is ultimately about prayer and death, with a momentary flare of love at its center…One of the lines in the play speaks about “putting the spirit down on paper” and much of the play’s symbolism revolves around this significant act. It is the way human beings make an indentation in the universe. Filloux does this.”
- Grace Cavalieri, The Morgan Messenger
EYES OF THE HEART
SELECTED PLAYS BY CATHERINE FILLOUX
published by University of Hawai'i Press can be purchased here
Eyes of the Heart collects six plays by Catherine Filloux: Silence of God, Selma '65, Mary and Myra, Kidnap Road, Lemkin's House, and Eyes of The Heart. These powerful works take up issues of civil and human rights, genocide, and the determination of women and men to retain their dignity and humanity in times of darkness and violence.