Filed under: Season One, TheatreNow! Artists, Yvette Heyliger, Yvonne Farrow | Tags: African-American Theatre, Danai Gurira, Hamilton Dramaturgy's TheatreNow!, HIV/AIDS Plays, Los Angeles Theatre, NYC Theatre, Twinbiz, Yvette Heyliger, Yvonne Farrow
TheatreNow!’s newest podcast features twin sisters whose artistry encompasses practically every talent needed to succeed in show business. Yvette Heyliger and Yvonne Farrow are founders of Twinbiz, a company whose mission is to write, direct and produce original works for stage, television and film. The interview was recorded on May 30, 2010, a few days after Yvette received her M.F.A. in playwrighting from Queens College in New York City.
Please listen to their interview, in two parts, of course, on my companion blog, hamiltondramaturgy.wordpress.com.
Yvette Heyliger is a playwright, a director and a producing artist based in New York City. She is currently editing a book of her own plays, entitled, What A Piece of Work Is Man!: Plays for Leading Women.
Yvonne Farrow is an actress, writer, filmmaker, model, and choralographer. She is based in Los Angeles. She wrote, produced, co-directed and starred in the award-winning short film I’d Rather Be Dancing. Please visit her website at www.gotchoralography.com
The twins often collaborate. Yvonne starred in Yvette’s award-winning play WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?, which completed a sold out run at the Billie Holliday Theatre in Brooklyn this Spring. It is a fearless drama which explores the impact of HIV/AIDS on the African-American community. You can reach them through www.twinbiz.com
Anne interviewed Yvette and Yvonne in May.
CORRECTION: Please note that Danai Gurira is the actor and writer’s name. I pronounced it incorrectly in the segment. -Anne
Anne Hamilton, Dramaturg and Playwright. www.hamiltonlit.com hamiltonlit@hotmail.com
TheatreNow! Staff: Anne Hamilton, Producer and Host; Linsey Bostwick, Editor
Filed under: Catherine Filloux, TheatreNow! Artists | Tags: Catherine Filloux, Hamilton Dramaturgy's TheatreNow!, Linsey Bostwick, NO PASSPORT, NYC Theatre
Catherine Filloux is an award-winning playwright who has been writing about human rights and social justice for the past twenty years. Her plays, and music theater pieces, have been produced in New York and around the world.
TheatreNow! Interview with Catherine Filloux – Part I -Thursday, 03 June 2010
Please also visit Part II, below. (For a faster download, please close out Part I first.)
TheatreNow! Interview with Catherine Filloux – Part II – Thursday, 03 June 2010
Catherine made the following statement at the NO PASSPORT conference in New York City. You can also download it here: Between You and Me, an Essay by Catherine Filloux.
For more interviews/features on Catherine, see http://www.catherinefilloux.com/links.html
Between You and Me
By Catherine Filloux
NoPassport Conference at Nuyorican Poets Café – February 26, 2010
All my plays have an American entry point. Though “American” is not the appropriate word. I love the United States of America: the idea that freedom is everyone’s birthright. In my play Silence of God, I exposed a secret capture plan by the U.S. to jail Pol Pot decades after the Khmer Rouge genocide. The U.S. government always knew where Pol Pot was but was caught up in superpower politics that made it inconvenient to get him. The U.S. government knows where Bosnian Serb military chief Mladic is (his house was just raided in Belgrade) but our priorities are elsewhere. What is the U.S. doing in the world through its control of oil, the military complex, and its passion for fear as a tool of repression? I think no discussion about genocide can exist without my acknowledgment of the Native American genocide. I grew up going to school in Toulon, France and my fellow students would say to me as they passed me in the hall: “Vous avez tué les indiens.” And I would say to myself in shock and embarrassment: “I killed the Indians?” My new play involves a tribe that is suing the federal government for actions resulting in “destruction” to the tribe’s sacred cultural sites. What’s more valuable: sacred, cultural sites or agribusiness profits? All my plays are about my own complicity: that of being from the United States. Rather than being some kind of punishment towards myself (or my country) I believe this work is the most hopeful, optimistic way I can find, as a theater artist, to fight repression and abuse. And to fight violence against women. The U.S. government didn’t sign the Kyoto Protocol; doesn’t believe in the ICC; waited three decades to sign Raphael Lemkin’s genocide convention; and our military pays private corporations to build land mines. It’s exactly because my immigrant parents and I loved the poetry at the heart of this nation that I am suffering at its gross misrepresentation around the world. The constitution is a document under siege. There’s only one thing holding us back from change in the U.S. and that’s the same two letters: Us. There’s only one thing holding me back from change in the U.S. and that word also has two letters: me.
You can follow Catherine’s career at www.catherinefilloux.com
— Anne Hamilton, Dramaturg and Playwright. www.hamiltonlit.com
TheatreNow! Staff: Anne Hamilton, Producer and Host; Linsey Bostwick, Editor
Hamilton Dramaturgy's TheatreNow! 