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Arts & Culture

'Selma '65' Looks At The Voting Rights Act And Famous Civil Rights March

Playwright Catherine Filloux is pictured. She will hold a Q & A after the performance of her play "Selma '65" on March 25 at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice.
Katie Schoolov
Playwright Catherine Filloux is pictured. She will hold a Q & A after the performance of her play "Selma '65" on March 25 at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice.

Playwright Catherine Filloux will hold Q & A after Wednesday night's performance at Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice

Playwright Catherine Filloux Talks About 'Selma '65'
GUESTS: Catherine Filloux, "Selma '65" Playwright Beth Accomando, KPBS Arts Reporter

Companion Viewing

"Mississippi Burning" (1988)

"The Long Walk Home" (1990)

"Home of the Brave" (2004)

"Selma" (2014)

Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of the last leg of the Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March. To celebrate that historic event, Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice will present a performance of Catherine Filloux's play, "Selma '65."

Catherine Filloux has turned playwriting into activism. She wrote about the violence of the Khmer Rouge and had it performed in Cambodia. In 2013, she took her play on honor killings to northern Iraq, in the region now occupied by ISIS. Now she challenges American audiences with "Selma '65", a play that asks us to look to the past in order to consider the ramifications of the Supreme Court’s 2013 invalidation of part of the Voting Rights Act.

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Her play is written as a one-woman show commissioned by actress Marietta Hedges in which Hedges plays both Viola Liuzzo, a largely forgotten civil rights activist who was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan shortly after the Selma voting march, and Tommy Rowe, an FBI informant working undercover with the Klu Klux Klan. During the play Hedges uses her voice, mannerisms, and some props and clothing to morph back and forth between the two historical figures.

"Selma ’65" will have one performance on Wednesday at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice at University of San Diego, in conjunction with a photography exhibit by Bruce Davidson, who made an important series of photographs in Selma and Montgomery in 1965.

Filloux will be present for a post performance Q & A. The performance is currently sold out but there is a wait list that you can register for online.

Playwright Catherine Filloux Talks About 'Selma '65'