Creative Team

Him Sophy, Composer
Him Sophy is a professor of music at the Royal University of Fine Arts and the Royal Academy of Cambodia, both in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Born into a musical family in Prey Veng province, Cambodia, Him Sophy began his studies in music in 1972 at the music school of the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, with French professors Madame Denos and Monsieur Guy Alain Hayer. From 1975 to 1979, his musical studies were suspended due to the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime, under whom he worked in a labor camp.

He resumed his music studies in 1981 at the School of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh. In 1985, he received a full scholarship from the former Soviet Union to continue his studies in Moscow, where he lived for the next decade. He studied piano with Prof. Lvovitch Bogomolov and Anatolievna Rima and composition with Prof. Konstantin Batashow and Prof. Roman Ledeniev. Him Sophy also studied musicology with famous Russian musicologist Dr. Yri Kholopov. He earned a Master of Fine Arts in music composition in 1993 and received his doctorate in composition in 1995. He successfully completed his PhD dissertation in musicology in 1998. The recipient of a prestigious Asian Cultural Council fellowship, Him Sophy traveled New York as a visiting scholar in 2001 and 2002.

His many compositions include: String quartet for violins, viola and cello (1987); A Memory from Darkness: Trio for violin, cello and piano (1990); Decline of Angkor — for soprano, flute, clarinet, cello, harp and percussion (1992); Symphony for large symphony orchestra (1993); The Mondolkiri Landscape — for cello and recorder (Khmer traditional woodwind khloy) (1998); I walk…and I cry on the island Poulouway – for recorder (the Khmer traditional khloy), flute, alto flute, and bass flute (1998); and The Onomatopoeia of rhythm of ensemble Pin Peat – for recorder, (Khmer traditional woodwind instrument khloy), flute, alto flute, and bass flute (1998). His music for dance includes Apsara — Dancing Stone: Music for contemporary Cambodian dance (1994). Him Sophy has also written extensively for film, including such compositions as Blood and Life, No Home Too Far, and Cambodia Dreams.


Catherine Filloux, Librettist
Catherine Filloux is an award-winning playwright who has been writing about genocide, human rights, and social justice for the past twenty years. Her plays have been produced in New York and around the world. They include: Dog and Wolf (The Ruth Easton New Play Series, The Playwrights’ Center, Minneapolis; Directed by Michael Bigelow Dixon, 2008); Killing the Boss (Cherry Lane Theatre, NYC, 2008); Lemkin’s House (Rideau de Bruxelles, Belgium, 2007; McGinn-Cazale Theatre & 78th Street Theatre Lab, NYC, 2006; Kamerni teatar 55, Sarajevo, Bosnia, 2005); The Beauty Inside (New Georges, NYC and InterAct, Philadelphia, 2005); Eyes of the Heart (National Asian American Theatre Co., NYC, 2004); Silence of God (Contemporary American Theater Festival, WV, New Play Commission, 2002); Mary and Myra (CATF, 2000 and Todd Mountain Theater, NY, 2002); Arthur’s War (commissioned by Theatreworks/USA, NYC, 2002); Photographs From S-21, a short play that has been produced throughout the world; Escuela del Mundo (commissioned by OSU, Columbus, toured 2006-2005); The Breach, a collaboration with playwrights Tarell McCraney and Joe Sutton about Hurricane Katrina (produced at Seattle Repertory Theatre, 2008; Southern Rep, New Orleans, 2007; and read at The Public Theater in New York City, 2008). The Beauty Inside was translated into Arabic for a workshop at ISADAC in Morocco, 2004.

Filloux is the librettist for Where Elephants Weep (Composer Him Sophy), commissioned by Cambodian Living Arts, to premiere in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in 2008; it received its preview in Lowell, Massachusetts in 2007. She is also the librettist for The Floating Box: A Story in Chinatown (Composer Jason Kao Hwang), selected as a Critics Choice in Opera News, 2005; CD released by New World Records; premiere at Asia Society, 2001.

Awards and Honors include: PeaceWriting Award (Omni Center for Peace), Roger L. Stevens Award (Kennedy Center), Eric Kocher Playwrights Award (O'Neill), Callaway Award (New Dramatists), Fulbright Senior Specialist (Cambodia and Morocco), William Inge Center for the Arts Playwright-In-Residence, Thurber Playwright-In-Residence, Asian Cultural Council Grant, Winner Nausicaa Franco-American Play Contest, Rockefeller MAP Fund (for Southern Rep and Floating Box), 5-time Heideman Award Finalist (Actors Theatre of Louisville), Juror for 2004 MES International Theater Festival, Sarajevo, Core Writer of The Playwrights’ Center, and New Dramatists alumna. Oral History Project: A Circle of Grace with Cambodian Women's Group, Bronx, NY. French-English Translation: Ubu Rep, NYC and various periodicals. Eyes of the Heart was developed for Lifetime TV.

Filloux’s plays are published by Playscripts, Inc., Smith & Kraus, Vintage, Seagull Books and Prentice Hall. Her anthology Silence of God and Other Plays will be published by Seagull Books “In Performance” (New Plays From Around the World) Editor: Carol Martin. Her articles have appeared in American Theatre, Manoa, The Drama Review, Contemporary Theatre Review (UK), and the Drama Guild Quarterly. She received her M.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and her French Baccalaureate with Honors in Toulon, France. She has worked as a French translator for various plays and literature. Filloux’s plays have been widely anthologized and critically reviewed in academic journals and books. She is a co-founder of Theatre Without Borders, a volunteer organization engaged in international theater exchange. Filloux has served extensively as a speaker for playwriting and human rights conferences and organizations around the world, including Amnesty International; RCN Justice & Démocratie, Brussels;
Shared Spaces Youth Culture Arts Network, Sligo, Ireland; California Institute of the Arts; Brandeis University; TCG; The Bushwick School for Social Justice; and Boston’s StageSource. www.catherinefilloux.com


Scot Stafford, Music Director
Scot Stafford’s music compositions have been featured in films, festivals (Mill Valley Film Festival, 2006), television commercials, and pop recordings (“Most Oustanding Debut” nomination for his rock group 'Applesaucer,' California Music Awards, 2000). He graduated from the Music Department of the University of Chicago in 1994, where he earned Special Honors for his thesis analyzing polyrhythmic systems of traditional Balinese music. At Chicago, Stafford studied composition with Andrew Imbrie and Jay Alan Yim; musicology with Charles Rosen and Howard Mayer Brown; ethnomusicology with Philip Bohlmann; and theory with Richard Cohn and Easley Blackwood.

In November 2002, Stafford founded Studio CLA, an ethnographic recording studio archiving traditional Khmer music and teaching modern audiovisual production arts to aspiring young engineers and filmmakers in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Scot and composer Sophy's deep friendship and fertile artistic partnership began nearly five years ago, during a recording session in the studio that led to their collaboration on the opera. Working with Sophy on Where Elephants Weep has been an incredible experience, bringing most of his diverse passions into one project for the first time: ethnomusicology, composition, music technology & sound design, rock, hip hop and theater. He currently freelances as composer, music producer, and musicologist, and lives in San Rafael, CA with his wife Monica and son Octavio.


Robert McQueen, Stage Director
In January 2007, Robert McQueen’s West Coast First Nations inspired production of THE MAGIC FLUTE played to standing ovations following two and a half years of preparation that engaged a creative team of 16 First Nations and non-First Nations artists.“An inspiring, must-see production, well worth the wait, the investment and the risk: a Magic Flute with real magic.” (Elissa Poole: Globe and Mail) “It made me feel something rarely felt in theatre or opera or life today: a sense of awe.” (Steven Schelling: The West Ender).

Other recent opera productions include: LA BOHEME for The Canadian Opera Company: “Director Robert McQueen, making his mainstage COC debut, shines right off the bat when a quartet of male bohos dance and sing in light mockery of their own poverty…Puccini would surely have appreciated the sumptuous design, superb acting and deft direction.” (Gord McLaughlin: Toronto Sun) and IL BARBIERE DI SEVIGLIA for Arizona Opera: “McQueen’s non-stop whirlwind of comedic activity lent the production a Marx Brothers zaniness.” (Daniel Buckley: Tucson Citizen)—as well as productions of L’ELISIR D’AMORE and TURANDOT. In workshop, Robert recently served as dramaturge during the development of the Vancouver Opera’s adaptation of the Joy Kogawa novel NAOMI’S ROAD. In the theatre, Robert’s most recent productions have included: I AM MY OWN WIFE for The Belfry Theatre in Victoria, AS YOU LIKE IT for Bard on the Beach in Vancouver, THE SPITFIRE GRILL for the Grand Theatre in London Ontario, as well as a production of YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU for the 40th anniversary of his alma mater, Studio 58 Theatre School in Vancouver. Other recent productions include THE CRADLE WILL ROCK, PAL JOEY, HAIR and CABARET.

Additionally, Robert was the Associate Director for the Broadway, U.S. nationals, Toronto, and Las Vegas companies of the musical juggernaut MAMMA MIA, and was Resident Director on the Hal Prince, Susan Stroman production of SHOW BOAT. Up-coming productions include: CAROUSEL at The Galaxy Theatre in Tokyo, Japan.


Seán Curran
In 1997, after two seasons at New York City’s Danspace Project where the dancers were paid with subway tokens for rehearsals and dinners after performances, Seán Curran decided it was time to grow up organizationally, to pay the dancers in real money and to create the Seán Curran Company. Since those modest beginnings the Seán Curran Company has toured throughout the United States and performed in festivals in France and Germany.

The company’s first major commission came in 1997 from Celebrate Brooklyn for the piece Folk Dance For the Future. Until then, Seán Curran, who took traditional Irish step dancing lessons as a child, had resisted using his Irish voice in the pieces he created. Folk Dance for the Future marked the beginning of Seán Curran’s incorporation of his Irish background into his choreographic works.

Other New York appearances soon followed the Celebrate Brooklyn performance, including performances at Dance Theater Workshop, The Joyce Theater, and The New Victory Theater.

The company has also had two engagements at Jacob’s Pillow, most recently in 2004 when Art/Song/Dance, a collaboration between Seán Curran and the Broadway composer Ricky Ian Gordon, premiered.

In the fall 2005, the Seán Curran Company premiered Aria, a new work which combines recorded apologies with opera arias by Handel.

Seán Curran (Artistic Director) began his dance training with traditional Irish step dancing as a young boy in Boston, Massachusetts. He went on to make his mark on the dance world as a leading dancer with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. He received a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for his performance in Secret Pastures.

A graduate and guest faculty member of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Curran was an original member of the New York City cast of the Off-Broadway percussion extravaganza Stomp, performing in the show for four years. He has performed his solo evening of dances at venues throughout the United States as well as at Sweden’s Danstation Theatre and France’s EXIT Festival.

Current and recent projects for Curran include productions of Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for The Shakespeare Theater, the twentieth anniversary production of Nixon in China and Street Scene at Opera Theater of St. Louis; choreography for the New York City Opera productions of L’Etoile, Alcina, Turandot, Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Capriccio, and Acis and Galetea; the Playwrights Horizons’ production of My Life with Albertine; Shakespeare in the Park’s As You Like It. He recently made his Metropolitan Opera debut choreographing Romeo and Juliette. Curran’s work has appeared on Broadway in James Joyce’s The Dead for Playwrights Horizons and The Rivals at Lincoln Center Theater. He has created works for Trinity Irish Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre’s studio company, Denmark’s Upper Cut Company, Sweden’s Skänes Dance Theater, Irish Modern Dance Theatre, Ririe Woodbury Dance Theater, and Dance Alloy, as well as for numerous college and university dance departments.

Curran has taught extensively at the American Dance Festival, Harvard Summer Dance Center, Bates Dance Festival, and Boston’s Conservatory of Music. Irish American Magazine selected Curran as one of its “Top 100” in the year 2000. Curran was awarded a Choreographer’s Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in 2002.

Happiest when making new work or performing, Seán Curran hopes to continue being an ambassador for the art of dance by building and educating the dance audiences of tomorrow.


Ieng Sithol, Artistic Advisor
Ieng Sithol was born in 1959 in Kampong Speu province. He began his studies in 1971 at the Royal University of Fine Arts, but when the Khmer Rouge took over the country in 1975, his education was interrupted. After the brutal Khmer Rouge regime fell in 1979, he resumed his studies at the Royal University of Fine Arts and completed his Baccalaureate of Arts in 1983. In 1986 he was placed in charge of Folkloric Dance at the National Theatre (Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts). Ieng Sithol became a well-known folk singer and actor, who was invited to perform all over the country. He has performed extensively for radio and television in Cambodia, and has also done recordings with companies inside and outside Cambodia. In 1982 he won a prestigious playwright’s prize, and was invited to teach drama in Laos in 1984. From 1983 to 1994, he created and directed seven theatre pieces and performed extensively. He received a medal of honor from the Royal Government of Cambodia in 2003. He has traveled to perform in countries including: Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Singapore, India, France, Holland, Belgium, New Zealand, Italy, Germany, Canada, Korea and the USA.


John Burt, Executive Producer
John Burt has been producing and directing theater-based projects for community development for over twenty-five years. He was founding director of the Traveling Artists and Performers Company in 1978, one of the earliest arts-in-education programs in New England. He founded both a theater development company and the commercial production company, John Burt Productions, in 1986. Commissions and productions include: Changing the Silence: Growing up in the Nuclear Age, national tour; The Slick of ’76: A musical Catastrophe, regional run; Almost September, regional runs (San Francisco Bay Award for Best Musical); THE GARBAGE CANtata, regional run and national tour (musical and education video co-produced by United Nations premiered the first Earth Summit); The Eco-Theater Festival (co-produced by New York State Parks); Cultural Baggage (TV pilot and education video co-produced with Moorhead Kennedy Institute).

Mr. Burt was the executive producer of the Children of War Theater and Film Project under the artistic direction of Obie Award-winning director Lawrence Sacharow of River Arts Repertory and with Academy Award-winning documentary film director Barbara Kopple. From this project he commissioned and produced the multi-media production The Road Home: Stories of Children of War, by James Lescene, which had its world premiere at New York’s Asia Society and featured Yolanda King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King. The play was featured at the Global Peace Conference at The Hague and completed its international tour at the International Theater Olympics in Moscow, Russia. John Burt Productions was the associate producer of the Broadway production of STARMITES.

Mr. Burt has been a practicing expressive arts therapist for twenty years, currently serves as Chair Emeritus of Cambodian Living Arts and has served on the boards of the Roberts Foundation, the Threshold Foundation and the Marion Institute.


Marcus Doshi (Lighting Designer) designs for theatre, opera & dance as well as collaborating with artists & architects on a wide array of non-theatrical ventures. Recent projects of note include ELEKTRA for Seattle Opera, AIDA for Baltimore Opera, and THE FIRST BREEZE OF SUMMER at the Signature Theatre, NYC. His work has been seen internationally in Edinburgh, London, Amsterdam, Castres, Vienna, Mumbai and Delhi among others. Selected NYC & Regional include: The New Group, Soho Rep, Joyce, Lincoln Center, Chicago Shakespeare, Seattle Rep, Portland Center Stage, Virginia Opera, Boston Lyric, and Florentine. Marcus also regularly collaborates with Sophiline Cheam Shapiro and the Khmer Arts Ensemble, having designed the international tour of PAMINA DEVI and the Venice Biennale presentation of SAMRITECHAK. Education: Wabash College, Yale School of Drama. More at www.marcusdoshi.com.


Camille Assaf, (Costume Designer) is a Franco-American designer living in New York. International projects include being part of the costume design team of the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games '08; she designed costumes and lights for Three Children at the Hong Kong Fringe Club, costumes and sets for Don Giovanni in Castres, France. In the United States, she designed costumes for the new American Opera Elmer Gantry; Catherine Filloux's Lemkin's House and Killing the Boss; The King Stag (Yale Repertory Theater). Her costume design for dance have been seen at the New York City Ballet, the Joyce Theater, the Guggenheim museum and Dance New Amsterdam. Camille received her education at the Université de la Sorbonne in Paris, and Yale School of Drama in the US.