First Public Reading: Monday, July 13, 2026, at 7 pm
“Catherine Filloux’s plays are more than just stories; they’re catalysts; they aim to send you forth from the theater not just satisfied and thinking but to make change in the world.” — Matt Barbot, Immigrant Report
“Opera Against the Patriarchy.” — Alex Ross, The New Yorker (on Orlando, Vienna State Opera)
“The man who invented the word genocide, Raphael Lemkin, turns out to have an unsettled afterlife in the compelling drama by Catherine Filloux… A call to action.” — Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times (on Lemkin’s House)
NEW YORK, NY; \u200b May 28, 2026 — The Olivia Trilogy continues with the first public reading of MEDUSA by Catherine Filloux, award-winning playwright and librettist whose career has spanned three decades of urgent, internationally produced work. MEDUSA is the second play in her Olivia Trilogy, with music by Karyn Levitt. The reading takes place Monday, July 13, 2026, at 7 pm in NYC, directed by Alice Reagan and starring Jay O. Sanders and Arianna Gayle. For reservation, please visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-olivia-project-presents-medusa-a-new-play-by-catherine-filloux-tickets-1989621118324
MEDUSA is a love letter to the environment, to the pioneering ocean conservation organization In The Same Boat (Norway), and to Filloux’s own oceanographer father. In it, a young caregiver named Karenna is bound by contract to an ambitious client who cannot bear abandonment. While nursing him for a living, she becomes entrapped, surveilled by security cameras. While her labor pulls her toward an uncharted frontier inspired by a scientist’s exploration of the deep. We share more with Karenna than we think.
MEDUSA follows Filloux's landmark first play in the trilogy, OLIVIA, which received its world premiere reading in February 2026 and was praised as "a riveting call-to-action piece" examining inheritance, family legacy, and environmental reckoning (Theatre Beyond Broadway). That event drew a distinguished panel of climate policy experts from the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, Climate Rights International, and In The Same Boat, sparking dialogue that extended far beyond the theater itself.
The trilogy is completed by DEEP TIME, a play written for actors Christine Bruno and Antoinette LaVecchia, in which an established physicist and her partner find their marriage tested as their dreams and fears about the planet collide. DEEP TIME will receive its first reading later in 2026.
Filloux, whose oceanographer father was the first to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a catamaran, has been a passionate advocate against plastic pollution from an early age. \u200b Filloux continues her partnership with In The Same Boat (Norway), advocating for young activists https://www.inthesameboat.eco/volunteers/ and advocating for our oceans https://oceana.org.
ABOUT THE OLIVIA TRILOGY
\u200bThe Olivia Trilogy represents Catherine Filloux at her most expansive and most intimate, three plays that together constitute a sustained meditation on the environmental crisis, the human beings caught inside it, and the choices that define us. Each play stands alone; together they form a body of work unlike anything in American theater. The trilogy has drawn direct partnerships with climate organizations and advocates, making the plays as much civic events as theatrical ones.
The reading takes place Monday, July 13, 2026, at 7 pm in New York City. Seating is limited for the FREE event, and attendance is by RSVP only at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-olivia-project-presents-medusa-a-new-play-by-catherine-filloux-tickets-1989621118324
Running Time: 80 minutes
Website: CatherineFilloux.com
BIOGRAPHIES
Catherine Filloux (Playwright) is among the most important American playwrights working today. Her opera Orlando with composer Olga Neuwirth was the first opera by both a woman composer and a woman librettist in the history of the Vienna Staatsoper and won the Grawemeyer Award. Filloux's three decades of work as a playwright and librettist has centered on human rights, women's rights, and the urgent questions facing humanity. She is a resident artist at La MaMa ETC.
Jay O. Sanders (Mister) is an American film, theater, and television actor and playwright. He frequently appears in plays off-Broadway at The Public Theatre and has received a Drama Desk Award and a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award.
Arianna Gayle (Karenna) played Mayella Ewell in the First National Tour of Aaron Sorkin's To Kill a Mockingbird; appeared on Broadway in JOB, understudying Sydney Lemmon, and starred in the lead role in its Philadelphia premiere; and has appeared in Elsbeth and The Night Agent.
Alice Reagan (Director) is a New York-based freelance director. Credits include Evelyn Brown (A Diary), an excavation of an almost-forgotten work by María Irene Fornés at La MaMa; Measure for Measure at Shakespeare & Company; Cherry Orchard with Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble.
Christine Bruno is an award-winning actor, educator, activist, and disability equity consultant for the entertainment industry, with credits across theater, film, and television in the U.S. and internationally.
Antoinette LaVecchia has appeared on Broadway in Torch Song and A View From The Bridge (starring Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber), and has performed extensively off-Broadway and regionally.
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