Playwright and social activist Catherine Filloux was already a player on the international theater scene before the terrorist attacks of 9/11. But in its wake she felt an urgency to keep the lines of global communication open. So did her friend, director Roberta Levitow."In America there was a battening down of the hatches, and cultural exchange was becoming more difficult," she says. "In 2003, we created Theatre Without Borders (Twb) as a way to encourage cultural exchange and reach out to others with similar interests."Twb is an informal network of theaters, organizations, and international artists who represent a range of missions and sensibilities. Many theater artists, such as Marcy Arlin, have been social activists for decades. Arlin's 24-year-old New York–based Immigrants' Theatre Project was spawned to produce works dealing with immigrants' experience in an alien American world. Similarly Arab-American artists Tracy Cameron Francis and J.J. El-Far, who run Hybrid Theatre.