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"Alien Citizen: An Earth Odyssey"

Thu, September 18th, 2014
7:30 pm

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Alien Citizen: An Earth Odyssey is a funny and poignant one-woman show about growing up as a dual citizen of mixed heritage in Central America, North Africa, the Middle East, and New England. Elizabeth Liang, film and theater actress, considers herself a Third Culture Kid, and the show is about her experience as a TCK.

In it, Elizabeth deals with the decisions every global nomad has to make repeatedly: to adapt or to simply cope; to build a bridge or to just tolerate. From being a Guatemalan-American teen in North Africa to attending a women’s college in the USA, Alien Citizen: An Earth Odyssey reflects her experience that neither one was necessarily easier than the other. She realizes girls across the world are growing into womanhood in environments that can be hostile to females (including the USA). How does a young girl cope as a border/culture/ language/religion straddler in country after country that feels “other” to her when she is the “other?” Where is the line between respecting others and betraying yourself?

The show includes projections and sound effects like American commercial jingles that track her experience (as a TCK) through first love, language confusion, culture shock, Clark Gable and sandstorms, and more.

Sponsored by the Center for Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, with generous funding from the Ford Schumann Fund for Democratic Studies, the Davis Center, Claiming Williams, Dean of Students, and the programs in Comparative Literature and the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies.

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