“Alien Citizen: An Earth Odyssey” Performance by Elizabeth Liang |
“Alien Citizen: An Earth Odyssey” Performance by Elizabeth Liang
Arts at MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Eastman Laboratories (Building 6)
2014-02-21, 18:00-20:30 EST (Local Time)
Written and Performed by Elizabeth Liang
Who are you when you’re from everywhere and nowhere? 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, like President Obama, is a Third Culture Kid or a TCK. Third Culture Kids are the children of international business people, global educators, diplomats, missionaries, and the military-anyone whose family has relocated overseas because of a job placement. Liang weaves humorous stories about growing up as an Alien Citizen abroad with American commercial jingles providing her soundtrack through language confusion, first love, culture shock, Clark Gable, and sandstorms…Our protagonist 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 reflects her experience that neither one was necessarily easier than the other. She realizes that 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?
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Tags: Arts at MIT, Elizabeth Liang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology