WORLD PREMIERE CREDITS
World Premiere
Presented by HapaLis Productions
in association with
Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC)
Written, Produced, and Performed
by Elizabeth Liang
Directed by Sofie Calderon
Associate Produced by Richard Lee,
Karen Smith, and Wendy Belcher
Assistant produced by Leila Ciszewski
Stage Managed by Michelle Hilyard
House Managed by Charls Sedgwick Hall,
Kate Huffman, Inger Tudor
Lighting & Projections Design by Matt Richter
Sound Design by Dennis Yen
Graphic and Program Design by
Gene Michael Barrera
Asylum Lab, 1078 Lillian Way, Hollywood, CA
Fridays & Saturdays @ 8pm
Previewed May 3, Ran May 4 - June 1, 2013
There was a talkback organized by MASC on Friday, May 31. (33% of proceeds using "MASC" code went to MASC.)
Credit for International Tour:
Additional Projection and Sound Design
by tour Co-producer Daniel Lawrence.
The international tour ended in summer 2019.
SYNOPSIS
Who are you when you’re from everywhere and nowhere? Alien Citizen is a funny and poignant one-woman show about growing up in the intersections of identity 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, usually 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?
Humor is a great survival mechanism! And friends make all the difference.
Click for Williams College's Rave Review!
The stage production is now retired. To bring Alien Citizen: An Earth Odyssey (the film) to your college campus, international school, theater, or other venue, with the options of a Q&A and/or a workshop on writing one's solo show or memoir, please email the Alien Citizen Team or click here.
To screen the film only, for licensing rights click here.
HISTORY
Elizabeth Liang developed the script with the help of a scholarship to the David Henry Hwang Writers Institute, Terrie Silverman's solo-show master class, and on her own. Segments of the show have also been performed at the "5,000 Women" Festival at Wesleyan University, the Hollywood Fringe Festival, East West Players, Beyond Baroque, the Families in Global Transition (FIGT) conference, CSULA, Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) conference, and the "Growing Up Global" class at Princeton University.
The show had a successful 5-week run at the Asylum Lab in Hollywood, CA in May 2013. It then opened the Stage Left Women at Work Festival Off Off Broadway on September 24-25, 2013; the festival tour continued with the United States of Asian America Festival in San Francisco on May 10, 2014 and the first annual Solo Queens Festival in Los Angeles from October 27 to November 19, 2017. The college tour began in February 2014 at Princeton University and M.I.T., continuing at Wesleyan in April, Williams in September, Augustana and Carleton in October 2014, Santa Clara University in March 2015, San Diego State and University of Arizona in April 2015, Smith in January 2016, and Citrus in May 2016, Hillsborough Community College in September 2018, Saint Mary's College in February 2019, and Wellesley in March 2019. The world tour began at two international schools and the US Embassy in Panama in March 2014 and continued in Iceland in August 2014, where Elizabeth was the first American artist and first Guatemalan artist to perform at Tjarnarbíó Creative Center in Reykjavík. She subsequently performed the show at the SIETAR Europa congress in Valencia, Spain in May 2015 and at the Women Playwrights International Conference in Cape Town, South Africa in July 2015 as the conference's final event. She continued her international school tour at two schools in Singapore in April 2016.
The show was made into a movie that premiered in San Diego, California at the SIETAR USA conference in October 2017. It had its US East Coast premiere at the Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) conference at the University of Maryland in March 2018. It had it European/International premiere at the Families in Global Transition (FIGT) conference in The Hague, the Netherlands in March 2018. It continues to be screened at conferences, colleges/universities, and international schools around the world, both in person and online.
Successful Indiegogo Campaign for SIETAR-Europa Congress (Spain) and WPI Conference (South Africa)
Heartfelt thanks to our incredibly generous backers for helping the show go to intercultural conferences in Spain and South Africa:
Helen (Kami) Amestoy Lee, Ronald Antinoja, Eric Baldwin, Michelle Bezanson, Jennifer Blaine, Cathryn Brubaker, Angela Bullock,
Jennifer Carmody, Shawna Casey & Jack Kehler, Joan Chodorow, Karen Christensen, Maire Clerkin, Phillip Curry, Francesca D'Amico,
Lisa De Fuso, Peter Evans, Laura Finnegan, Myriam Fizazi-Hawkins, Genevieve Fong, Audrey Freudberg, Susanna Apold Frost, Nick Garey, Lily Theresa Gatica, Kimiko Gelman Prosky, Prince Gomolvilas, Rebecca Gray, Dawn Greenidge, Randy Gritz, Evelyn Hall, Stephen Hall,
Nancy Harris, Leonard Herzog, Nancy Keystone, Kathy Kilsby, Sezín Koehler, Eliza Lanman, Gene Lee, Juan M. Lee, Richard Lee, Harry Liang, Susan Liang, Moses Ling, Victoria Longland, Karen J. Martinson, Shelley Mills, Cecilia Neher, Gino Pellegrini, Penny & Jim Peters,
Alina Phelan Ballou, Debra Poneman, Veronica Proctor, Diahann Reyes, Julia Simens, Brigid Todish, Amy Waddell, Terri Wagener, Phil Ward, Alice Wu, Maria Zabala, and Anonymous
Successful Kickstarter Campaign for Iceland
Enormous thanks to our very generous backers for helping the show go to Iceland:
Karen Achenbach, Ronald Antinoja, Doug Atchison, Evelyn Badia, Wendy Laura Belcher, Stacy Benjamin, Liz Bezanson, Michelle Bezanson, Edward J. Borey, Edna Boulad, Hiwa Bourne, Angela Bullock, Bridgette Campbell, Jennifer Carmody, Christine Corpuz & Robbie Abilez,
Lisa de Fuso, Pamela Dell, Heidi Durrow, Vanessa Emlich, Genevieve Fong, Audrey S. Freudberg, Lily Gatica, Dawn Greenidge, Randy Gritz, Evelyn G. Hall, Nancy Harris, Michael Hornbuckle, Caroline Kennedy, Maury Lanman, Kai Lie Lau, Daniel Lawrence, Gene Lee, Richard Lee, John Liang, Susan Liang, Patricia Linderman, Moses Ling, Victoria Longland, Linda & Frans Manoll, Caroline Martinez, Steve Mize & Emmylou Diaz, Claire Moed, Thao P. Nguyen, Christopher 'Staples' O'Dell, Eileen O'Meara, Penny Peters, Diahann Reyes, Julia Lee Simens, Peter James Smith, Karen Smith, Johannes Tang, Kikuko Tanimoto, Jennifer Taub Gwillim, Kiem Thè, Roy Unger, Elif Celebi Wisecup,
Alice Wu
Successful USA Projects Campaign
Profound thanks to the generous donors to the USA Projects campaign:
Percy Angress, Doug Atchison, Jenna Banko-Conder, Wendy Belcher, Nancy Berman, David Bickford, Denise Blasor, Sofie Boulad,
Jennifer Carmody, Lisa Clifton, Jeff Defalque, Lisa Dring, Laura Finnegan, Genevieve Fong, Audrey Freudberg, Gina Garcia Sharp,
Rebecca Gray, Randy Gritz, Pooja Gupta, Charls Hall, Evelyn Hall, Stephen Hall, Rena Heinrich, Nancy Henderson-James, Fritz Herzog,
Molly Hope, Theodore Hope & María Sáenz, Nova Jacobs, Tom Jacobson, Jessica Lynn Johnson, Timothy Judd, Ken Klenner, Kate Kofler, David Kreinberg, Eliza Lanman, Kami Lee, Richard Lee, Harry Liang, Juan Liang, Susan Liang, Moses Ling, Karen Jean Martinson,
Michael Mayhew, Mark McClain Wilson, Mary Mollica, Frannie Moyer, Chon Noriega, Trevor Olsen, Robert W. Oriol, Diahann Reyes,
Bill Robens, Laurie Searle, Terrie Silverman, Carolyn Townsend, Xavier Vela, Amy Waddell, Alethea Wang, Deborah Werbner, Libby Werbner, David Wilcox, Ling Yu, and Anonymous
Successful Kickstarter Campaign
Elizabeth launched a successful Kickstarter campaign in order to take Terrie Silverman's 6-month solo-show master class.
Humble thanks to her backers: alow, Margot Amestoy , Edoardo Ballerini, Wendy Laura Belcher, Jennifer Blaine, Hiwa Bourne,
Elif Celebi Wisecup, Frances Chavarria, Carl Cunningham, Lisa de Fuso, Genevieve Fong, Nathalie Foy, Steve Garland , Francisco Gomes, Randy Gritz, Patricia Hall, Denise Harris, John & Molly Hope, Theodore Hope, McKerrin Kelly, Kai Lie Lau, Daniel Lawrence, David Lawrence, Jerome P. Ledin, Gene Lee, Kami Lee, John Liang, Michael Mayhew, Chuck McCollum, Sherry Miller, David Morfin, Amanda Moss,
Anna Nicholas, Jack O'Brien, Derek Sayre, John Sinclair, Karen Smith, Johannes Tang, Kiem Thè, Roy Unger, Pilar and Xavier Vela,
Dara Weinberg, Susan Wester, Robert Whittington & Phylliss Crist
SOCIAL MEDIA
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Alien Citizen: An Earth Odyssey - A film by HapaLis Prods