New York City October 10-16, 2011 www.mobilityshifts.

org

Mobile Identities and Community Mobilization:

Collaborative Digital Theater in Transnational Communities
Thursday, October 13, 9:00 p.m. Wollman Hall, Eugene Lang Building, 65 West 11th Street, 5th floor
This panel will discuss two collaborative digital theater projects in ESL classrooms and transnational communities, in which educators and multimedia makers worked collaborated with ESL students to write, act and direct digital videos that would be used to inform and engage their larger community. The students produced DVDs and online video on topics such as the exploitation of immigrant labor and how to fight back, deadbeat landlords and asthma, and date rape. Each participant will speak on their contributions and perspectives, from both practical and theoretical standpoints. Mobility will also be examined, in regard to 1) mobile identities which are explored through the use of theater and creating and inhabiting characters; 2) mobile media, especially in sites where access to broadband and the tools of media production are limited; and 3) how media can be used to mobilize and create community. Panelists will also connect collaborative digital theater to the context of transnational communities, which need to foster fluencies in negotiating multiple and fluid identities, in maintaining connection to community amidst displacement, and enacting the social and linguistic mobility which are sought in English language classrooms.

Tasha Darbes (New York University) Agrippino Flores (La Uion) Nari Kim (New York University) Chloe Smolarksi (Hunter College)

please visit www.mobilityshifts.org/register1/ to register