Walter Byongsok Chon, Assistant Professor of Dramaturgy and Theatre Studies, co-presents, with activist and devising theatre specialist Joan Lipkin, their paper “The New Colossus Project: Dramaturging and Devising Immigration” at the ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Education) Conference on August 5 and 6.
Walter and Joan organized and chaired two panels at the conference, “Dramaturgy and Devising as Socially Conscious Pedagogy: a Latinx Focus,” where they presented, and “Dramaturgy and Devising as Socially Conscious Pedagogy: Notes from the Field,” which included presentations on devising around climate change, the US foster care system, and digital devising.
Their presentation was about the New Colossus Project, which they created and offered at Ithaca College in 2017. Using the poem The New Colossus (1883), the Petrarchan sonnet by American poet Emma Lazarus at the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York, this project is designed for students and community groups to create image work, interweave their family’s immigration stories if applicable, and devise original pieces that ask questions about the past, present, and future of immigration in the United States as well as about the participants’ relationship with the land on which they stand. They also gave their presentation at the panel “Leveling the Playing Field & Advocating for Equity.”