Elizabeth Liang

Elizabeth is an internationally sought out artist-educator on intersectionality, autobiographical storytelling, the Third Culture Kid and Mixed Race experiences, and the creative process. She is also an award-winning actress and published essayist who was raised in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panama, Morocco, Egypt, and Connecticut as a Guatemalan-American business brat of Chinese-Spanish-Irish-French-German-English descent.

The film of her one-woman show, ALIEN CITIZEN: AN EARTH ODYSSEY, won the Outstanding Achievement in Performing Arts Award at the CIC Film Festival. ALIEN CITIZEN premiered at SIETAR USA and was screened at other conferences including Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS), Families in Global Transition (FIGT), National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME), National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE), and the National Race Amity Conference. It is being used as a pedagogical tool by Anthropology, Communications, Psychology, Sociology, Theatre, and Women & Gender Studies professors throughout the USA and in Canada and Mexico.

Elizabeth performed the one-woman show in 14 states and on four continents, touring the US college circuit; the US Embassy and international schools in Panama and Singapore; and festivals Off Off Broadway and in San Francisco (where it was sponsored by the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center and hosted by the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts). Elizabeth was the first American artist and the first Guatemalan artist to perform at Tjarnarbíó Creative Center in Reykjavík, Iceland. ALIEN CITIZEN was also the closing performance at the SIETAR Europa Congress in Spain and the Women Playwrights International Conference in South Africa.

Elizabeth’s essays about navigating the creative process as an intercultural person have been published in an anthology and scholarly journals. She co-hosted Hapa Happy Hour, the longest running podcast on the mixed race and TCK experiences.

Elizabeth has lead her workshop on writing one’s intercultural solo show, memoir, or personal essay at venues including Princeton University, DePaul University, Cal State L.A., Vassar College, University of Chicago, Hillsborough Community College, Tennessee Tech, University of Maryland, Cal Arts, St. Mary’s College (IN), Wellesley College, Lewis & Clark College, and the FIGT and CMRS conferences. She also leads private sessions in Los Angeles and via Skype with participants around the world.

Elizabeth has acted in both English- and Spanish-language features and short films that have been screened all over the globe. Some of her television credits include "NCIS," "Brooklyn Nine-Nine," and a recurring role on "The West Wing."

On stage Elizabeth has acted at the Bootleg Theater, Critical Mass Performance Group, East West Players, Theatre of NOTE, Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, Quantum Theatre Company, 2100 Sq Ft, and Pacific Resident Theatre, among others.

Her one-woman show, Alien Citizen: An Earth Odyssey, toured in 14 states and four continents. It is now a film on DVD and streamable.

Elizabeth is also a published author. Her essay about the process of writing her solo show, “Checked Baggage: Writing Unpacked,” was published in the anthology Writing Out of Limbo: International Childhoods, Global Nomads and Third Culture Kids. For three years she wrote the column "TCK Talent" in The Displaced Nation, in which she interviewed adult Third Culture Kids (ATCKs) who work in creative fields.

Elizabeth was the co-host of Hapa Happy Hour, the longest running podcast to explore and celebrate the mixed-heritage experience. This subject was highlighted in her production of Chekhov’s Three Sisters, in which all of the siblings were played as Hapa (multiracial of partially Asian and/or Pacific Islander descent) by hapa actors. She wrote an essay about the experience, “Transforming Three Sisters,” which was published in a special issue of the scholarly journal Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies.

Elizabeth leads a workshop on writing one's solo show, memoir, or personal essay. She also blogs about solo show creation. She has a special affinity for intercultural stories and continues to search for ways to give voice to those experiences.