Test of Non-English Languages for English Speakers (ToNES) is an ensemble-based participatory theater performance where audiences were quizzed on foreign languages with only the help from a real-time Google Translate on backdrop. The play addressed the issue where people in English speaking countries falsely equate immigrants or foreigners’ intellectuality with their English language capability.

I worked with the director, Jialin He, and other theatrical designers, who all are international students. We started by drawing a journey map of our daily routines, and we brainstormed the issues we might confront because of our insufficient capacity in English. We picked up some issues and came up with the concept of the performance. We aimed to create a confusing yet not too overwhelming environment for American audiences to experience the daily life of people living in a foreign country.

I developed an app for generating graphics using Processing. The app could parse the up-to-date scripts in text format and draw them on the Processing canvas.