Judeth Oden Choi

With a background in community-based and collaborative theatre-making, education, and the production of innovative and engaging cultural events and festivals, I bring a collaborative spirit to everything I do. I marry elements of play, performance, and participatory design with more traditional mixed-methods research to design and research new technologies. I strive to build equitable relationships with collaborators and stakeholders in order to support the design of technology grounded in social justice principles.

I investigate the process of discovery through writing. I am interested in writing as a tool for identity development in youth and young adults. I am also interested in writing at the community level–how shared narratives, scripts and poetics emerge through the writing process. I have investigated this idea through devised theatre, participatory art installations, and in my dissertation work through large scale data analysis of Black Lives Matter tweets.

I have a PhD from the Human Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon. I apply a dramaturgical lens to investigate the relationship between on-the-ground organizing and networked activism. My research interests also include theatre-based design methods, playtesting methods, and AR/VR experience design.

In 2007 I co-founded Writ Large Press, an independent literary press dedicated to making publishing accessible, amplifying diverse voices, and creating public literary events that call for participation by and the preservation of our local cultures and communities. In the summers of 2014 and 2017, Writ Large Press and collaborators filled Los Angeles with 90 consecutive days of literary and cultural programming featuring the vitality and diversity of the city. Along with my partners Chiwan Choi and Peter Woods, we have expanded our mission to form Writ Large Projects, which is working on opening a brick-and-mortar bookstore, coffee shop, and community media lab in Braddock, PA, among other projects.

I have an MFA from NYU’s Tisch Department of Dramatic Writing and a BA from Yale University, where I was on the executive board of the Yale Children’s Theater. I have written and/or directed numerous plays in educational, community settings and nonprofit theatre. I now have over 20(!) years of teaching experience as a teaching artist, a middle and high school classroom teacher, and as a university teaching assistant and co-teacher. As a program director and writing mentor at Will Power to Youth, Shakespeare Center LA, for over a decade, I have helped teach, manage and design an exemplary national-award-winning arts education and employment program.