On the upper deck, Herman Melville's Captain Ahab and his diverse crew venture on a quest to find and kill the white whale that wounded Ahab. On the lower deck a crew of inner-city youths led by a young girl undertakes a voyage through the city to track down and kill WhiteThing - the embodiment of the power of cocaine and the drug culture surrounding it. Ahab and his crew speak the language of Melville's novel. The urban crew speaks a blend of hip-hop and street slang, carrying the actions and motivations of Melville's dramatic and colorful characters into our modern world.

In the old world story, Ahab takes his men to the edge of destruction, in a journey that ends in tragedy and sacrifice for all. In the modern story line of Moby-Dick, cocaine is the white whale that has violently shattered crew leader Alba's world, taking a loved one, and sending her and the crew on a journey of relentless revenge.

Moby-Dick: Then and Now will launch the release of our first Teacher's Strategy Guide, Reading in a Participatory Culture, a sample curriculum written to help students better understand the function of the new media literacy skill, appropriation. The guide provides a set of lesson plans for use in English and language arts classrooms using Herman Melville's Moby-Dick as the sample text and the theater adaptation by Ricardo Pitts-Wiley entitled Moby-Dick: Then and Now as an example of a contemporary adaptation. The guide is intended to demonstrate techniques which could be applied to the study of authorship in relation to a range of other literary works, pushing us to reflect more deeply on how authors build upon the materials of their culture and in turn inspire others who follow to see the world in new ways.

Following the performance, Jenna McWilliams will moderate a session, featuring Henry Jenkins, Wyn Kelley, Ricardo Pitts-Wiley and Rudy Cabrera in a discussion of the production and how it relates to New Media Literacies and the Teacher Strategy Guide material. This discussion will focus on how the production relates to New Media Literacies and the Teacher Strategy Guide material and introduce each of these participants as the four roles used within the Teacher Strategy Guide to explore the motives for reading in a participatory culture.

About Mixed Magic Mixed Magic Theatre & Cultural Events seeks to create new works and performing arts experiences that bring people together to share their history, living experiences and visions of the future. Mixed Magic's original mission was to produce and present theatre and cultural events that foster collaborations between diverse groups. The primary mission has expanded to build stronger more literate and arts active communities through literature and the performing arts. Mixed Magic Theatre Company was founded in 2000 by Ricardo and Bernadet Pitts-Wiley. For the past eight years Mixed Magic Theatre has produced the popular Bard on the Bay and Blackstone River Shakespeare Series in North Kingstown and Pawtucket.

About Moby Dick: Then and Now Moby-Dick: Then and Now is an original production conceptualized by Ricardo Pitts-Wiley. The play debuted in Pawtucket, RI, was presented at the 2007 International Melville-Conrad Conference in Poland, and is scheduled to be performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC this fall.

About Project NML Project New Media Literacies, sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation, currently explores participatory culture with an eye toward identifying the social and cultural skills that we think young people should learn and be given the chance to practice in order to successfully navigate a contemporary media culture. It is our belief that young people need to both make and reflect upon media and in the process, acquire important skills in teamwork, leadership, problem solving, collaboration, brainstorming, communications, and creating projects. NML is developing a range of materials, including an application that will house interactive learning challenges offering teens a rich variety of ways to explore and practice the skills needed in the new media culture; a series of teachers' strategy guides designed to show the fit between media literacy principles and traditional school content; and a case book for media ethics (in collaboration with Harvard's Project Zero). NML is part of a larger initiative that MacArthur has launched to explore the social and educational opportunities the new media landscape offers, involving coordination and collaboration with other researchers at Indiana University, Global Kids, Common Sense Media, University of California-Berkeley, and University of Wisconsin-Madison.