Part X: Ping Chong Ping Chong Hometown: NYC Current Town: NYC Tell me about ALAXSXA/ALASKA: Ryan Conarro came to Ping Chong and Company as a TCG mentor/mentee fellow about 2015 and suggested we make a work together. Using the UE approach of interviewing people, I interviewed Ryan and found that he had lived in Alaska for 12 years. I suggested we make a work about Alaska with 2 more or less parallel narratives: His personal encounter with Alaska and a historical encounter of outsiders with Alaska. After I did extensive research on Alaska, I wrote the character of The Professor’s material and Ryan went off and wrote his personal narrative. We then went to Saratoga for a theater residency to develop it and stage it as a work-in-progress. It is here that I developed the airplane dances for Ryan. We did a second workshop in New York at La Mama’s Great Jones rehearsal space for an invited audience. At this point we had an almost complete work in the rough. Ry