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. Ryan realized at this stage that we needed a native Alaskan to balance his white narrative. This was awkward since we had an almost complete work which is why we have the structural problems we have been struggling with ever since.

However, after Gary Beaver entered the picture it was clear that his participation was important and necessary despite his late entry into this project. I conceived the work in the collage manner which is typical of my work. It has always been a signature aspect of my work that I am the auteur of the visual and audio aspects of the work (Most of the music was selected by me and some by Lucy Peckham and the 3 screen concept was mine). At the same time Ryan made creative contributions both texturally and in the vaudeville dance which he alone developed.  Justin Perkins contributed a great deal in creating his movement in the Definitions sequences and in conceiving how the table will open for the Exxon/Valdez sequence. It is customary for me to come up with the basic concept of the show which I did here, and then welcome the riffing and creating of the team which includes the designers. My way of working with the designers is to give them the concept, e.g. I wanted clouds across three screens, but how the clouds are rendered is an agreement aesthetically between me and the designer, etc.

Encounters between outsiders and insiders and the results of that is what the show is about. The syntax of the show is poetic rather than prose like. I have never been interested in linearity. It is associative. This is generally what I favor as an approach.

Realism bores me. If I want realism I’ll go to the movies.

Tell me about your process and concept of this show.

I believe I’ve answered this question.

What else are you currently busy with?

I will send you the project description of my latest project called Modern Times

Tell me, if you will, a story from your childhood that explains who you are as a Director and/or as a person.

I’m a first generation immigrant of Chinese descent from two generations of a Chinese Opera family. My experience of theater until I was 17 years old was Chinese opera and Chinese movies and Western movies. Movies/Cinema is what I love most of all. My theater is highly informed by this. I don’t go to the theater much, but I watch films regularly.

If you could change one thing about theater, what would it be?

Too many words. Theater is generally not active enough in space and it is still

too white.

Who are or were your theatrical Heroes?

I don’t believe in heroes. And the auteurs I admire are film directors.

What kind of theater excites you?

I’m not really interested in theater. I just happen to make it.

What advice do you have for Directors just starting out?

Be curious about everything.

Anything else you’d like to add?

Don’t pander if you can help it even though the pressure everywhere is to dumb down.

Shout out to the designers and stage crew.

check out their bios here 

Plugs, please:

* Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity

Wesleyan University, CFA Theater 
Thursday, July 13, 2017, 7:30pm. 

* keep your eyes open for info ALAXSXA/ALASKA will be coming to La Mama in October

* Nosferatu at Virginia Tech premiers in November