Ping Chong (Chinese name: 張家平; pinyin: Zhāng Jiāpíng; b. Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1946) is an American contemporary theater director, choreographer, video and installation artist. He was born in Toronto and raised in the Chinatown section of New York City. Chong is internationally recognized as a director, writer, and multi-disciplinary artist, and is considered a seminal figure in Asian American theatre and the Asian American arts movement.
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Originally trained as a visual artist and filmmaker at the School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute, he began his theatrical career as a member of Meredith Monk's The House Foundation. He created his first independent theatre work, Lazarus in 1972. Many of Chong’s works concern the interaction of Eastern and Western cultures and/or issues of cultural diversity, and frequently draw on documentary and interview-based materials (as in Undesirable Elements and Children of War).
In 1975, Chong founded Ping Chong & Company (originally called The Fiji Theatre Company). The company's mission is "to explore the meaning of contemporary theatre and art on a national and international level," and "to create and tour innovative multi-disciplinary works of theater and art, which explore the intersections of history, race, art and technology in the modern world."[1][2] The company has created and toured more than 50 works by Chong and his collaborators, which have been presented at major theatres, performing arts centres, and arts festivals around the world.
Recent productions have included several large scale puppet theatre works, Cathay: Three Tales of China (2005), Obon: Tales of Rain and Moonlight (2002), and Kwaidan (1998). Kwaidan and Obon were both based on Japanese ghost stories collected and published by Lafcadio Hearn. Cathay was set in China and used three interconnected stories to explore three eras of Chinese history: the Tang Dynasty, the Japanese invasion during World War II, and contemporary China today. Cathay was named one of the Top 10 Shows of the 2005-2006 Season by NY Theatre Wire, and was awarded three Henry Hewes awards for achievement in theatrical design.
Since 1992, Chong has created over 30 works in the Undesirable Elements project, an ongoing series of oral-history theater works exploring issues of race, culture, and identity in the lives of individuals in specific communities. The development process includes an extended residency and rehearsal period during which Ping Chong and collaborators conduct intensive interviews with potential participants from the local community. These interviews then form the basis of a script, performed by the interviewees, that covers the historical and personal narratives of individuals who are in some way living between two cultures.
Chong is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including five National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and two Obie Awards. The second of these, which he received in 2000, was for "Sustained Achievement." He was awarded the Yomiuri Prize in 1995 for Undesirable Elements. In 2006, Chong was named to the first round of USA Artist Fellows by the United States Artists Foundation [3].
A/PA archives survey of Ping Chong & Co.'s records: http://dlibdev.nyu.edu/tamimentapa/?q=node/26