General Info

PING CHONG & COMPANY: HISTORY Ping Chong was born in 1946 and raised in the Chinatown section of New York City. He studied film-making and graphic design at the School of Visual Arts and the Pratt Institute. Ping Chong began his theatrical career as a member of Meredith Monk's The House Foundation. He collaborated with her on several major works including The Travelogue Series and The Games, for which they shared the Outstanding Achievement in Music Theatre Award in 1986. In 1972, Ping Chong gathered a group of artists at Meredith Monk's loft in New York City to create Lazarus, his first independent theatre work. Since then, he has created over fifty major works for the stage including Humboldt's Current ( Obie Award, 1977 ), A.M./A.M. - The Articulated Man ( Villager Award, 1982 ), Nosferatu ( Maharam Design Award, 1985 ), Angels of Swedenborg ( 1985 ), Kind Ness ( USA Playwrights' Award, 1988 ), Brightness, which garnered two 1990 Bessie Awards, and After Sorrow. In 1998 he created Kwaidan, his first full-length puppetry work, in collaboration with Jon Ludwig and Mitsuru Ishii. His work has been performed at such major New York venues as The Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival, The Joyce Theatre, La MaMa E.T.C., St. Clement's Theatre and The Central Park Summerstage, as well as at major museums, theatres and festivals in North America, Europe and Asia. In recent years he has expanded the range of his explorations to include video and visual arts installations. Today, Ping Chong is recognized as one of our country's most significant theatre artists, and a seminal figure in the Asian-American arts arena. Ping Chong & Company, originally Fiji Theatre Company, was founded in 1975 to explore the meaning of contemporary theatre and art on a national and international level. The company's mission is to explore the intersections of race, culture, history, art, media and technology in the modern world. Today, the company creates unfailingly innovative works of theatre and art for modern, multi-cultural audiences in New York and throughout the world. Ping Chong & Company is a modestly sized, not-for-profit experimental arts organization. The company is artist-run and maintains a small full-time staff, offices and storage facilities in New York City. In addition, the company provides an artistic home and professional base for a multi-racial core group of performers, designers and theatre artists who collaborate with Ping Chong on a project basis.