Ping Chong and Company (PCC) Celebrates 50 Years of Visionary Work by Founder and Charts Vital Next Chapter

The Ping Chong and Company (PCC) Board of Directors and Staff, as the organization celebrates 50 years of its founder's artistry, today announce a three-year leadership transition plan to support the next generation of interdisciplinary artists and expand the Company's long standing Undesirable Elements community specific program. This new vision is supported by $900,000 from the Mellon Foundation, which has provided lead funding for the $1.5 million transition budget. Looking forward to the company's second half-century producing pioneering original work, the beloved team of Founder and Artistic Director Ping Chong, and Executive Director Bruce Allardice announce their retirement from PCC at the end of this year, as the organization looks to transform artistic legacy into practice for the next generation of artists. PCC Managing Director Jane Jung and Associate Director Sara Zatz, alongside a to-be-announced Artistic Chair, will lead the organization through the strategic transition plan envisioned in collaboration with consulting firm P.S. 314. PCC will also initiate a fundraising campaign for the remaining $600K needed to achieve the transition plan.

Ping Chong and Bruce Allardice have worked to achieve and hone PCC's vision of aesthetically rich, socially probing interdisciplinary theater that explores the interconnectedness of cultures and multifaceted identities in the U.S. and across the globe. The anniversary celebrates Ping Chong's 50-year career as a leading Asian American artist and theatrical innovator; 30 years of the company's series of community-specific, interview-based works known as the Undesirable Elements series; and 35 years of artistic partnership between Chong and Allardice.

Over five decades, Ping Chong has sustained a prolific career as a generative artist, leading the creation of over 110 original works that span artistic disciplines. During that time, PCC has been a stable and adaptive artistic home not only to Ping Chong, but, increasingly, to other artists as well. In recent years, PCC has begun re-focusing on the next generation of artists who innovate in the world of formal experimentation and ask critical questions in the name of social justice, including Johnnie Cruise Mercer, Jaime Sunwoo, Kirya Traber, Talvin Wilks, and many more. Throughout the pandemic, it adapted to artists' needs, using its multimedia foundations to create platforms for emerging artists responding to the company's legacy-as with projects from its Creative Fellows, and A Universal History of Infamy, for which artists responded to Chong's Nocturne in 1200 Seconds. PCC recently named its 2022 Creative Fellows: performer and director of live works of art Nile Harris and composer, director, improviser, and sound conceptualist JU-EH.

The organization continues to work in communities across the nation and globe, including with its Undesirable Elements series, featuring local community members telling their own stories of place, identity, and belonging. This series most recently included Generation Rise, created by Sara Zatz and Kirya Traber, which originated as a virtual production with BIPOC NYC teens during the pandemic. It later became a live production re-opening the New Victory in Fall of 2021, after nearly two years without live performances. The company's ongoing arts education programs engage the next generation in sharing their own voices and stories through the arts, serving students throughout New York City.

In the next three years, PCC will formalize its decade-long evolution from a company identified with a single artist into one that supports, through an adaptive organizational infrastructure, a new generation of interdisciplinary artists of color. Ping Chong says, "What better way to carry the future of creating forward than to support the next generation of artists!"

Bruce Allardice says of his retirement from the company, "I believe that the pandemic, technology and this political moment in New York and the world has had a fundamental structural impact on our artistic community - and what is required to build back for the future is new approaches, new thoughts, new energy. Building new structures that work in our changed world-that's for the next generation to do, and I want to support that fully. We have wonderful people who work with us, and this is a way to embrace the potential and opportunity of change. Ping and I will be around throughout the three-year transition, but we don't want to be too around-we don't want to get in the way of that process."

Ping Chong adds, "It's such a tough time for the young, especially in how prohibitive New York's cost of living has become, how different the conditions are here than when I was beginning as an artist, and I believe the future belongs to the young people. I will always be an artist, but as I move away from leadership of the company, it's great to see that we can create a space for them."

Emil Kang, Program Director for Arts and Culture at the Mellon Foundation, says, "Ping Chong forged new paths in multidisciplinary artmaking and contemporary theater practice and his work continues to expand our collective understandings of identity, otherness, and being. His lasting legacy is a testament to his expansive vision, deep intellect, and imagination; all attributes that he holds humbly, generously, and honestly. We are honored to support the next chapter for Ping Chong and Company as they honor the rich legacy of Ping Chong and Bruce Allardice while creating space for a new generation of creators."

PCC Managing Director Jane Jung says, "The impact of Ping's singular vision and voice has rippled across so many individuals' lives and communities in powerful ways, fostering connection, compassion, and understanding across differences. Ping and Bruce made great art together. We can't wait to carry forth their legacy with a vision to support the next generation of interdisciplinary artists and their works. We're grateful to the Mellon Foundation and the partnership of our Board and P.S. 314 who have thoughtfully guided us through this major transition moment, which is an exciting opportunity for growth and evolution."

PCC Associate Director Sara Zatz says, "As we enter into this period of transition and organizational transformation, we have a unique opportunity to center the voices and vision of a new generation of artists forging their own creative paths. Ping Chong and Company has fostered a space that is a truly welcoming home for artists and that creates room for growth and transformation, learning, and evolution. We are excited to honor Bruce and Ping's legacies and contributions by continuing to incubate community connectedness, artistic risk-taking, and empathetic storytelling for many years to come."

Amy Chin, Chair of the Ping Chong and Company Board, says, "Ping Chong and Company has been crossing artistic boundaries for half a century with innovative and pioneering theater that speaks to a global human experience. The Board gratefully honors Ping Chong's many decades of creativity and the inspired guidance of Bruce Allardice. The legacy of their work continues in the gifted artists and exceptional leaders they have nurtured. As we celebrate this anniversary milestone, we are also excited to lean into the Company's next 50 years supported by a talented team and the generous support of Mellon Foundation and our PCC friends, family, and fans."

As Ping Chong and Company celebrates Chong's and Allardice's legacies while further opening their mission to tomorrow's vanguard artists, they return to Lazarus, the work that set in motion Ping Chong's boundary-shattering career. This reconsidering of the piece for our world 50 years later, now titled Lazarus 1972-2022, represents a homecoming for Chong to La MaMa, the theater he considers his artistic "home base"- one of the first organizations to give him a platform following his years presenting performances in New York lofts. Lazarus 1972-2022 will take place September 30-October 16 at the La MaMa Downstairs Theatre. More details on the production, and remaining programming for the 50th Anniversary Season, will soon be announced.

Seeing Lazarus through today's lens signals a parallel goal, through this transitional period, to activate legacy as a generative tool to support daring artists in creating work for this moment and the future that reflects the company's commitment to both invention and social justice. As Ping Chong returns to La MaMa for his final performance with the company-itself containing and alluding to the past 50 years of his groundbreaking artistry-this history will continue to inform and inspire some of tomorrow's most radical new visions for interdisciplinary performance.

To post a comment, you must register and login.