Today we announce a three-year leadership transition plan to support the next generation of interdisciplinary artists and expand the Company’s long standing 

 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.

Our beloved Founder and Artistic Director Ping Chong, and Executive Director Bruce Allardice announce their retirement from PCC at the end of 2022, 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 

The upcoming anniversary season will celebrate 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 

 series; and 35 years of artistic partnership between Chong and Allardice.


READ THE STRATEGIC PLAN EXECUTIVE SUMMARY HERE

Ping Chong and Bruce Allardice have worked tirelessly 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.

 says of his retirement from the company, "What better way to carry the future of creating forward than to support the next generation of artists! 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.”

 says, “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 

around—we don’t want to get in the way of that process.”

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.”

 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.”

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.”

Ping and Bruce's long-time colleagues offer reflections on their work, and the company’s impact:

"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," shares

 Emil Kang, program director for Arts and Culture at the Mellon Foundation

. “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."

 says, “The work of Ping Chong and Bruce Allardice has been transformative for our field. They have helped shape the legacy of La MaMa through the powerful artistry and the urgent community-engaged work we have been blessed to have on our stages. By examining the complexities of delving into Otherness and stories of the Other, ultimately the work has revealed our interconnectedness and shared humanity. Ping Chong and Company has influenced generations of artists, and their impact will reverberate for generations to come.”

Artistic Producer/Founder at The Foundry Theatre Melanie Joseph

, Appetite, History, Inclusion, Fluidity, Integrity, 

. Words that will ever hold the image of Ping and Bruce 

, that activated what they made, how they made it and who they shared it with for 50 years. They’re a beacon for anyone who strives to make great art, and then actually makes it. And they’re a rudder for those who seek to build theatres with transparency, experiment and tremendous care, that actually operate and evolve in that way.They were all of this, and then some, for me.I’m so glad that we found one another in this roiling cauldron that is our world, and grateful to have shared reasons to climb out, and get shit done (after a wee pause for a delicious meal.). I love you both, 

BAM Executive Producer Emeritus Joseph V. Melillo 

says, “I began working with Ping Chong in 1984 within the context of BAM’s annual Next Wave Festival and subsequently worked with him many times. Ping expanded my conception of what theater could be as a contemporary genre. His visionary and pioneering art has advanced our understanding of storytelling. His resourcefulness is boundless. His art is redolent of original ideas and highly imaginative techniques for delivering the inherent humanity that is the foundation of his creative artistry.”

Melillo adds, “Bruce is a man of sterling integrity. He has consistently demonstrated the exemplary principles of a manager supporting an artist through the vast myriad of challenges throughout the creative process of the development and producing of new work while growing an organization for that artist and his work. He was an exceptional professional partner throughout our working together to get Ping Chong’s art to its desired opening night for the originating artist, his collaborators and performers.”

Celebrating 50 Years of Visionary Work by Ping Chong and Our Vital Next Chapter  

Ping Chong and Company creates works of theater and art that reveal beauty, invention, precision, and a commitment to social justice.

Founded by Ping Chong, Ping Chong and Company is a welcoming home and site of experimentation for multigenerational artists. The company creates original interdisciplinary, community-specific work; and cultivates artistry through training and education programs.


We are excited to announce two presentations by our 


As part of their Fellowship during our 50th Anniversary season, PCC has commissioned and supported the generation of a new work by JU-EH and Nile, which we will present in November 2022 and January 2023.

Nearly 50 years ago, when Ping Chong started making performance work, he created an artistic home by establishing Ping Chong and Company. This artistic home has been a place of mentorship and creativity for many artists over the years; and we deepen this commitment through the Creative Fellowship. The Fellowship engages artists to learn from the body of PCC’s work and methodologies; and receive mentorship and guidance on their career and creative goals. These new projects are generated from research and engagement with the Ping Chong and Company production archive.


JU-EH
Wednesday, November 30, 2022, 7:30pm
The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, 450 West 37th Street, New York, NY 10018

This is a free event, with registration required. 

JU-EH will offer a guiding voice as you experience an immersive sound experience in various physical positions/locations (wandering, sitting, standing, lying down, shoes on/off) in a 3000 square feet music hall with a 52-speaker reverb system.

Since the beginning of 2022, JU-EH has built a new microtonal spatial instrument, 意聼 (pronounced YI TING, which is also the poetic translation of OVERHEAR). JU-EH has sourced software developers and audio engineers to code and design this instrument specifically for JU-EH's creative workflow.

You are invited to be early adoptors in this conceptual artwork. 

is presented as an interactive, process oriented workshop for facilitating live creation between the artist and audience, informed organically in real-time.


JU-EH is a male soprano specializing in developing non-human roles envisioning a new era of utilizing opera as a meta-emotional vehicle. As a composer, director, improvisor, and sound conceptualist, JU-EH has built a software synthesizer with coders and spatial sound designers to address microtonality, human voice as sonic sculptures. This is a pioneering concept in understanding human relationships from the perspective of voice, body, and technology. JU-EH has initiated projects that defy genre, period, or easy categorization including 1st Clubhouse episodic opera “ASIAN CASTA DIVA,” for the #StopAsianHate movement with an interactive virtual monument on Mozilla Hubs; JU-EH’s audio/visual NFT collection “仚 Hint” has just won the 2022 Future Arts Awards by Mozaik. Find out more on ju-eh.com.


Nile Harris
Thursday, January 19, 2023 at 7:00pm and Sunday, January 22, 2023 at 1:00pm


Presented in association with the Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival

Shiva Theater, The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, New York, NY 10003

Tickets are $25 and General Access tickets will be on sale November 10th. 



 is a lecture on absence, abjection, and American nationalism. Navigating through the anonymous logic of the internet, where everyone has an opinion, this solo performance, or incellectual rant, poses a rhetorical insurrection of the priorities of neoliberalism and pays homage to the memory of a friend gone too soon.


Nile Harris is a director and performer of live works of art. He has done a few things and hopes to do a few more, God willing.

2022/23 Creative Fellows Presentations 

 All Islands Connect Underwater: a Celebration of Ping Chong and Bruce Allardice

Ping and Bruce will retire from their leadership roles at the company at the end of 2022. In honor of their immeasurable impact and leadership, we will gather to celebrate their vision and artistry, and the artistic community they have cultivated over the past 50 years.  This event will take place on 

The celebration will bring together artists and other luminaries for a public tribute who have collaborated with or been supported by Ping and Bruce. 

 continues a season celebrating 50 years of impactful work by Ping, his 35-year partnership with Bruce, and 30 years of the company’s series of community-specific, interview-based works known as the

 series. The season kicked off with a sold-out run at La MaMa of

, a new reimagining of the production that set Chong’s boundary-shattering career in motion.

Over five decades, Ping has sustained a prolific career as a generative artist, leading the creation of over 110 original works that span artistic disciplines. Throughout his extraordinarily long artistic partnership with Bruce, they have collaborated to achieve and hone PCC’s vision of aesthetically rich, socially probing interdisciplinary theater.

All Islands Connect Underwater: A Celebration of Ping Chong and Bruce Allardice  

Ping Chong's Final Production as Artistic Director 

In 2022, we mark 50 years of impactful work by 

our Founder and Artistic Director Ping Chong 

, his new reimagining of the production that set his boundary-shattering career in motion, from September 30 - October 16

 was Ping Chong’s first independently created theater production. It

is an imagistic meditation on the resurrected man transplanted from its Biblical setting to the surreal, urban purgatory of New York City in the 1970’s—a deeply personal work about cultural alienation disguised as a Biblical story. With the exception of a voice over, sound effects, and some music, 

is silent, poetic, and nonlinear. Originally performed in Meredith Monk’s loft in the heady early days of the New York avant-garde, it

established Chong’s seminal integration of slide and film projection, puppetry, and recorded sound in theatrical performance; so much of what the artist and his company would go on to achieve in theater and storytelling can be mapped from the artistic gestures in this bold starting point.

Ping Chong says, “Lazarus was a metaphor for my own experience, because I had just left my insular world of Chinatown, moving out of that limbo into figuring out how to exist in larger society. The original show was 1972; New York City was nearly bankrupt at that time and the urban purgatory aspect of it was very surreal and real. Originally the work reflected that—but the work has changed: I’m a lifetime New Yorker, and 

 is now different than the show was at the time in the sense that New York is also different, and centrally, part of the character of the show. 

 is my love for New York but it’s also my sadness for what it’s become. Lazarus may have left purgatory and come back into the world—but what kind of a world did he come back into in 2022?”

 as Figure 3. The creative team includes 

take place Thursday – Saturday at 8pm, and Saturday & Sunday at 4pm at La MaMa Downstairs Theater (66 East Fourth Street, NY, NY 10003). Tickets are $30 ($25 for students and seniors), inclusive of all fees, and can be purchased at lamama.org or  646-430-5374. The first ten tickets to every performance are $10. The September 29 preview performance will be pay-what-you-can. Running time is approximately one hour.

Time Passes: Ping Chong and Fiji Theater Company Then and Now
Sunday, October 9

 on Sunday, October 9, at 4pm, Chong will reunite with late 1970s and 1980s members of his company, then called the Fiji Theater Company, for a discussion of the evolution of his work and the changing climate in the downtown performing arts scene. They will share personal memories of their time creating work and touring work together. Moderated by Sara Farrington, editor of 

The Lost Conversation: Interviews with an Enduring Avant-Garde

, the event will feature Ping Chong, John Fleming, Brian Hallas, Louise Smith, and Jeannie Hutchins. Smith and Hutchins both won Bessie Awards for their work with Chong.


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