Page 21 - APAP Inside Arts - Spring 2020

The list of Merit Award winners past includes Martha Graham, Aaron Copeland, Alvin Ailey, Katherine Dunham, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Laurie Anderson and Philip Glass.
Like those other pioneers, Chong has reset the artistic expectations of his own era, in this case breaking down existing norms to make work that is multi- media, nonliterary, interdisciplinary, movement-inclusive and sharply focused on social justice issues.
than the language of film and television, he believes, where sets, locations and dialogue attempt to mimic the actual world. Theater can’t be some “poor version of cinema.”
Within that, however, anything is possible, including high-tech lighting, sound and projections. Chong was a pioneer of those now-common theatrical elements. Forgive him if he is somewhat suspicious about their overuse in live productions today.
coordinating everything “from the technical things to the publicity to the theaters you’re working with.” Having a professional company manager on staff has made that possible, he said. For Ping Chong + Company, that job has been filled by Bruce Allardice, the executive director since 1988.
Chong has also had to survive being defined by as an artist based on his ethnic background. Certainly, he has Chinese roots and was brought up in
“ARTISTS NEVER FORGET THAT THE WORLD IS MIRACULOUS. WE ARE ALWAYS ASTONISHED BY IT.”
That was obvious in 1977, when Chong first received wide recognition for Humboldt's Current, which introduced his interest in tackling geopolitical topics as a matter of course. It remains certain in this century, notably through his documentary project, Undesirable Elements, which started in 1991 and has been reimagined 40 times since. For that evolving piece, Chong and his company spend time with varied communities across the globe, interviewing subjects and building a framework for a presentation of dramatic, personal narratives that has been described as a “seated opera for the spoken word.”
All of Chong’s work is connected through a similar desire to relate intimate stories about the underclasses to the larger world. The real thread, according to the playwright, is that it’s all pure theater. By that, he means it relies on the audience’s willingness to sit in a dark room for some time and suspend disbelief. “That’s real theater,” he said. “You have to use the imagination a lot more than trying to be literal about realism.”
The “poetics of theater” are different
“I started in the generation that really brought media to the foreground,” he said. “Now everyone is doing projections and sound. Even when they shouldn’t be doing it, they’re doing it.”
Theater is best, he believes, when it puts the pre-tech connections between people first. “Simple, direct interaction between two human beings is very important, and we are in danger of losing that,” he said.
Not that Chong is cynical at the age of 73. Just the opposite. He continues to make hopeful work, even in dark political times. And, he notes, he’s more confident: He’s been around the block, as they say, and overcome a few obstacles that give him the status of elder statesman in the arts.
He brought his own company together at the start of an era when independent, professional arts organizations were just figuring out how to operate as small businesses and prosper over the long haul.
“For the longest time, we were always: ‘Are we gonna be here next year’ — and we always were,” he said.
But he’s mastered the particular business that is theater, which requires
a family of Chinese opera performers. “I didn’t even see Western theater until I was 17,” he said. That had a significant influence on his creativity. “My whole concept of theater is more imaginative, not a 19th-century,
European one.”
At the same time, “I’ve aways felt like
I didn’t quite fit in the Asian American art world,” he said. “I kind of went my own way.”
Personal geography had a lot to do with that. Chong was born in Toronto and raised in Manhattan. His perspective is definitively New World, and the topics he makes work around are diverse. Being tagged as an Asian American artist hardly tells the whole story.
“I’m a real American artist,” he said. “In the sense that my influences come from all over the place.”
Ray Mark Rinaldi is a writer and critic who reports nationally and internationally on arts and culture, splitting his time between Denver and Mexico City. He is founder, editor and contributor at One Good Eye, a platform for a wide-ranging discussion about the visual arts, and a 2018 winner of the Rabkin Prize for arts writers. A former fellow with the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, Rinaldi is a regular contributor to Inside Arts.
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