Celebrating 30 Years of Ping Chong and Company’s Undesirable Elements Series and More Events at The New School
The New School invites you to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Ping Chong and Company’s (PCC) Undesirable Elements theater series. The two-day celebration held on February 3 and 4, 2023 brings Undesirable Elements cast members, presenters, creative collaborators, producing partners and colleagues in the field of documentary theater to the university for a two-day symposium featuring courses, panels, and student workshops, culminating with an evening performance from a new work in progress, Undesirable Elements: Ukraine.
Undesirable Elements is Ping Chong and Company’s groundbreaking interview-based, community engaged, theater series that features local community members telling their own stories of place, identity, and belonging. Unlike a traditional play or documentary theater project performed by actors, Undesirable Elements is produced with local partner organizations and features local community members in the performance. Presented as a chamber piece of storytelling, the production’s development is shaped by an extended community residency during which PCC artists conduct intensive interviews with the local participants and develop the script based on the cast members’ experiences. The script is performed by the interviewees, themselves, who have final approval of content, many of whom have never before spoken publicly.
All events are free and open to the public, but guests must RSVP for each event individually. Please visit the symposium event website for more information.
FEBRUARY 3, 2023
Opening night session
7:30PM (EST)
Tishman Auditorium, 63 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
Ping Chong, Founder and Artistic Director Emeritus of Ping Chong and Company, Creator of Undesirable Elements, in conversation with Gonzalo Casals, senior research and policy fellow for Arts and Culture at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Opening Remarks by Taryn Higashi, Executive Director, UNBOUND PHILANTHROPY
If you’re unable to attend in-person, we invite you to join for a livestream via YouTube.
FEBRUARY 4, 2023
Daytime Panels:
Real People, Real Stories, Real Theater: Undesirable Elements and Community Impact
11:00AM (EST)
Tishman Auditorium
63 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
Speakers:
- Ping Chong, Founder and Artistic Director Emeritus of Ping Chong and Company, Creator of Undesirable Elements
- Kyle Bass, resident playwright a Syracuse Stage and Assistant Professor, Department of Theater at Colgate University
- Billye J. Jones, LCSW, therapist, educator, trainer, and nonprofit leader
- Zeyba Rahman, Director, Building Bridges Program at the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art
- Kirya Traber, writer, performer, and cultural worker, MFA in Theatre from the School of Drama at the New School
- Moderator Sara Zatz, Associate Director of Ping Chong and Company, lead artistic collaborator on Undesirable Elements series
The Power of Naming Yourself in Public: Cast Members Reflect
2:30 PM (EST)
Tishman Auditorium, 63 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
Speakers:
- Amir Khafagy, cast member in Beyond Sacred: Voices of Muslim Identity, journalist
- Zazel Chavah O’Garra, cast member of Inside/Out: Voices from the Disability Community, founder and Artistic Director of ZCO/DANCEPROJECT
- Vaimoana Niumeitolu, cast member and of multiple Undesirable Elements productions, Ping Chong and Company teaching artist, performer-poet and visual artist
- Kilhah St. Fort, cast member Generation Rise, poet, Lehman College student
- Moderated by Leyla Modirzadeh, Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts, SUNY New Paltz; cast member and creator of multiple Undesirable Elements productions
Testimony, Dialogue, Community: Documentary Theater, Raising Up Voices
4:00PM (EST)
Tishman Auditorium, 63 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
Speakers:
- Raquel Almazan, interdisciplinary performer, writer, director and educator
- Aizzah Fatima, actress and writer, creator of Dirty Paki Lingerie (one-woman show) and Americanish (film)
- Kayhan Irani, writer, storyteller, creative community builder
- Sara Zatz, Associate Director, Ping Chong and Company
- Moderated by Cecilia Rubino, Associate Professor of Theater, Eugene Lang College
Evening Performance and Discussion
Undesirable Elements: Ukraine (Livestream)
7:30PM (EST)
Tishman Auditorium, 63 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
Ping Chong and Company and Yara Arts Group will share a 35-minute excerpt work-in-progress of a new Undesirable Elements production exploring experiences of Ukrainian-American New Yorkers and recent arrivals from Ukraine. Created in collaboration with Virlana Tkacz and Yara Arts Group, the production will explore the diversity of Ukrainian identity, immigration experiences, intergenerational connections, the history of Ukrainians in the United States, and the devastating impact of the current invasion by Russia. The work in progress will be followed by a conversation with cast and creative team members, who will be joined by Oksana Kis, Visiting Professor at Eugene Lang College for Liberal Arts Department of Anthropology.
ADDITIONAL FEBRUARY EVENTS
The Bette Howland Prize Celebration
Wednesday, February 1, 2023
6:00PM to 7:15PM (EST)
66 W 12th Street, Room A-407, New York, NY
Join us for a reading with authors Na Zhong, Rocky Halpern, Valerie Kipnis, and Charlotte Slivka, MFA writing program graduates and winners of the Bette Howland Prize. The evening will be introduced by Brigid Hughes, editor of A Public Space which rediscovered Howland, and moderated by Associate Teaching Professor Honor Moore.
The Bette Howland Prize is given every year for excellence in nonfiction writing to a graduating nonfiction MFA student at the New School. It was founded in 2017 by Honor Moore to recognize the work of graduating nonfiction concentrators and named for Bette Howland (1937-20l7), a memoirist and fiction writer who had mentored Moore.
Lake Superior Our Helper: Stories from Batchewanaung Anishinabek Fisheries Film Screening and Discussion
Thursday, February 2, 2023
6:00PM to 8:00PM(EST)
Kellen Auditorium, 66 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
Lake Superior Our Helper: Stories from Batchewanaung Anishinabek Fisheries follows Chief Dean Sayers through a series of conversations with community members to reveal the cultural, political, and ecological relationships surrounding their fisheries. Inviting viewers on a journey of Lake Superior, the film shares the messages of Elders, youth, fishers, community leaders, and their visions for the future of Batchewana’s fisheries. It also documents how fishing has changed over time, conflicts with the Canadian state around management and regulation, principles of Indigenous law, and the culture and ceremony that are deeply embedded within fishing practices.
This event will feature an in-person screening of Lake Superior Our Helper, followed by a panel discussion.
Gradually, Then Suddenly: The Bankruptcy of Detroit— New York City Premiere
Thursday, February 9, 2023
6:30PM to 8:30PM (EST)
The Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, New York NY
Gradually, Then Suddenly tells the inside story of how Detroiters grappled with the suspension of democracy at a time when the very essence of the nation’s grand experiment is under immense pressure. It explores the riveting tale of how the world’s most elite restructuring professionals battled over the future of the city-owned Detroit Institute of Arts, which faced the risk of liquidation. And it illuminates the implications of the tumultuous affair for the resilient people of a great American city that helped preserve democracy during World War II, put America on wheels and created the middle class.
A discussion and Q&A will be held after the screening led by Carol O’Cleireacain, former Deputy Mayor of Detroit and former NYC Budget Director, with the film’s creator and director, Sam Katz, Milano ’74.
A Concert for Ukraine
Sunday, February 12, 2023
12:00PM to 1:30PM (EST)
Tishman Auditorium, 63 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
Join us for A Concert for Ukraine presented by John Zorn and The New School’s College of Performing Arts. General admission tickets are free with a suggested donation of $50 and above to Razom. Doors will open at 11:30am.
Line-up:
Laurie Anderson-John Zorn Duo
Laurie Anderson: violin, voice
John Zorn: alto sax
Brooklyn Rider
Johnny Gandelsman: violin
Colin Jacobsen: violin
Nicholas Cords: viola
Michael Nicolas: cello
Marc Ribot-Mary Halvorson Duo
Marc Ribot: guitar
Mary Halvorson: guitar
Ravi Coltrane Quartet
Ravi Coltrane: tenor sax
Adam Rogers: guitar
Dezron Douglas: bass
Kush Abadey: drums
Doc Talks: Wisdom Gone Wild and Q+A with Rea Tajiri
Monday, February 13, 2023
7:00PM (EST)
Kellen Auditorium, 66 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY
Join us for a screening and Q+A with director Rea Tajiri to discuss her film Wisdom Gone Wild. In this moving and original reflection on aging, mortality, and transformation, Rea Tajiri partners with her mother, Rose Tajiri Noda, to create a film about the final 16 years of Rose’s life as a person living with dementia. Together, they nurture their connection through listening, art, and music. Rose performs songs from her youth, providing the soundtrack for time travel, as we witness her evolution across nine decades of living. Delicately weaving between past and present, parenting and being parented, the film reflects on the unreliability of memory and the desire to reinvent one’s own life when memories fail us.
Buddha Weeps in Jadugoda film screening
Friday, February 17, 2023
12:00PM to 2:00PM (EST
Wolff Conference Room (room 1103), 6 E 16th Street, New York, NY
Buddha Weeps in Jadugoda chronicles the deadly impacts of uranium mining on adivasis (South Asian Indigenous peoples) living in the community of Jadugoda in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand. Decades of unsafe mining, milling, and tailings management by the Uranium Corporation of India have contaminated the area, destroying local ecosystems and causing cancer, congenital birth defects, and numerous other health problems. The film highlights the gross abuse of power by state authorities that has displaced the original inhabitants of the region and abrogated internationally accepted norms and safety precautions for the handling of uranium and its by-products.
Join us for a screening of the film followed by a discussion with director Shri Prakash and lifelong adivasi activists Ashish and Ghanshyam Birulee, who will explain how adivasis, farmers, and other oppressed communities have mobilized against uranium mining and its devastating consequences in Jadugoda for decades.