Join Tim Bond and Ping Chong for a personal discussion about their decades of experience as BIPOC theater practitioners, as well as how their professional experiences have changed to reflect the current moment. The discussion will also focus on practices for artists in the theater and how these practices have been and continue to be honed during the COVID-19 pandemic. This online discussion will be facilitated by Leyla Modirzadeh, an interdisciplinary artist and acting lecturer at UC Berkeley. Register to receive the Zoom link for this event. TIM BOND joined TheatreWorks Silicon Valley as Artistic Director in July 2020. He is a nationally-known director and educator with past leadership roles as Producing Artistic Director at Syracuse Stage, Associate Artistic Director at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Artistic Director at Seattle Group Theatre, and tenured full Professor and Head of the Professional Actor Training Program at the University of Washington School of Drama. Over the last 35 years Tim has directed at many theatres including The Market Theatre (Johannesburg), Baxter Theatre Centre (Cape Town), Guthrie Theater (Minneapolis), Milwaukee Rep, The Wilma Theater (Philadelphia), Arena Stage (DC), GEVA Theatre Center (Rochester), Cleveland Play House, Indiana Rep, Actors Theatre of Louisville, PCPA (Santa Maria), Arizona Theatre Company, Portland Center Stage, Dallas Theater Center, Seattle Rep, A Contemporary Theatre (Seattle), Empty Space Theatre (Seattle), Paul Robeson Theatre, and Seattle Children’s Theatre. He is the recipient two Backstage West Garland Awards, two Syracuse Area Live Theatre (SALT) Awards, and a Dallas-Fort Worth Critics Forum Award. Tim received his BFA in Dramatic Arts from Howard University and his MFA in Directing from the University of Washington. PING CHONG is an internationally acclaimed theatre artist and pioneer in the use of media in the theater. Since 1972, he has created over 100 works for the stage which have been presented at major festivals and theatres worldwide. He is the recipient of the 2014 National Medal of Arts, the highest honor specifically given for achievement in the arts to an individual artist in the United States. He has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, a USA Artist Fellowship, two BESSIE awards, two OBIE awards and the 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. In 1992, he created the first work in the Undesirable Elements series of community-based oral history projects of which there have now been over 50 productions. His puppet theater work CATHAY: Three Tales of China was commissioned by the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for its Festival of China in 2005 and was presented at the Seattle Repertory Theatre, New Victory Theatre, the Vienna Festival and the World Puppetry Festival in Chengdu, PRC. His adaptation of Kurosawa’s THRONE OF BLOOD, was presented at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival in 2010. Theatre Communications Group has published two volumes of his plays The East West Quartet and a volume on Undesirable Elements. Recent projects include Collidescope: Further Adventures in Pre- and Post-Racial America, exploring the complex history of racial violence in the United States, which premiered at the University of Maryland in 2014 and was subsequently produced by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Wake Forest University and University of Minnesota in 2019. ALAXSXA | ALASKA, a theatrical production exploring cross-cultural encounter in Alaska with puppetry, video, and Alaska Native drum and dance, which premiered in Alaska in Summer 2017 and followed by performances at La MaMa ETC in October 2017. In May 2020, he created The Aleph, de Maistre and Me, a video reflecting on the Covid-19 Quarantine. Accessibility: If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting, CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) in order to fully participate in this event, please contact TDPS at least 10 days in advance of the event.