Mimi Lien is a designer of sets/environments for theater, dance, and opera. Arriving at set design from a background in architecture, her work often focuses on the interaction between audience/environment and object/performer. 

In 2017, Mimi won the Tony Award for her design of Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812.  In 2015, she was named a MacArthur Fellow, and is the first stage designer ever to achieve this distinction. Mimi is a company member of Pig Iron Theatre Company, and co-founder of JACK, a performance/art space in Brooklyn. 

Selected work includes Die Zauberflöte (Staatsoper Berlin), True West (Broadway), Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway), Taylor Mac’s A 24 Decade History of Popular Music (St. Ann’s Warehouse & international tour), The Oldest Boy (Lincoln Center), Black Mountain Songs (BAM), Pelléas et Mélisande (Cleveland Orchestra), 4 Nights of Dream (Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Japan), Petrushka (Perm Opera Ballet Theatre, Russia).  Her theatre designs have been presented around the country at Lincoln Center Theater, Signature Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, the Public Theater, Soho Rep, The Kitchen, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Berkeley Rep, A.R.T., Mark Taper Forum, Wilma Theater, Longwharf Theatre, Goodman Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, Portland Center Stage, Alliance Theatre, Playmakers Rep, and Virginia Opera, among others.

Her large-scale public artworks include a building-wide installation for the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts in 2011 (La Ville Radieuse), and 2016 (2×4 tree).  Her performance installation, Model Home, was commissioned for the 2017 Without Walls Festival at the La Jolla Playhouse.

Her design work has been exhibited in the Prague Quadrennial, and her sculpture work was featured in the exhibition, LANDSCAPES OF QUARANTINE, at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York City.

She is also a recipient of the Cullman Award for Extraordinary Creativity at Lincoln Center Theater, a Bessie Award, Drama Desk Award, Lucille Lortel Award, American Theatre Wing Hewes Design Award, LA Drama Critics Circle Award, and an OBIE Award for sustained excellence.

Back to ThisGen Fellowship page.