Ming Cho Lee


Ming Cho Lee is a Chinese American theatrical set designer and professor at the Yale School of Drama.

Biography

Lee, whose father was a Yale University graduate, moved to the United States in 1949 and attended Occidental College. He first worked on Broadway as a second assistant set designer to Jo Mielziner on The Most Happy Fella in 1956. Lee's first Broadway play as Scenic Designer was The Moon Besieged in 1962; he went on to design the sets for over 20 Broadway shows, including Mother Courage and Her Children, King Lear, The Glass Menagerie, The Shadow Box, and For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf. He has won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Set Design, a Helen Hayes Award, and in 1983 he received a Tony Award for Best Scenic Design for K2. He has also designed sets for opera. Since 1969, Lee has taught at the Yale School of Drama, where he is currently co-chair of the Design Department. In February 2017, he announced that he would be retiring at the end of the fall semester. He is on the Board of Directors for The Actors Center in Manhattan. Lee is the subject of Ming Cho Lee: A Life in Design by Arnold Aronson, which was published by TCG Books in 2014.

Awards and Honors

Lee was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1998, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2002. In 1995, he won the Obie Award for Sustained Excellence for his consistent and valuable contributions to the theatrical community.