Mimi Lien
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. She hails from New Haven, CT and is based in Brooklyn, NY.
Selected work includes Antony & Cleopatra (Metropolitan Opera / San Francisco Opera), Grounded (Metropolitan Opera / Washington National Opera), Parsifal (Bayreuther Festspiele), The Righteous (Santa Fe Opera), Die Zauberflöte (Staatsoper Berlin), Silent Night and Intelligence (Houston Grand Opera), The Comet/Poppea (The Industry/AMOC*/Lincoln Center), Pelléas et Mélisande (Cleveland Orchestra), 4 Nights of Dream (Japan Society/Tokyo Bunka Kaikan), Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway, Tony Award), Sweeney Todd (Broadway – Tony nomination), Fairview and An Octoroon (Soho Rep), Uncle Vanya (Lincoln Center Theater), True West (Roundabout), Taylor Mac’s A 24 Decade History of Popular Music (St. Ann’s Warehouse & international tour). Her stage designs have been presented in NYC and around the US at the Public Theater, Signature Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, The Kitchen, Berkeley Rep, A.R.T., Mark Taper Forum, Wilma Theater, Longwharf Theatre, Goodman Theater, La Jolla Playhouse, and Alliance Theatre, among others.
Her large-scale public artworks include The GREEN (2021, New York), a public space intervention commissioned by Lincoln Center; PARADE (2022, Toronto), a conveyor-belt installation commissioned by The Bentway Conservancy; MODEL HOME (2017, San Diego), a performance installation utilizing a 60-ft crane; and 2×4 tree (2016), a kinetic sculpture commissioned by the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts.
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.
She is the recipient of the Cullman Award for Extraordinary Creativity at Lincoln Center Theater, 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.
Mimi received a B.A. in Architecture from Yale University (1997) and an M.F.A. in Stage Design from NYU (2003).
She is a co-founder of the Brooklyn, NY performance space JACK.
