Chronology.
1930 Born in Shanghai, China On October 3.
1948 His family moves to Hong Kong.
1949 Came to California and enrolls in Occidental College as an art major.
1954-1958 Works With Jo Mielziner in New York, on and off Broadway.
1955 Got his union card.
1959-1963 Designer at the Peabody Institute of Music in Baltimore.
1961 Becomes the resident designer at the San Francisco Opera.
1962 First Broadway show: The Moon Besieged.
1962-1973 Principle designer at the New York Shakespearean Festival.
1970 Becomes leader of the design program at Yale University.
1970 Nominated for a Tony Award for Billy.
1978 Designed to Astor Court in the Chinese wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
1983 Wins a Tony Award for his design of K2.
1996 He is awarded an endowment at Yale Drama School.
 
 

His History.

    Ming Cho Lee was born in Shanghai, China, on October 3, 1930. Lee’s early education included a variety of mission schools while also studying landscape painting with Chang Kwo Nyen. His first exposure to the theatre came during the Japanese occupation of China in the 1930’s-1940’s. His family moved to Hong Kong in 1948, and in 1949 he traveled to California to study art at Occidental College. He soon changed his major to theatre and had many opportunities to design; he and even acted and directed. He spent a year in graduate school at UCLA but, being dissatisfied, he went to New York at the suggestion of Edward F. Kook, the president of Century Lighting. Kook introduced him to Jo Mielziner for whom Lee worked from 1954 to 1958, working on such productions as Silk Stockings, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
    In 1955 Lee got his union card and designed two productions for the Grist Mill Playhouse, but was fired for making sets too elaborate and expensive. In 1958, he designed two Off-Off Broadway shows: The Infernal Machine at the Phoenix Theatre, and The Crucible. From 1959 to 1963 he worked at the Peabody Institute of Music in Baltimore where he designed sets and lights for nine productions.
    In 1962 Lee’s first design on Broadway was for The Moon Besieged, after a brief pursuit as resident designer at the San Franciso Opera in 1961. Upon his return to New York he was hired as resident designer for the New York Shakespearean Festival, where he worked for ten years.
    The year 1970 brought two major advances for Ming Cho Lee. He became a professor of design and co-chairman of the Design Department at the Yale School of Drama. He was also was nominated for his first Tony Award for his design of Billy. Lee would not win the Tony Award for this production, not until his 1983 design of K2 did he procure the Tony.
    His wife is named Betsy and they reside in Manhattan’s Upper East Side is an apartment that has become more of a studio than anything else.
 
 

His Designs.

    "To this day Lee’s Style is equated by most people with pipe scaffolding - it has largely become a joke." (Aronson, p. 88). However, when one views a design by Ming Cho Lee, one can not help but notices the strict attention to detail or the way in which the essence of the play has been captured in the design. However he does admit a fascination for scaffolding. "I’m fascinated by the difference in scaffolding...Lines cutting across planes are interesting to me." (Aronson, p. 92). Some good examples of his use of scaffolding are: The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Peer Gynt, and Attila. (Pictures of which are contained in the appendix.)"While others constantly have tried to stereotype Ming, he has always been moving and growing." (Theatre Crafts, Feb ‘84). Like most artists, Lee has phases in his work. Along with the use of pipes or scaffolding, another Lee trademark is collage. These designs are best exemplified in Bomarzo, The Barber of Seville, and Anna Bolena. The final type, or phase in Lee’s work is scarcity. This use of open space is evident in his designs of Waiting for Godot, The Witches of Endor, and The Works of Samuel Becket.

"The Stage is not flexible and not limitless. It is a finite space, and I am happiest when I am showing the finite space. Whenever I try to create endless space I always realize how ultimately unsuccessful it is. So I tend to approach even the suggestion of endless space in a finite way." - Ming Cho Lee (Aronson, p. 88).

    "Since the mid-1960’s, Ming Cho Lee has been the single most influential force in American stage design." (Aronson, p.87). The impact and influence of Ming Cho Lee can be understood by mearly examining his long legacy students. Over fifty percent of the bulk of working American stage designers were trained by him. He is "quite possibly the most influential designer in the United States today. Not by the virtue of huge Broadway successes seen by millions. In fact, his Broadway record has been rotten. Not by virtue of his work in films. He doesn’t. Not because he has written a text used across the country. He hasn’t. But because, quite simply he works - works a lot in opera, dance, theatre. And his work is good." (Theatre Crafts, Feb ‘84).
    Lee’s design for Don Rodrigo as well as other productions for the New York City Opera shaped the way American designers look at opera design. From the 1950’s to the early 1960’s the majority of opera designs were "in the 19th-century style of painted Romantic Realism." (Aronson p.95). Lee challenged this notion and helped to bring opera back as a legitimate theatrical art form.
    In recent months, Lee has been speaking as a proponent for the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has been quote as saying "The N.E.A and the N.E.H. are almost gone. The pressure to change, to downgrade humanities and arts is enormous. If we don’t take on responsibility for individual rights for the arts, then soon we will have no education... this is where we make our stand." (The Post, 8 Apr ‘96)
 

Selected List of Scene Design Credits.

Broadway.                                                         Martha Graham Company.
Execution of Justice (1986).                                Myth of a Voyage (1973).
K2 (1983).                                                         The Witch of Endor (1965).
The Glass Menagerie (1983).                              A Look at Lightning (1962).
The Shadow Box (1977).
For Colored Girls Who Have Considered            San Francisco Opera.
Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf (1976).            St. Matthew Passion (1973).
Much Ado About Nothing (1972).                        La Favorita (1973).
Two Gentleman of Verona (1971).
Billy (1969).                                                        New York Shakespearean Festival.
Little Murders (1967).                                         Much Ado About Nothing (1972).
A Time for Singing (1966).                                   Peer Gynt (1969).
Slapstick Tragedy (1966).                                     Henery IV (1968).
                                                                             Richard III (1966).

New York City Opera.                                       Love’s Labour’s Lost (1965).
Attila (1996).                                                        Hamlet (1964).
Attila (1981).                                                         Electra (1964).
Maria Stuarda (1972).
Roberto Devereux (1970).                                    Metropolitan Opera.
Faust (1968).                                                         Khovanschina (1985).
Le Cog d’Or (1967).                                             I Puritani (1976).
Don Rodrigo (1966)                                              Lohengrin (1976).
Boris Godunov (1974).
 
 

Bibliography.