Mimi Lien is a designer of sets/environments for theater, dance, and opera, and a MacArthur Fellow – the first stage designer to achieve this distinction. Select work: Antony & Cleopatra (San Francisco Opera & The Metropolitan Opera), Parsifal (Bayreuth Festival), The Righteous (Santa Fe Opera), Grounded (Washington National Opera & The Metropolitan Opera),Intelligence (Houston Grand Opera), Die Zauberflöte (Staatsoper Berlin), Taylor Mac’s A 24 Decade History of Popular Music (St. Ann’s Warehouse & international tour), The Oldest Boy (Lincoln Center Theater), Sweeney Todd (Broadway), Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway / Tony Award). Mimi’s large-scale public artworks include PARADE, a conveyor-belt installation at The Bentway in Toronto (2022), and The GREEN, which transformed the plaza at Lincoln Center into a grass-covered public space in Summer 2021. Her designs for dance have been seen at Perm Opera Ballet Theatre (Russia), Intradans (Netherlands), National Theatre (Taiwan). She is a co-founder of the Brooklyn performance space JACK.
