Mimi Lien, Basil Twist, Lin-Manuel Miranda among Winners of McArthur Genius Grants

Set designer Mimi Lien, puppetry specialist Basil Twist, and Hamilton author/star Lin-Manuel Miranda are among the theatre people to be awarded so-called "genius grants" from The McArthur Foundation; it was announced this week. Each grantee will receive $625,000, paid quarterly over the course of five years. They are designed to recognize the winner's originality and creativity, and come with no strings attached.

Citing her designs for such shows as Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812; Born Bad; An Octoroon; and Eurydice, the foundation said in a statement, "Mimi Lien is a set designer for theatre, opera, and dance whose bold, immersive designs shape and extend a dramatic text's narrative and emotional dynamics. Lien combines training in set design and architecture with an innate dramaturgical insight, and she is adept at configuring a performance space to establish particular relationships -- both among the characters on stage and between the audience and the actors -- that dramatize the play's movement through space and time." Most recently, Lien designed Annie Baker's new play, John, at New York's Signature Theatre.

Miranda is currently starring in the smash hit musical Hamilton. The foundation stated, "Lin-Manuel Miranda is a composer, lyricist, and performer reimagining American musical theatre in works that fuse traditional storytelling with contemporary musical styles and voices. Well-versed in the structure and history of musical theatre, Miranda expands its idiom with the aesthetic of popular culture and stories from individuals and communities new to Broadway stages. "

Twist is about to open the production Sisters' Follies: Between Two Worlds, at Abrons Art Center. The foundation stated, "Basil Twist is a puppeteer and theatre artist whose experiments with the materials and techniques of puppetry explore the boundaries between the animate and inanimate, the abstract and the figurative. Twist's works range from productions of classic stories to abstract visualizations of orchestral music and are informed by puppetry traditions from around the world, including hand puppets, bunraku, and string-and-rod marionettes."

For the full list of winners, go to https://www.macfound.org/fellows/class/2015/