Mimi Lien Wins 2020 Edwin Booth Award

Designer Mimi Lien is the winner of the 2020 Edwin Booth Award, conferred annually by PhD students at the CUNY Graduate Center.

The 2020 Booth Award Website celebrates four of Lien's landmark undertakings -- a) Brandon Jacob-Jenkins' play An Octoroon, b) Superterranean, produced by Philadelphia's Pig Iron Theatre Company, c) the musical Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, and d) the Brooklyn performance space JACK -- alongside five-minute-or-less video tributes from academics and from her acclaimed collaborators.

Artists contributing include: director Rachel Chavkin (The Great Comet, Hadestown), playwright/director Dan Rothenberg (Pig Iron), writer/director Alec Duffy (JACK), actress Jennifer Kidwell (Underground Railroad Game), actor Tony Torn (Ubu Sings Ubu), as well as others designers, performers, playwrights, and technicians.

Lien designs sets and environments for theatre, 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 is co-founder of JACK, the inclusion-minded performance space in Brooklyn; sits on the board of directors at Soho Rep; and is a core company member of Pig Iron Theatre Company (Philadelphia), where she was recently the lead artist of Superterranean ('19), the company's epic piece of "visual theatre."

Her visual dramaturgy has been central to some of the most celebrated shows in recent NYC history, including Fairview, An Octoroon, Taylor Mac's A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, John, and Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812. Her work has been recognized with the Obie Award, Hewes Design Award, Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Lucille Lortel Award, Bessie Award, and the MacArthur Fellowship.

A brief ceremony, which includes Lien's unboxing of the Booth Award and a tour of mimilien.edwinboothaward.com can be livestreamed in English on HowlRound TV Friday, May 29 at 7:30pm.

In conjunction with the award The Segal Center will be streaming Pig Iron's Superterranean (2019) from 5/29/20 through 5/31/20 on the Segal Center YouTube Channel and Love Unpunished (2005) from 6/01/20 through 6/03/20. Links to these YouTube videos will be posted on the Segal Center's event page.

The Edwin Booth Award was established in 1983 by the Doctoral Theatre Students' Association (DTSA) to honor a person, organization, or company for their outstanding contribution to the New York City/American Theatre and Performance Community. Recipients of the annual Booth Award are nominated and elected exclusively by students in the program. Named after the nineteenth-century tragedian Edwin Booth, renowned for his intellectual curiosity, the award promotes integration of the professional and academic theatre communities. The 2019 Booth Award was given to Ishmael Houston-Jones. Past honorees include: Ellen Stewart ('84), Joseph Papp ('89), Dixon Place ('99), HERE Arts Center ('06), Mabou Mines ('07), Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir ('16), Taylor Mac ('17), Young Jean Lee ('18) and others. Designer Mimi Lien is the winner of the 2020 Edwin Booth Award, conferred annually by PhD students at the CUNY Graduate Center.