The scenic route
0 Comment(s)
Print
E-mail
Global Times, June 30, 2011
 |
|
Ming Cho Lee, one of the most influential set designers of his generation. Photo: Cai Xianmin/GT |
Ming Cho Lee has finally been honored in Shanghai, the hometown he left at the age of 18. Now 81, speaking fluent English and a little Shanghainese, the Tony Award winner admits he worried whether his stage design works would find favor here. "I was worried for many reasons," he told the Global Times. "One is that I have retired from designing and I wondered whether my designs would seem dated."
As the co-chairman of the Design Department at the Yale School of Drama since 1979 and one of the most influential set designers and mentors in the US today, Lee has worked on more than 200 shows including Broadway and off-Broadway productions, operas and dance events both in the US and overseas. In 1983 the Broadway production K2 earned him a Tony Award for Best Scenic Design. In 2002 he was also honored with the National Medal of Arts.
The 2011 World Renowned Prominent Set Designer Ming Cho Lee Design Retrospective, devoted to his career, closed last week in Ningbo (Lee's ancestral home) after a stop in Shanghai before that (at the Shanghai Art Museum). The show featured 108 works including everything from manuscripts to graphic drafts and stage models. It was the first time a retrospective of his work had been held on the Chinese mainland; previously he has been honored in New York and in Taipei.
Early influences
Born in 1930, Lee came from a wealthy family. His mother Tang Ying was a well-educated woman, and a member of high society in Shanghai. Tang, who also performed in some plays, often took her son to watch operas instilling in him a love of theater. She also arranged for him to be tutored by the well-known Chinese landscape painter Zhang Daqian.
In 1948, Lee left Shanghai for Hong Kong with his father and moved to Los Angeles to study art at the Occidental College. "Since I was having great problems with English, I spent two years immersing myself in studio arts - drawing, figure drawing and painting. And I got all As in my art classes, in sharp contrast to the Ds I got in English," he said. "Then I had to make a decision. Did I want to remain in the field of the arts, work in motion pictures, or work on the stage?"
Although Lee was able to achieve a degree of ability in abstract expressionist painting, he felt uncomfortable with the form.
"I realized that my training in Chinese painting - even though Chinese landscape painting is not realistic because it has no perspective - is never totally abstract. It tells a story and has a landscape. To have a painting with no subject matter was very difficult for me," he said.
Lee then went to the University of Southern California (USC) to study film. During 1948 and 1949, he watched many films in Hong Kong where his uncle owned a film studio. But after studying film for a summer, Lee switched to learning drama and design in the speech department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
"At that time, drama was not considered respectable enough to be a fully-fledged academic subject for study," he said.
Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)