2020 DTSA Booth Award Honors Mimi Lien

Due to the ongoing hleath crisis, the traditional in-person event is replaced by an enduring online tribute - http://mimilien.edwinboothaward.com/ - to launch officially on May 29th, 2020.

The 2020 Booth Award Website celebrates four of Mimi Lien's landmark undertakings - a) An Octoroon, b) Superterranean, c) 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: Rachel Chavkin (The Great Comet, Hadestown), Dan Rothenberg (Pig Iron), Alec Duffy (JACK), Jennifer Kidwell (Underground Railroad Game), Tony Torn (Ubu Sings Ubu), as well as designers, performers, playwrights, and technicians.

Mimi 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 Mimi Lien's unboxing of the Booth Award and a tour of http://mimilien.edwinboothaward.com/ and be live-streamed in English on HowlRound TV Friday, May 29th 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, on the Segal Center YouTube Channel. 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.

The Edwin Booth Award is made possible by support from the Doctoral Students Council (DSC),representing Doctoral and Masters students at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.