left to right Ming Cho Lee (Faculty), Dede Ayite ’11, Aaron Mastin ’11, and Jess Goldstein ’78 (Faculty). Photo by Joan Marcus.
miracles nowadays? With Reagan in office?’ John was a little taken aback, and said, ‘Do you ever question the fact that you wake up?’ Then he walked to the window and said, ‘If you are a man from Mars, and I tell you that this gray world you see out there, in six months will be filled with green, would you believe it?’” This is the kind of passion, the kind of open-eyed, unconventional thinking that Ming encourages in his students. With his guidance, we explore each play as if it were, in the words of dramaturg Elinor Fuchs (Faculty), a “small planet,” with its own rules of climate, space, and time. Fuchs’s canonical essay, “Visit to a Small Planet,” lays the groundwork for this kind of deep listening to a play’s heartbeat, and it’s no great leap to John Hirsch’s “man from Mars.” Born in China, Ming might joke about his struggles with English (he grins as he recalls his undergraduate years at Occidental College, where he “failed any class that involved English—which was every class”), but he is absolutely fluent in the language of theatre. At 84 years old, his eyes still light up when he talks about Salome or Hedda Gabler, and the sketches that he roughs out on the classroom dryerase board are still a wonder to behold. They convey an absolute understanding of the space required to tell a particular story. Last winter’s major exhibition at the Yale School of Architecture, “Stage Designs by Ming Cho Lee,” was, in one very special way, the first of its kind. While there have been multiple retrospectives of Ming’s work in both the United States and China, there has never been one at Yale—Ming’s home as a teacher—until now. On the opening night of the exhibit, Arnold Aronson, a theatre historian and professor at Columbia University who is completing a book on Ming, spoke of the significance of showcasing Ming’s work here and now: “A younger generation today may not know the work of Ming Cho Lee,” Aronson said. “Unlike paintings, unlike music, unlike movies, theatre disappears. But to actually see his design work done 50 years ago and to understand why this was revolutionary when it was done … things that today we might think are old fashioned were new at one time, and they were new in many cases because Ming Cho Lee did them first. What is now the common vocabulary of the American theatre started, in many cases, with things that Ming Cho Lee did.” And so I sit in the classroom at 205 Park Street, the home of Ming’s scenic design class for 45 years, and as the April breeze comes in through the window, Ming and I chat. I listen as he tells me about his favorite movies (Gone With the Wind and Forbidden Games rank high on the list), his memories of his mother taking him to the theatre in Shanghai as a child, where both wept over a Chinese-language stage adaptation of Wuthering Heights, and the sudden start to his astounding career: “In 1961 I had to go to all the way to San Francisco just to find a job,” he recalls. “And in 1962 I was all over the place! Everyone was calling me.” And while he speaks, I have a thought. Next May I will be handed a sheet of paper that adds a few letters to my name. I’ll be a Master of Fine Arts. That’s good. But what’s better is the amazing experience I’ve had at YSD, learning from a true master like Ming Cho Lee. Like the seemingly endless New Haven gray blossoming into green, it’s a kind of miracle. Sarah Holdren ’15, YC ’08 is a third-year directing student.
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