改變美國戲劇的華人舞臺設計師

It is hard to overstate the impact Ming Cho Lee has had on the world of theater design.

你怎麼稱讚李名覺對戲劇設計界的影響都不爲過。

Michael Yeargan, a student of Mr. Lee's at the Yale School of Drama in 1969 and now co-chairman of the drama school's design department, recognized that at the 2005 Tony Awards ceremonies, where Mr. Yeargan was honored for set design.

邁克爾·耶爾根(Michael Yeargan)2005年參加託尼獎頒獎典禮領取舞臺設計獎時意識到了這一點。1969年耶爾根在耶魯大學戲劇學院就讀時師從李名覺，現在是該戲劇學院設計系的聯合系主任。

"When I went backstage and looked around me," he recalled, he noticed that five of the six Tony winners standing there had studied with Mr. Lee. "I suddenly realized what an influence he had on all of us."

他回憶說，“我走到後臺，看着周圍的人”，注意到站在那裏的六位託尼獎獲得者中有五位曾師從李名覺，“我突然意識到他對我們所有人的影響有多大”。

The schools of drama and architecture at Yale are staging a retrospective exhibition honoring Mr. Lee, who has been a member of the drama school faculty for more than four decades.

耶魯大學戲劇學院和建築學院正在舉辦李名覺回顧展。李名覺已在戲劇學院任教40多年。

"Stage Designs by Ming Cho Lee," on display at the Yale School of Architecture in New Haven through Feb. 1, features more than 90 models, sketches and photographic reproductions for more than 60 theater, dance and opera productions by Mr. Lee, who received a special Tony Award for lifetime achievement last year and a National Medal of Arts in 2002.

“李名覺舞臺設計展”(Stage Designs by Ming Cho Lee)在紐黑文市的耶魯大學建築學院舉行，持續到2月1日，展出李名覺爲60多部戲劇、舞蹈劇和歌劇設計的90多件作品，包括模型、草圖和逼真的複製品。李名覺去年獲得了託尼獎終身成就獎，2002年獲得了國家藝術獎章。

Arnold Aronson, a professor of theater at Columbia University who wrote the introductory wall text and publication for the Yale exhibition and who is writing a book on Mr. Lee that will be published this year, said Mr. Lee had trained more set designers than anyone else.

展覽簡介牆和出版物上的文字是由哥倫比亞大學戲劇教授阿諾德·亞倫森(Arnold Aronson)撰寫的。他正在寫一本關於李名覺的書，該書將於今年出版。他說李名覺培養的舞臺設計師比其他任何人都多。

"And his influence goes beyond set design," Dr. Aronson said. "Costume and lighting designers, playwrights, directors, architects, artists have taken his classes. His aesthetic and ideology have seeped into the very fabric of American theater."

“他的影響力超越了舞臺設計，”亞倫森博士說，“服裝和燈光設計師、劇作家、導演、建築師和藝術家都上過他的課。他的審美觀和思想方式已經滲入了美國戲劇的構造中。”

Mr. Lee, who has also taught at New York University and has held classes and workshops around the world, is not passing along a particular style of design, Dr. Aronson added. Instead he offers "an approach, a commitment to the idea that art has the possibility of changing the world, that art must make a statement."

李名覺也在紐約大學教書，還在世界各地開過講習班。亞倫森博士補充說，他不是傳授某一種設計風格，而是提供“一種方法，傳遞一種信念——藝術具有改變世界的可能，藝術應該表達立場”。

Born in Shanghai in 1930, Mr. Lee studied landscape painting as a teenager, which, he said in a recent interview, had taught him "not to use much color" and "gave me a real foundation for watercolor." These studies, he added, also showed him how to be "real without being realistic."

李名覺1930年出生在上海，十幾歲的時候學過風景畫。他在最近的一次採訪中說，學習風景畫讓他明白“不要使用太多色彩”，“爲我學水彩畫奠定了紮實的基礎。”他補充說，這也讓他知道如何“具有真實感而不照搬現實”。

When he entered Occidental College in Los Angeles in 1949 with little command of English, he could not understand his first lecture, and decided, he said, "to take every drawing class I could get my hands on." In them, he said, "I would get A's, which balanced the D's I got in freshman English. They saved my life."

1949年他進入洛杉磯西方學院學習時，幾乎不會說英語，第一節課完全聽不懂，所以他決定“去上能上的所有繪畫課”。他說，這些課“我能得到A，它們能平衡我在大一英語課上得的D。它們救了我的命。”

Mr. Lee moved to New York in 1954 and worked for Jo Mielziner, the designer of sets for plays including "The Glass Menagerie," "Death of a Salesman" and "Carousel."

1954年，李名覺搬到紐約，爲喬·梅爾齊納(Jo Mielziner)工作。梅爾齊納是很多戲劇的舞臺設計師，包括《玻璃動物園》(The Glass Menagerie)、《推銷員之死》(Death of a Salesman)和《旋轉木馬》(Carousel)。

Mr. Lee also worked with the set designer Boris Aronson (no relation to Arnold Aronson), who Dr. Aronson said introduced nonobjective art movements into the American theater, providing "an important counterpoint to the poetic realism of Mielziner."

李名覺還跟舞臺設計師鮑里斯·亞倫森（Boris Aronson，與阿諾德·亞倫森沒有關係）合作過。亞倫森博士說鮑里斯·亞倫森把抽象藝術運動帶入了美國戲劇界，提供了“一種與梅爾齊納的詩意現實主義相反的重要方法”。

"For Boris, Lee has said, designing for the theater was not just a question of design but of the play's relationship to history, society, politics, religion — to life itself," Dr. Aronson said.

“李名覺曾說過，對鮑里斯來說，戲劇設計不只是設計的問題，而是這部戲劇與歷史、社會、政治、宗教以及生活本身的關係，”亞倫森博士說。

The Yale exhibition, which was organized by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and based on three earlier exhibitions, traces these influences and experiences, largely through some 65 models made by Mr. Lee for sets.

耶魯大學的展覽是紐約公共圖書館爲表演藝術組織的展覽，它以之前的三次展覽爲基礎，主要通過李明覺爲佈景創作的約65個模型來追蹤這些影響力和經歷。

From 1962 to 1973, Mr. Lee was the principal designer for what is today the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park program at Central Park's Delacorte Theater. He also designed sets for the Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, Martha Graham Dance Company, regional theaters like the Arena Stage in Washington and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and many others.

從1962年到1973年，李名覺是如今的公共劇團在中央公園戴拉寇特劇院舉辦的“公園中的莎士比亞”(Shakespeare in the Park)項目的主要設計師。他還爲其他很多劇院設計過佈景，比如大都會劇院、科文特花園的皇家歌劇院、瑪莎·葛蘭姆現代舞團，以及一些地方劇院，比如華盛頓的阿瑞娜劇場和洛杉磯的馬克·塔佩劇場。

The models are mostly one-eighth-inch-scale and one-quarter-inch-scale and some half-inch-scale models of sets, in full color, not only containing scenery, but often lights, actors and audiences.

這些模型大多是1/8英寸或1/4英寸，有些是1/2英寸，全綵色，不僅包括佈景，還包括燈光、演員和觀衆。

Among the most important, Mr. Lee said, is the model for "Electra," a 1964 Public Theater production at the Delacorte Theater. The model has three stone sculptural pieces on a metal framework that represent the walls of a courtyard.

李名覺說，其中最重要的一個是爲《厄勒克特拉》(Electra)製作的模型。該劇是公共劇團1964年在戴拉寇特劇院上演的戲劇。這個模型有三個石雕，鑲嵌在一個代表院牆的金屬框架上。

This set was the first with "a completely nonliteral abstract design, though at the same time it was real, an emblem, an icon," Mr. Lee said. "It wasn't an illustration of a place, it was the pure expression of the play."

李名覺說，這個佈景是第一個“完全非寫實的抽象設計，雖然它同時也具有真實感，但它是一個象徵，一個標誌”，“它不是對一個地方的描繪，而純粹是對這齣戲的表達。”

Similarly, his designs for two sets from the Metropolitan Opera's 1973 production of "Boris Godunov" feature multiple religious icons as well as what he called "fairly real sculptural pieces" that represent a cathedral wall and a stone wall.

同樣的，他爲大都會歌劇院1973年的《鮑里斯·戈都諾夫》(Boris Godunov)設計的兩個佈景也含有很多宗教標誌以及他稱之爲“非常真實的雕塑”，這些雕塑代表大教堂的一面牆和一面石頭牆。

Mr. Lee said more recent models for the two parts of "Angels in America," produced at the Dallas Theater Center in 1996, "are very different from ‘Electra.' I'm no longer interested in making things abstract, I'm using super-realism."

李名覺說爲1996年在達拉斯戲劇中心上演的分兩部分的“《美國天使》(Angels in America)設計的模型”與“《厄勒克特拉》很不一樣”。“我對製作抽象的東西不再有興趣了，我用的是超現實主義風格。”

In Part 1, the rear wall of the set's great hall contains light switches and various medical controls, representing a hospital, while it is also painted with a blue sky and white clouds; this design thus combines multiple locations and images into one. The set for Part 2 is what Mr. Lee described as a "pretty abstract" East Village tenement, painted a "dirty blue" that could represent heaven.

在第一部分中，佈景中大廳的後圍牆上有電燈開關和各種醫療控制裝置，代表一個醫院，不過上面還畫着藍天白雲，這樣的設計能把多個地點和場景融合在一起。爲第二部分設計的佈景是李明覺所說的“非常抽象的”東村住宅，它是“深藍色”的，可以代表天堂。

The exhibition also brings Mr. Lee's career full circle: Beside theatrical models, it also contains 24 of his watercolors, painted from 1949 to 2007; none has been shown before. These include 1950s scenes of Los Angeles and New York and lyrical, almost abstract seascapes of Bar Harbor, Me., from 2007.

此次展覽還全面展示了李名覺的藝術生涯：除了戲劇模型，還包括24幅他從1949年到2007年繪製的水彩畫，這些水彩畫之前從未展示過。其中包括20世紀50年代洛杉磯和紐約的場景以及2007年緬因州巴爾港的抽象海景。

"I've devoted a good part of my life to teaching at Yale, and when they said, ‘Let's do a retrospective at Yale,' I welcomed it," he said, adding he hoped the exhibition would help visitors better understand set design, which he called "neither fish nor fowl."

他說，“我大半生都在耶魯大學任教，所以當他們說‘我們在耶魯辦個回顧展吧'時，我欣然同意。”他又補充道，希望這次展覽能幫助觀衆更好地理解“不倫不類的”舞臺設計。