Winner of two Tonys for Best Scenic Design - The Nance (2013) and Talley's Folly (1980) - as well as many Tony nominations and numerous Drama Desk Awards and nominations, scenic designer John Lee Beatty will be the recipient of the Ming Cho Lee Award for Lifetime Achievement. The award will be presented at the 61st Henry Hewes Design Awards on October 20, 2025 in New York City. He was also the 2019 winner of the 2019 Robert L. B. Tobin Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatrical Design, as presented by the TDF/Irene Sharaff Awards, and has won Outer Critics Circle and Obie Awards.
A huge fan of Beatty's work, I have often said you could move right into any number of his sets, they are so realistic and inviting. When I told him that once during an interview, he laughed and said a lot of people tell him that but the perspective is not true to life and the architectural details are designed for the stage. “It’s theatrical manipulation of scale to make it look right…not truly the right proportions,” he insists. But in spite of his protests, I think you could definitely settle in comfortably in many of his rooms.
Beatty has also won seven prior Hewes Awards for ten productions dating back to Knock, Knock in 1976. His credits comprise over 115 Broadway designs and more than 140 Off Broadway designs, not to mention regional theatre productions, that have made a profound impact on theatre culture across five decades.
“John Lee Beatty is truly one of the legends in theater design,” said Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, chairman of the HHDA committee. “It is with great appreciation for his work and leadership that the Henry Hewes Design Awards committee honors him with the Ming Cho Lee Lifetime Achievement Award.”
A union scenic artist as well as designer, Beatty has also taught at four colleges, designed seven restaurants, and worked with the circus. He has been a major designer for Manhattan Theatre Club (70 productions), Circle Repertory Company, and Lincoln Center Theater (28 productions), City Center Encores! (22 seasons), and Shakespeare in Central Park. He designed musicals such as Ain’t Misbehavin’, The Color Purple, and the long-running revival of Chicago. But he is best known for premieres of plays by Lanford Wilson, David Mamet, Harold Pinter, Arthur Miller, Beth Henley, Jon Robin Baitz, Terrence McNally, Lynn Nottage, Wendy Wasserstein, David Ives, David Lindsay-Abaire, A.R. Gurney, Brian Friel, David Auburn, John Patrick Shanley, and more. Many of these plays are now classics in the American repertory.
A graduate of Brown, and Yale School of Drama, Beatty has been a member of the Theater Hall of Fame since 2003.