Now Onstage, Spaces to Lust For "As it happens, some of the most captivating open houses these days are being held in the city's theaters, with more than a dozen major plays and musicals this season set in New York City apartments."– Patrick Healy, New York Times 4/30/2010
Canadian Opera Company Displays Greed with Giant "Hoard" Piled on Stage "Everywhere Catherine Malfitano and Wilson Chin looked, they saw greed."– Trish Crawford, Toronto Star 4/23/2012
当代华裔百老汇舞台设计师——陈伟松 – Jiaying Chen, Duo Wei News 5/28/2010
music by Gaetano Donizetti, directed by Catherine Malfitano, Lyric Opera of Chicago, IL
"Lucia di Lammermoor reentered the repertory of Lyric Opera of Chicago in a starkly attractive new production directed by Catherine Malfitano. A darkly silhouetted tree dominated a genuinely creepy fountain scene, the fountain itself suggested by the interplay of Schuler's moody lighting with the mirrored flooring." – Mark Thomas Ketterson, Opera News
"Susanna Phillips delivered a creditable Mad Scene on Wilson Chin's high, narrow, curving tower staircase. Chin has some nice stage pictures, especially with a moonscape inspired by German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich." – Andrew Patner, Chicago Sun-Times
"Director Malfitano keeps the tale of illicit lovers moving swiftly, within uncluttered set designs by Wilson Chin that combines postmodern abstraction and period realism. For the famous Mad Scene, the tower revolves to reveal a steep spiral staircase, at the top of which Lucia stands revealed in a blood-stained bridal gown. Phillips is required to sing this coloratura marathon while slowly making her way down those precarious-looking steps." – John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune
"For Lucia di Lammermoor, director Catherine Malfitano and designer Wilson Chin offered consistantly striking images. Chin's solution for the Wolf's Crag scene, a rounded tower with slit windows, proved unusually effective and revolved neatly to provide a splendid, light-focusing 'scary staircase' playing area for the mad scene." – David Shengold, Opera News (2009)
music by Alexander Zemlinsky/Giacomo Puccini, directed by Catherine Malfitano, Canadian Opera Company, ON
Dora Award winner, Outstanding Set Design
"The COC has been mounting the most visually arresting theatre in Toronto. With two gorgeous productions opening this month, I'd like to tip my hat to the COC's recent slate of remarkable set designers. Gianni Schicchi is the latest COC production to dazzle. A hoarder's mountain of furniture, art, golf clubs, books, lampshades, and the like– designed by Wilson Chin– looms in the background. Other visual delights (I won't spoil them for you) await the audience as the family climbs and paws the heap. Eventually the claustrophobic death chamber gives way to an expansive beauty, and yet the hoard remains, stubbornly holding its ground in the new light." – David Ritter, The Toronto Review of Books
"Diva-turned-director Catherine Malfitano further linked the two operas by setting them in the same decaying Florentine villa, beautifully designed by Wilson Chin." – Christopher Hoile, Opera News
"The handsome parlor was designed by Wilson Chin and moodily lit by David Martin Jacques. For Schicchi, the set becomes a joke about the Italian predilection for refurbishment, with household junk piled high among drop cloths as the blue light of a TV screen dominates Schicchi's death-sofa-bed." – Jeremy Gerard, Bloomberg News
"Malfitano's comic work is devilishly inspired, with her designer, Wilson Chin, making the house something right out of Hoarder and providing a final coup de grace of the Florentine skyline that is pure joy." – Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star
"Wilson Chin's set played a equal part in the night's success, featuring a towering structure of junk that the ensemble could perch atop. The act closes as Rinuccio, played by René Barbera, dramatically pulls down a curtain and motions for the back wall to be lifted, revealing a beautiful canvas of Florence stretching the whole stage and adding one final awe." – Megan Leahy, Plaid Magazine
"With the strikingly beautiful set designed by Wilson Chin, this work deserves to be seen and heard by all opera lovers in Toronto." – Joseph So, La Scena Musicale
2 Tony Award nominations: Best Play and Best Director
"Next Fall has achieved the tricky and necessary feat of retaining its subtlety while increasing its clarity in making the transfer to Broadway. Wilson Chin (sets) and Jeff Croiter (lighting) have scaled up their designs to fill a larger house without strain." – Ben Brantley, New York Times
"Wilson Chin's set, Jessica Wegener's costumes and Jeff Croiter's lighting never call attention to themselves; they're functional in the best sense." – Ben Brantley, New York Times (2009)
"The production moves gracefully between the past and the present, thanks to the subtle magic of Wilson Chin's set, which transforms with minimal shifts from a generic lounge to a cramped Manhattan one-bedroom." – Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times
"Excellent design elements– Wilson Chin's fluid sets, Kate Bergh's costumes, and Jeff Croiter's lighting– provide a credible and atmospheric environment for this engrossing production."– Les Spindle, Backstage
"Wilson Chin's set design contends valiantly with the frequent changes of locale." – John Simon, Bloomberg
"From the hospital to the rooftop where Luke and Adam meet to a shared NY apartment set that ingeniously protracts and retracts, you never know how the scenery will develop next, but you'll ooh and ahh (at least in your head) every time it magically happens." – Cindy Pierre, Stage and Cinema
2012 Craig Noel Award nomination, Scenic Design
"Goldstein's staging deploys striking in-the-round tactics, especially designer Wilson Chin's terrific setting of tattered overhangs, wharf ropes and rusted metal flooring, which scores a coup when the saloon transforms amid copious dry ice into the barge."– David C. Nichols, Los Angeles Times
"Creeping waves of fog blanket the stage, which scenic designer Wilson Chin imaginatively transforms into a variety of nautical settings with the simplest of rough-hewn materials- ropes, rusty steel plates and ripped canvas. Combined with Paul Peterson's subtle but relentless sound design and Austin R. Smith's evocative lighting, the design team makes the ocean a living, breathing character in the story. Physically, the show's a wonder."– Pam Kragen, North County Times
"Wilson Chin's scenic design is so authentic playgoers will think they are actually aboard the barge. From the inventive rope work, and the transition from bar to ship, every scene is transporting."– Diana Saenger, La Jolla Light
"...truly breathtaking stagecraft (including a scene change that, deservedly, received thunderous applause). Wilson Chin's set is a wonder of minimalism as it easily evokes a barroom and a barge at sea; among other great inventions is the figurative use of ropes as a doorway. The transition from tavern to fog-enshrouded barge is easily the most eloquent, artistic scene change in memory."– Tony Frankel, Stage and Cinema
"The set evokes the weathered decay of any seaport, and the set change between Acts I and II is itself a work of art."– Josh Baxt, Culture Vulture
by Sondheim & Wheeler, directed by Julianne Boyd, Barrington Stage Company, MA
"Wilson Chin's squalid sideshow of a set, moodily enhanced by Philip S. Rosenberg's lighting, is as atmospheric and efficient as the occasion requires." – Ben Brantley, New York Times
"Wilson Chin's setting for director Julianne Boyd's haunting production of Sweeney Todd at Barrington Stage Company is lean, raw, spare; revealing, even with all its shadowy recesses. It is perfectly emblematic of a production that goes about its business purposefully; with crisp smooth discipline and focus; which has nothing on its mind but to get out of the way and let a complicated musical about the dark, morally corrupt side of human nature speak for itself." – Jeffrey Borak, Berkshire Eagle
"Wilson Chin's shadowy set is perfect– and a character itself in this tale of revenge." – Ron Lee, XBRK Radio
"With a stripped-down but evocative set by Wilson Chin, sharp and moody lighting by Philip S. Rosenberg, and costumes by Jennifer Moeller in a grimy palette amusingly spiked with venomous hits of chartreuse, this production has a distinctive look. It's part Grand Guignol, part modern minimalism, and wholly coherent and smart." – Louise Kennedy, The Boston Globe
"Wilson Chin's set is fantastic, a compendium of scaffolding, industrial lights and a rolling meat pie shop seems as if Street Scene, The Wizard of Oz and Chicago were involved in a car crash." – Michael Eck, Albany Times Union
by Richard Greenberg, Barrington Stage Company, MA; dir: Barry Edelstein
"Production starts out promising, with spacious, layered and detailed set design by Wilson Chin, smart period costumes that don't distract by Jessica Ford, and subtle lighting by Chris Lee that evoke a muted world, as if in a fading photograph from the play's time period, spring 1919." – Chris Newbound, Variety
"This production is a dream, starting with Wilson Chin's pop-up book set and Jessica Ford's period-perfect costumes." – Paul Lamar, Schenectady Gazette
"Director Barry Edelstein has assembled an excellent cast for BSC's take on Violet, and he has also put together a fine production team, anchored by Wilson Chin and his wonderful set design." – Jim White, The Times Union
"Wilson Chin has designed an amazing set, a slanted Collier Brothers rabbit warren of a 14th-floor office stacked high (and I mean high) with writer submissions in the first act and machine-produced pages in the second, with moveable wall-to-wall windows overlooking the cavernous streets of corporate New York." – Charles Kondek, The Independent
by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, Ars Nova Theatre, NYC; dir: Alex Timbers
"The stage curtain immediately pulls back to reveal Wilson Chin's impeccably detailed set, a brightly lit basement laboratory/studio apartment, with a fish tank whose vast significance is only revealed in Boom's final inspired moments." – John Del Signore, Gothamist
"The visual aesthetic of the play is fantastic. It looks beautiful, and the effects employed to highlight major shifts in plot are right on the money, and fit entirely with Timber's concept of breaking the fourth wall throughout. Much credit should be given to set designer Wilson Chin and lighting designer Marcus Doshi for making that happen." – Matt Johnston, nytheatre.com
"The amazingly detailed set is by WIlson Chin." – Matthew Murray, talkinbroadway.com
by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Working Theatre, NYC; dir: Connie Grappo
"Wilson Chin has designed a gorgeous commanding set." – Jason S. Grossman, nytheatre.com
"Wilson Chin provides a handsome scenic design that ingeniously converts for the play's multiple locales, even as it evokes the arcing parallel universes that Nihar says he has inhabited." – Andy Propst, American Theater Web
"The cast is aided by a versatile, simple scenic design by Wilson Chin, whose streetwise set featuring flyer-papered walls converts masterfully into a variety of domestic settings using sliding components." – Richard Patterson, Music OMH
by Richard Greenberg, The Old Globe, CA; dir: Kim Rubinstein
"There's no carping at the environment... with Chris Rynne's lights investing the photographic realism of Wilson Chin's weed-infested garden (complete with symbolic dilapidated rowboat) with the magic of balmy summer days and starry nights. In a superbly conceived coda, set 10 years on in Eva's Manhattan mansion, setting and mood shift abruptly as Greenberg contrasts the anger and energy of an antiwar street rally with the spiritual emptiness of the inhabitants above." – Bob Verini, Variety
"The production is stunning. Wilson Chin's set is beautifully bucolic, all grass, rocks and flowers, with a weathered wood walkway, an old rowboat, even a functional pong." – Pat Launer, Curtain Call
"It opens with a splashy little visual surprise, and closes with an exquisitely wistful image, like a bouquet of woe. That aquatic motif flows through the narrative – and through Wilson Chin's inviting and inventive set." – James Hebert, San Diego Union-Tribune
"[Kim Rubinstein] and scenic designer Wilson Chin have gone to ingenious lengths to satisfy the challenges of the Cassius Carter's in-the-round stage" – Paul Hodgins, Orange County Register
by Richard Greenberg, Studio Arena Theatre, Buffalo, NY; dir: Kathleen Gaffney
"At the Studio, it's no affront to the performers to talk first about Wilson Chin's set, which captures the vast authentic grunge of a disused Manhattan loft. Hints of better days lurk fuzzily behind a transparent drape." – The Buffalo Rocket
"Gaffney has delivered a smart production, handsomely designed by Wilson Chin with the obligatory high level of stagecraft expected by Studio Arena audiences. Chin's lower Manhattan loft apartment, which undergoes a total transformation as the clock turns back a generation, is effectively illuminated and given marvelously expressive mood and contour by lighting designer Lynne M. Koscielniak. As the title promises, it even rains." – Anthony Chase, ArtVoice
"The cast has been well supported by the designers, particularly Wilson Chin as scenic designer. His rainmaker is a wonder, but the attractive loft elevates and punctuates the play without interrupting it." – Willy Rogue Donaldson, Night-Life Magazine
by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Rattlestick Theatre, NYC; dir: Trip Cullman
"Keeping with the playwright's original vision of cosmic science fiction set in a living room, scenic designer Wilson Chin and lighting designer Matthew Richards have used the relatively capacious Rattlestick Theatre stage to advantage, dreaming up the perfect backdrop for this flawless production." – Randy Kandel, Show Business Weekly
"Wilson Chin's wonderfully detailed set, Matt Richards's disturbingly atmospheric lights, and Shane Rettig's sweat-inducing sound design enhance the proceedings." – Michael Criscuolo, nytheatre.com
by Rob Nash, Ars Nova Theater, NYC; dir: Jeff Calhoun
"On Wilson Chin's delightful set (the stage is backed by a three-dimensional aerial view of the boy's homeroom, complete with wadded papers on the linoleum floor), director Jeff Calhoun keeps Nash in a constant state of energy-filled motion." – Andy Propst, Backstage
"Wilson Chin's scenic design provides an exquisite aerial view of a classroom that is rendered in lifelike detail, but is set at a skewed angle to suggest an off-kilter viewpoint appropriate to the show as a whole." – Dan Bacalzo, theatermania.com