In this first‑person narrative, costume designer Linda Cho recounts her unconventional journey from a science‑focused high school in Canada to becoming a Yale School of Drama graduate and Broadway designer. She describes her Korean mother’s push toward medicine, a brief fine‑art semester in Paris, and a psychology degree at McGill where elective theater classes sparked her interest. A nurturing costume‑construction professor introduced her to the distinction between designer and draper, and a summer stint with the grassroots Repercussion Theater gave her hands‑on experience. Despite late‑stage uncertainty, her mother surprisingly encouraged a theater career. Guidance from her professor led her to apply to Yale via an ERDA recruiting fair. During the Yale interview, Ming Cho Lee critiqued her technical skills but was impressed by a personal sketchbook filled with pen‑and‑ink drawings from her travels, which ultimately secured her admission. The story highlights the role of family expectations, mentorship, practical experience, and authentic visual storytelling in shaping her path to Broadway.
Chapters
So my high school background, going all the way to high school, was mostly science, actually. My mother was a fine artist, she was a painter, and she actually discouraged any kind of artistic career for me because she said, "You're a woman, you're a minority, it's going to be very, very difficult for you, so medicine would be a really great career for you." And I'm Korean, so it's like a natural thing that they push on their children. I actually finished high school a little bit earlier by going to a science school. It was a sort of a condensed academic program. It was at the Ontario Science Centre in Canada. I had a little free time before college. I had a semester, and what I really wanted to do was go to Africa and do international development work. But again, being Asian and small and easy to kill, my mom said, how about going to study fine art? You like fine art. So they dangled that carrot, and I said, okay, all right, yeah, that sounds good. So I studied fine art arts and fashion in Paris for a semester, and then I went to McGill to study psychology in Montreal. And so there I started off with a Bachelor of Science, and I was taking all the prerequisites to get into med school, so biology, chemistry, physics, algebra, calculus, all those things. And you had a few electives, so I picked up like a little theater class and some fine art classes and things I was interested. But truly, the science classes made me miserable, and my grades really reflected that. And then suddenly these— I was getting A's in my theater and my fine arts classes. And then I had a really sort of nurturing teacher who was teaching costume construction at McGill. That was the only kind of costume course that they had. And she explained to me the differences between being a designer, a costume designer, or being a draper, somebody who makes the costumes. It's a very different skill set. She said you have to sort of decide which way, because I loved both at that point. And then outside of the school at Concordia University, I took a class in costume design. And, you know, I was terrible. My watercolor was terrible, my drawing was like crap, but I loved it. You know, I really, really loved it. All the people, everyone else in the class was, you know, a much more accomplished artist but it was like something I just grabbed onto. So in the summertime, there was a theater called Repercussion Theater, and it was an outdoor Shakespeare park that sort of toured all the parks around Montreal and a little bit into the United States. And so I just kind of talked my way into a job there, and we built some costumes, and it was sort of a very grassroots organization, so I could, I could sew some things, I could design some things, I toured backstage with the show and helped set up the tents and wrap up all the cables, and I loved it. Again, it was like this, this revelation and something totally new. As I was coming to the close of my 4-year Bachelor of Arts degree, I was at a loss. What should I do? What should I do now with my Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a whole bunch of theater classes. And to my great surprise, my very conservative Korean mother said, "What about this theater thing? You seem to like this a lot." And I said, "Really?" So she was actually surprisingly the one who said, "Why don't you do this for a living?" And so it was sort of late in the game, but I talked to my costume professor, Catherine Bradley, at McGill, and she said, "There's this thing called ERDAs that they do all over the United States, and it's sort of a science fair for different— a recruiting fair for different universities. A number of the recruiters were Yale alum that were teaching at these various institutions, and they said, "You should just apply to Yale." And again, late in the game, I called the Yale School of Drama office and I told them my experience and they said, "All right, come on in, send your stuff, let's see." When I went to my interview, it was with Ming Cho Lee and Jane Greenwood. I think it was just the two of them at the time. And Ming said, "Oh, your watercolor is terrible! Oh, you need to go back and learn how to figure draw. This is terrible." But, you know, surprisingly, I had this this little sketchbook that I just carried around with me when I was a student in Paris for that semester. And also I did it when I traveled with my family starting when I was like 12. And I would just use a pen and ink and just draw things, do contour drawings, draw buildings, draw paintings, write a little diary of things. And he flipped through that and he said, "Now this, this is something." And that is what actually got me into Yale, not my crappy my crappy costume designs, not my crappy set designs. They were very— I look at them now and it's humiliating. But these drawings, there was, you know, there was an honesty and there was like, I think, just a love for the visual world. And I think truly that's what sort of helped me get into that school.
