Kathy Perkins

Kathy Perkins teaches Africa/African Diaspora Theatre, World Drama, Lighting Design at the University of North Carolina. She has designed lighting for productions throughout the U.S. at such regional theatres/venues as American Conservatory Theatre (ACT), Arena Stage, Berkeley Repertory, Seattle Repertory, St. Louis Black Repertory, Alliance, Goodman, Steppenwolf, Congo Square, Manhattan Theatre Club, Alabama Shakespeare, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), New Federal Theatre, eta Creative Arts, Mark Taper, Studio Arena, Indiana Repertory, Court, Writers Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Los Angeles Theatre Center, Two Rivers Theatre, and Victory Gardens.

She is the recipient of such design awards as NAACP Image Award, Chicago’s Black Theatre Alliance, and was a nominee for the L.A. Ovation Award and New York’s Audelco. She has served as faculty member at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she chaired the MFA lighting design program for nearly twenty years, and Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Perkins has served as board member /advisory member for USITT, URTA, New World Theatre, Congo Square, Definition Theatre, and The History Makers. In 2007 she was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre. She received her BFA in Drama from Howard University and her M.F.A. in Lighting Design from the University of Michigan.