Kathy A. Perkins

Kathy A. Perkins, lighting designer and scholar.

Born in Mobile, Alabama (USA) during the era of segregation. Through her parents, teachers, and mentors, she learned the importance of education and love of the arts. She received her BFA in Drama from Howard University, and her MFA in lighting design from the University of Michigan. At Michigan she was challenged by a young white male PhD regarding the lack of presence of Blacks behind the scenes. Angered by this comment, Kathy started her research journey investigating Blacks in non-performing areas in the American Theatre, which later expanded to Africa and the Diaspora. Over the next few decades, Kathy would edit/co-edit six anthologies focusing on women from Africa and the Diaspora, curate a major exhibition on Blacks behind scene, as well as serve as a theatre consultant for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture inaugural exhibition Taking the Stage (2016). She would design lighting for nearly 400 productions throughout the U.S. and internationally.

Kathy has traveled to over forty countries as both designer and lecturer, and is the recipient of numerous research awards, including the Ford Foundation, Fulbright, United States Information Agency (USIA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), and United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT). She is faculty Emerita at Univ. of Illinois and Univ. of North Carolina.

Contribution to South African theatre, film, media and performance

Her interest in South African Theatre began when she met and designed lighting for several exiled artists working in the New York beginning in the late 1970s, such as Welcome Msomi and Duma Ndlovu. Through these artists she discovered the parallels between segregation and apartheid. In 1995, she made her first trip to South Africa. After this initial visit, Kathy would return over a dozen times where she designed the premiere of Hang on In There Nelson (1996) at the Windybrow Arts Center in Johannesburg, A Coloured Place (1998) at the Durban (now KwaZulu Natal) Playhouse, and Fatima Dike’s premiere The Middle Passage: A Ritual of Healing (2003) at Grahamstown Festival and University of Cape Town. She would also return to Grahamstown to work on a variety of projects over the years.

In 1998 Kathy published South African Women: An Anthology of Plays, which was the first anthology of plays focusing on South African women, and in 2008 she published African Women Playwrights: An Anthology.