Over the course of a remarkable 45-year career, lighting designer Kathy A. Perkins has worked in theaters all over the United States and as far away as South Africa and Cuba. She has also cultivated a distinguished academic career as a theater historian, editing or co-editing several collections of plays and textbooks, including most recently “The Routledge Companion to African American Theater and Performance.” She chaired the MFA lighting department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for 20 years, and in 2012 she joined the faculty at UNC Chapel Hill, where she is currently Professor Emerita of Dramatic Art.

In this conversation with Pier Carlo Talenti and Rob Kramer, Kathy considers the upheaval of the last year through the lens of a theater veteran, a trailblazer in a field where exceedingly few women, much less Black women, have been able to make a career.