About Robert Perry
Biography
Robert Perry is currently the Director of Design and Co-Director of Level 21 (Design, Tech & Management programs) as well as an Associate Professor in the Lighting Design & Technology Program. He has designed lighting for over 30 years with projects ranging from Off-Broadway to dance and opera. His designs have also been featured in numerous regional theatres across the country, including the Goodman Theatre, LaJolla Playhouse, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Walnut Street Theatre, Dallas Theater Center, California Shakespeare Festival, Triad Stage, the Shakespeare Theatre (Washington DC), the Intiman, Hartford Stage, Philadelphia Theatre Company, the McCarter Theatre, and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival.
Highlights of his career include designing the lighting for the World Premieres of Drowning Crow at the Goodman Theatre (Director, Kate Whoriskey), Crowns at the McCarter (Choreographer, Ronald K. Brown) and Lost Lake at Manhattan Theatre Club (Director, Dan Sullivan). In addition, Robert is credited with designing the lighting for the New York Premieres of Reefer Madness at the Variety Arts Theatre (Choreographer, Paula Abdul) and David Mamet’s Boston Marriage at New York’s Joseph Papp Public Theater.
Robert’s vast repertoire of directors he has designed for include Tony Award-winning directors Dan Sullivan, Pam MacKinnon, Des McAnuff, and Mark Lamos in addition to Joseph Chaikin, Michael Kahn, Seret Scott, John Cameron Mitchell, Barbara Gaines, Richard Hamburger, Regina Taylor, Shep Sobel, Gabriel Barre, Lucie Tiberghien, and Kate Whoriskey.
Awards include a Vivian Robinson AUDELCO Award for Best Lighting Design for the New York premiere of Crowns (2nd Stage), a Dean Goodman Choice Award for Best Lighting Design for The Skin of Our Teeth (California Shakespeare Festival), the Knoxville Area Theatre Coalitions Award for Best Lighting Design for Catfish Moon (Clarence Brown Theatre), and the Dallas-Fortworth Theater Critics Forum Award for Best Design Team for Inexpressible Island (Dallas Theater Center). Robert also has received several award nominations including a Drama Desk Award nomination for David Mamet’s The Water Engine (Atlantic Theater Company) and a Joseph Jefferson Award nomination for Love’s Labor’s Lost (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre).
For five years beginning in 2006 Robert was an Assistant Professor of Lighting Design at the University of Miami and Resident Lighting Designer for the Jerry Herman Ring Theatre. From 2011–2013, he was an Assistant Professor of Lighting Design at Virginia Commonwealth University.
In addition to his theatrical lighting career, Robert is also a renowned lighting sculptor in which he creates sculptures that incorporate incandescent bulbs into 3-dimensional pieces made from recycled metals and found objects. View his sculptural work on the Structures of Light website. Robert also has a background in music performance having studied at the famed Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, and Musicians’ Institute in Hollywood, California.
Mr. Perry received a Master of Fine Arts from Yale University’s Yale School of Drama and a BFA from the North Carolina School of the Arts. He is a member of United Scenic Artists Local #829.