TALENT: Lighting Designer

Cat Tate Starmer is a theatrical and architectural lighting designer, artist, activist and mom. She is an adjunct professor at Rutger University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts. Her favorite projects champion parity and diversity and tell stories that reveal our best selves.

As a freelance lighting designer, she has worked Off-Broadway with Epic Theatre Ensemble, Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Civilians, Working Theatre, and HERE Arts Center. She has designed at regional theatres across the country, including The Guthrie, The Alley Theatre, The Old Globe, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Playmakers Rep and Barrington Stage Company. Prior to teaching at Rutgers, she has been a guest lecturer and designer at Yale, Princeton, Brown, Barnard, and Bard College. Cat designed the architectural lighting for Plaza 33, a pedestrian plaza near Penn Station in NYC and received two Lumen awards and a SOURCE Award for her architectural work with Focus Lighting.

Recent designs include Hold These Truths (terraNOVA Collective, Epic Theatre Ensemble); Himself and Nora (American Theatre Group); Macbeth, Othello (Epic Theater Ensemble); Leave the Balcony Open (3LD); Homunculus: Reloaded (3 NY Innovative Theater Awards); A Hard Wall at High Speed (APAC); White People (Ensemble Studio Theater); This Beautiful City, The Great Immensity (The Civilians); The Chimes, Miss Celia Rose (SPF); Kingdom (NYMF, Most Promising New Musical); American Jornalero (Working Theater); Wickets (HERE); Model (PS 122); Seven (world premiere, 92nd St Y, Deauville, FR). Cat has designed lights and sets with Epic Theater Ensemble’s Shakespeare Remix Program and Roots and Branches Intergenerational Theater for the past few years. She has been a guest lecturer and designer at Yale, Princeton, Brown, Barnard and Bard College. Producing credits include Binding (3 NY Innovative Theater Awards) and 8 Track, Obama Drama (with co-producer Creative Destruction). She received two Lumen Awards and a SOURCE Award for her work with Focus Lighting, an architectural lighting firm. MFA, Yale School of Drama.