What’s the path from forest ranger to lighting designer?
KP: [laughs] I don’t know. I know his undergrad major was Forestry, he was on his way to be a forest ranger, and he somehow ended up at Yale in an MFA program for lighting. DG: I feel like Forestry is possibly the only major which would get a worse response from your parents than “I’m going to get my MFA.” But in any case, it seems like you wanted to be a lighting designer from a young age. KP: I ran an old-school lightboard for the first time when I was 8. My younger brother was always a singer/actor/performer type. For years my parents put us in drama camp in the summers. The woman who ran the camp was named Evelyn Weymouth, who started a company called All-of us Express [in Lansing, MI] when I was in sixth grade – the motto was “For Kids, By Kids.” Kids did everything. They had adult supervisors and an adult director, but the kids built all the sets, built all the props. I did that for three years, just running the lightboard. That company has gotten huge: that first show, there was
