In Memoriam: David Jenkins

	David Jenkins. Photo: Evan Andrew Jenkins

The scenic designer David Jenkins, a prominent figure on and Off Broadway in the 1980s and '90s, who also worked extensively in resident theatres, has died of natural causes in Middlefield, Massachusetts. He was 86.

Born in Hampton, Virginia in 1937, Jenkins was the son of F. Raymond and Cecelia (Chandler) Jenkins. He was raised in Richmond, Indiana, where he graduated from Earlham College. He received an MFA from Yale School of Drama. By the late 1960s, he was working in New York, serving an associate lighting designer to Richard Pilbrow on the musical Zorba. A year later, he designed scenery for A Musical Timepiece at Equity Library Theatre.

A run of jobs at major resident theatres followed, including The Importance of Being Earnest and The Homecoming (both in 1971) at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, New Jersey; the melodrama Child's Play (1971) at Trinity Repertory in Providence, Rhode Island; William Congreve's The Way of the World (1972) for Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven; and Scenes from American Life (1972) at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago; and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1973) at Arena Stage.

One production, David Storey's The Changing Room, about a North-of-England rugby team, opened at the Long Wharf and transferred to Broadway in 1973, where it became one of the notable plays of the season. "David Jenkins's setting is shabbily and grubbily exquisite," wrote New York Times theatre critic Clive Barnes, adding, "It is always a special skill to make shabbiness visually appealing." Another production, Brian Friel's drama of the Irish troubles The Freedom of the City, moved to Broadway in 1974. It was not a success but by then Jenkins was working more and more on Broadway, including the musical revue Rodgers and Hart (1975), the black comedy Checking Out (1976), a revival of Saint Joan starring Lynn Redgrave (1977), and Strangers (1979), about Sinclair Lewis and Dorothy Thompson.

Jenkins has his first major Broadway success with The Elephant Man, which transferred from the Theatre at St. Peter's Church to the Booth Theatre, where it ran for 916 performances. Other Broadway credits include the Neil Simon comedy I Ought to Be in Picture (1980), the biographical drama Piaf (1981), the revue Stardust (1987), Sherlock's Last Case (1987), Two Shakespearean Actors (1992), Harold Pinter's No Man's Land (starring Christopher Plummer and Jason Robards, 1994), Taking Sides (1996), and James Joyce's The Dead (2000). For the National Actors Theatre on Broadway, he designed revivals of The Crucible (1991), A Little Hotel on the Side (1992), and The Master Builder (1992). For New York City Opera, he designed The Student Prince (1987) and The Music Man (1988).

Jenkins' Off-Broadway credits include Gorky (1975), Hamlet (starring William Hurt, 1979), The Art of Dining (1979), Quartermaine's Terms (1983), And a Nightingale Sang... (1983), The Common Pursuit (1986), Talk Radio (1987), Other People's Money (1989), The Subject Was Roses (1991), Wrong Turn at Lungfish (1993), Avow (2002), and Kilt (2002).

Jenkins also continued to work around the country, designing, for example, The Real Thing at Mark Taper Forum (1985) and Fortinbras at La Jolla Playhouse (1991). His film and television credits include art direction for the PBS television series The Best of Families (1977); production design for I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can (1982), starring Jill Clayburgh; a television film of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1984) starring Jessica Lange, Tommy Lee Jones, and Rip Torn; and The Trial of Bernhard Goetz for American Playhouse (1988).

As his career in New York wound down, Jenkins continued working at Trinity Rep with associate artistic director Amanda Dehnert, on Saint Joan (1999), We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! (1999), Othello (1999), My Fair Lady (2000), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (2000), The New England Sonata (2001), Noises Off (2001), Peter Pan (2002), The Skin of Our Teeth (2002), Annie (2003), A Moon for the Misbegotten (2003), West Side Story (2004), and the musical You Never Know (2005).

Jenkins was nominated twice for Tony Awards, for The Changing Room and The Elephant Man. He won a Drama Desk Award for The Changing Room and was nominated twice more, for The Elephant Man and I Ought to Be in Pictures. Other honors include the Drama Logue Award for Hedda Gabler at Mark Taper Forum (1986); the Los Angeles Drama Critics' Circle Award and Back Stage Garland Award, both for Dealer's Choice at the Mark Taper Forum (1998); and the Back Stage Garland Award for The Poison Tree at Mark Taper Forum (2000).

Jenkins was married to Leigh Rand, a model maker and draftsperson who worked on many New York shows, including some of Jenkins', and who taught at the Department of Design for Stage and Film at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She died in 2000. He is survived by his daughter Jessica Leigh Jenkins of Boulder, Colorado; his son Evan Andrew Jenkins, of Los Angeles; three grandchildren; and a brother, Philip Jenkins, of Richmond, Indiana.

The family notes that donations can be made in Jenkins' name to the Leigh Rand Scholarship Fund at NYU: giving.nyu.edu/giving/give-now/?id=1000376.