Actor Spotlight

Dallas actor Bill Jenkins talks former lives and breaking his back onstage

Award-winning actor Bill Jenkins has appeared in a variety of roles on numerous Dallas-Forth Worth stages. He's also a Ramones fan who's kissed Zsa Zsa Gabor; has a penchant for driving fast; and tells a very sweet story about how he met his wife, actress Linda Leonard.

These life experiences (and those had during his former lives — you'll want to read on) have given Jenkins a deep well to draw from when he's onstage. In WingSpan Theatre Company's production of Samuel Beckett'sHappy Days, Jenkins plays the reticent counterpart to Stephanie Dunnam's Winnie, a chatty woman who spends the play more than half buried in a mound of dirt.

Jenkins recently took the time to fill out our survey of serious, fun and sometimes ridiculous questions.

Name: Bill Jenkins

Role in Happy Days: Willie

Previous work in the DFW area: WaterTower, Echo, Theatre Three, African American Rep, Uptown, Dallas Theater Center, Dallas Children’s Theatre, Circle, Kitchen Dog, Lyric Stage, Casa Mañana, Granbury Opera House, Stage West, Theatre Britain, Granny’s Dinner Theater

Hometown: Birmingham, Alabama

Where you currently reside: East of White Rock Lake in Dallas

First theater role: Elyot in Private Lives (college); Marlowe in She Stoops to Conquer at Theatre Three (professional)

First stage show you ever saw:Rapunzel (children’s theater). Gave me a "thing" for girls with long hair.

Moment you decided to pursue a career in theater: College review "Bill Jenkins became Elyot" (from Private Lives at Centre College of Kentucky)

Most challenging role you’ve played: Dysart in Equus (grad school) or Peter in Forty Carats opposite Zsa Zsa Gabor. The latter was my first Actors Equity role at Granny’s Dinner Theater. Only seven days of rehearsal — kissed Zsa Zsa 25 times and lived to tell about it!

Special skills: Sailing, driving fast

Something you’re REALLY bad at: My theater nickname is “Hell on Props” because I'm really clumsy.

Current pop culture obsession: The musical group Cage the Elephant

Last book you read: Jane Roberts' The Education of Oversoul Seven

Favorite movie(s):Bell, Book and Candle; Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty; My Favorite Year; Avatar

Favorite musician(s): Joe Walsh, Mott the Hoople, Little Feat, The Ramones, Soul Coughing, Cake

Favorite song: "Rocky Mountain Way" by Joe Walsh or "Sheena Is a Punk Rocker" by The Ramones

Dream role: Atticus in To Kill A Mockingbird (played it — I am a descendant of four generations of Alabama lawyers and judges) and Henry opposite my wife, Linda Leonard, as Eleanor in The Lion in Winter

Favorite play(s): I Hate Hamlet by Paul Rudnick, Eastern Standard (Theatre Three’s Patrons’ Favorite Award), Three Days of Rain by Richard Greenberg and The Dead Presidents’ Club by Larry L. King (Critics Forum Award for Richard Nixon)

Favorite musical(s): The Sound of Music (where I met my wife playing Von Trapp opposite her Maria) and My Favorite Year (Critics Forum Award for Alan Swann)

Favorite actors/actresses: Peter O’Toole, Michael Caine, Mark Wahlberg, Rosalind Russell, Katherine Hepburn, Katherine Heigl

Favorite food: Custom Ital-chos at Terilli’s with a full-bodied, oaky red wine

Must-see TV show(s):The Good Wife, Grimm, Blacklist

Something most people don’t know about you: I was supposedly good friends with Thomas Jefferson, killed in the Civil War as a Union soldier, and was a show biz lawyer in LA during the '30s and '40s — all in former lifetimes.

Place in the world you’d most like to visit: Paris and London with my wife

Pre-show warm-up: Mentally aligning myself with the character/prayer

Favorite part about your current role: Very little memorization

Most challenging part about your current role: Due to above, character analysis was virtually cryptic.

Most embarrassing onstage mishap: I fell three stories from the catwalk and broke my back onstage at WaterTower Theatre during the last 35 bars of the musical Working playing Mike the narrator, because I was too macho to worry about having a safety back-up system for a stunt I was doing.

Career you’d have if you weren’t a performer: Sound designer

Favorite post-show spot: At home with my dogs and my wife (when she’s out of her show) licking our wounds or toasting our success

Favorite thing about Dallas-Forth Worth: People tend to drive a little fast.

Most memorable theater moment: Preaching on Easter Sunday as Jerry in Theatre Three’s God’s Man in Texas

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WingSpan Theatre Company's Happy Days plays at the Bath House Cultural Center October 10-26.

Dallas actor Bill Jenkins is dangerously devoted to his craft.

Photo courtesy of Bill Jenkins

Dallas actor Bill Jenkins is dangerously devoted to his craft.

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Season Announcement

'Come find your people' in Echo Theatre Dallas' 2025 season

Photo by Joan Marcus

A scene from the Off-Broadway production of Catch As Catch Can.

The theme for Echo Theatre's 2025 season is family, with the tagline "Come find your people." Echo, if you need a reminder, is the Dallas-based company that solely produces plays written by women-plus.

"We recognize the limiting nature of the binary use of the word 'woman,'" the company explains on its website. "We use the term 'women-plus' to include an expansive and diverse array of people, including those born female, those who identify as women, and those who are gender non-conforming."

“This season, my thoughts have turned to family in all its forms,” says artistic director Kateri Cale. “Every person experiences generations of family expectations, judgements, competitions, celebrations, and disappointments, over and over again. If we're lucky, we experience the fierce love of family too.”

First up is the regional premiere of Catch as Catch Can by Mia Chung.

Double-cast across gender, generation, and race and set in a blue-collar New England town, the drama follows two families — the Irish-American Phelans and the Italian-American Lavecchias — as the prodigal son returns home for a holiday gathering. Two off-stage characters, who are Korean and Korean-American, impact the families as they face the weight of generational expectations.

“With Catch as Catch Can, I wanted the audience’s experience of what they’re watching to mirror that felt by the characters; the character doubling articulates and enhances the propulsion of the play," says Chung in a release about the play's Off-Broadway debut in 2022. "I believe in performance, I believe in the actor’s capacity to inhabit a character to the extent that an audience may stop seeing that the actor is a man, or is Asian, or is 30 years younger than the role they’re playing. The cognitive dissonance is by design.”

It runs February 3-March 8, 2025, at the Bath House Cultural Center.

Next is OPEN by Crystal Skillman, a queer love story told by an amateur magician, presented during Pride Month.

A woman called the Magician presents myriad tricks for our entertainment, yet her performance seems to be attempting the impossible: to save the life of her partner, Jenny. But is our faith in her illusions enough to rewrite the past? The clock is ticking, the show must go on, and, as impossible as it may seem, this Magician’s act may be our last hope against a world filled with intolerance and hate.

It runs June 6-21, 2025, at the Bath House Cultural Center.

Last is El Rey del Pollo, a world-premiere "nuevo comedy" by Anna Skidis Vargas that the playwright describes as "a Shakespearean telenovela that’s loosely based on King Lear, but it’s a lot shorter and a lot sillier."

Reymundo Lear is about to retire from his fried chicken empire, and he is leaving everything to his three daughters. But things aren’t as easy as they seem. Cordelia gets disinherited, and Gisela and Raquel hike the prices. El Rey del Pollo features a hungry old man, essential oils, a giant chicken suit, and all the family drama you can eat.

It runs September 11-27, 2025, at the Bath House Cultural Center.

The Echo Reads free play readings will continue next year, and are scheduled for the months of March, April, May and September, October, November.

Season tickets are on sale now at echotheatre.org. Single tickets will be available at a later date.

A fun fact about Echo Theatre productions: Up to 10 free tickets are set aside for every performance and given out on a first-come, first-served basis. Patrons must email the box office directly at reservations@echotheatre.org to participate.

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