Profile: Carol Mayo Jenkins

UT Theatre Professor, TV Star And Broadway Vet Carol Mayo Jenkins

It’s the time of year when many of us have channeled alter-egos and taken on the personas of characters real and imagined, but Carol Mayo Jenkins, a faculty member of the University of Tennessee Theatre Department, has made a career of the art form.

Jenkins traveled the world as an actress, working with Edward Albee, Debbie Allen and Glenn Close; founding the Drama Centre London and starring on the television show Fame before returning to her hometown to share her experiences and knowledge with UT students. 

The Knoxville native attended Sequoyah Hills Elementary and Tyson Junior High School as a child. She went on to boarding school in Winston Salem, N.C., and later attended a theatre school in London.  She lived for years in San Francisco and New York, but returned to Knoxville to be with her mother.  

As a theatre student in London, Jenkins was one of the founders of the Drama Centre London. After two years as a student at the School of Speech and Dramatic Arts there, the faculty fired all of the teachers and told the students they would have all new teachers in their final year. She and her classmates (which included Shivaun O’Casey, daughter of Irish dramatist Sean O’Casey, and Amaryllis Garrett, Virginia Wolfe’s great niece) did not like this idea at all.

“My fellow students and I said, ‘I don’t think so’ and raised money all summer, rented a church hall, and asked our old teachers to continue teaching at the new school,” she said.  “They agreed, we started the school and it is still going today.”

In addition to studying and working in London, Jenkins worked on Broadway playing “Natasha” under William Ball’s direction in The Three Sisters at the American Conservatory Theatre, a role she says has been her favorite on Broadway. She was also “Jocasta” in a production of Oedipus Rex.

On the Fame television series, Jenkins played English teacher Elizabeth Sherwood from 1982 to 1987.  She says her five years on Fame were fun, but when it was time for the show to end, she was ready for it.
“It’s very hard to keep a show fresh when you’re doing 22 stories a year,” she said.

Despite the series’ ending more than 20 years ago, the power of Fame lives on. Last month, Jenkins went to Los Angeles where a British Company’s Fame retrospective took place, reuniting with former castmates Debbie Allen, Valerie Landsburg, Carlo Imperato, Lee Curreri and Erica Gimpel.  Jenkins says the cast does not communicate often, but they vowed to keep in touch while in L.A..

Despite this laundry list of achievements, Jenkins says among her greatest was auditioning for playwright Edward Albee for the part of “Martha” in his Tony-award winning Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  She got the part and worked with Albee in Lithuania in what she says is her favorite role of all time.

“I adore him,” she says of the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Albee. “But he can be brusque.”

Returning to Los Angeles, Jenkins was a private coach for professional actors as well as a teacher at the Stella Adler Institute. She also taught at the National Theatre School in Denver, the Shakespeare Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia and has taught Shakespeare to members of the Actor’s Studio in Elia Kazan’s living room.

Nevertheless, she says the greatest light in her life is watching young people grow in their work. Jenkins began teaching at UT in 2001, also acting in several shows, including The Glass Menagerie, Road to Mecca and
Major Barbara. She started an ensemble class in 2004 that focuses on the heightened language of the theatre for serious theatre students who must audition for admission into the class. Those who are accepted focus on voice and movement and meet seven hours a week.

Jenkins teaches the class this year with the Clarence Brown Theatre’s Artist-in-Residence, David Alley and also teaches a class to second-year graduate students. “[It] is exclusive of Shakespeare, but we study everything else, including Moliere, Shaw, Jacobean pieces and some restoration pieces,” she says. “It is a very fun class to teach.” 

Jenkins says she loves teaching theatre and has learned a lot from working with UT theatre students, adding she finds it interesting to watch the maturation process during the time her students are in college as vast life changes happen between the ages of 17 and 22.   

“It is wonderful to see them grow in confidence and skill and develop as human beings,” she says. “I think the students in this department of theatre turn out to be really terrific people.

“I’ve worked for so long with so many great people and studied with so many great teachers. It is a privilege to pass on what I’ve learned and somehow tribute to those who have taught me by passing on their lessons.”