John Conklin, who was born on June 22, 1937 in Hartford, CT, passed away on June 24, 2025 at the age of 88. An international designer and dramaturg, he also taught in the Department of Design for Stage and Film at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. He was educated at Kingswood-Oxford School and Yale University.
In New York City, he has designed for the Metropolitan Opera; the New York City Opera; the New York Shakespeare Festival; Broadway and off-Broadway productions. He has designed for other U.S. opera companies, including the San Francisco Opera and the Chicago Lyric Opera; Glimmerglass Opera; Opera Theatre of St. Louis; Santa Fe Opera; Seattle Opera; and the opera companies of Houston, Dallas, San Diego, Washington, and Boston. Regional theaters where he has worked include the American Repertory Theatre, the Goodman Theatre (Chicago), the Long Wharf Theatre, Hartford Stage, Arena Stage, the Guthrie Theatre, Center Stage (Baltimore), and Actors Theatre of Louisville.
Conklin designed extensively on Broadway, receiving a Tony award nomination (1974) for set design of The Au Pair Man. He received the Robert L.B. Tobin Award for Lifetime Achievement in Theatrical Design from the Theatre Development Fund (2008).
In Europe he has designed for the English National Opera; the Royal Opera, Stockholm and the opera companies of Munich, Amsterdam, and Bologna. In 1991 he designed the costumes for Robert Wilson's production of the Magic Flute at the Bastille Opera in Paris.
In 2008 he retired from his position as Associate Artistic Director for the Glimmerglass Opera, a post he had held for eighteen years. Read about his tenure at Glimmerglass here; he had come out of retirement this year to design four productions for the 50th anniversary season of The Glimmerglass Festival, a company with which he had been associated since 1991. “John is such an important part of our artistic legacy at Glimmerglass,” said artistic & general director Rob Ainsley. “Not only did he create some of the company’s most memorable productions, he created a way of working, one that lives on both in our production process and in the artists and staff whom he mentored. I knew John could help us envision a 50th anniversary season like no other, and I was eager to join the long list of theater professionals whose thinking has been elevated through collaborating with John.”
He was also the artistic advisor for Boston Lyric Opera where his work has included Lucia de Lammermoor (2005) and Brittens's A Midsummer Night's Dream (2011). Reviewing the latter production, the Boston Globe described the scenery as "by turns abstract, stylized, whimsical, and deconstructed."
At BLO he also worked to develop new supplemental performances, lecture series, and community events. Conklin retired from the faculty of the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 2021, where he taught courses in design for stage and film.
Live Design sends condolences to John's friends and family.