Submitted photo From left, David Jendre is shown with Easy Street Productions co-founders Todd Hancock and Maureen Collins from Easy Street’s 1993 production of “A Day in Hollywood, A Night in the Ukraine.” Jendre died Friday at age 66.

As a performer, David Jendre went from local stages to national tours.

Behind the scenes, he directed many of the Youngstown Playhouse’s biggest musicals and influenced the lives of other locals who went onto professional careers.

The Youngstown native’s death Friday at age 66 shocked and saddened many in the theater community.

Maureen Collins, cofounder of Easy Street Productions, remembers watching him on stage at Packard Music Hall with the Kenley Players. Seeing someone local in supporting roles on stage with the stars John Kenley brought in made her think, “I could be like him,” she said.

The two played opposite each other in several Easy Street shows over the years and, “Working with him made you better.”

In a 1999 interview with the newspaper, Jendre said he started auditioning for Kenley when he was in high school, and Kenley finally cast him when he was 20 years old in a production of “She Loves Me” with Jack Jones and Anita Gillette in 1974.

“He had me play a drunken little busboy in one scene, and John said I stole the show,” Jendre said at the time. “He always used me after that. He gave me some great parts.”

His work with Kenley Players led to a series of professional credits, including a national tour with Tommy Tune. He played Sancho Panza to John Raitt’s Don Quixote in Kenley’s “Man of La Mancha” and worked with such stars as Lucy Arnez, Ed Ames and Sonny Bono (who he later impersonated in Easy Street’s cabaret shows).

When he returned to the area in the early 1990s to help care for his parents, he regularly appeared in Easy Street’s shows and worked as a director in the area.

“He’s a local legend, an icon in the theater community,” Easy Street co-founder Todd Hancock said. “He left an indelible mark. If you were anyone who passed through the Playhouse, you knew the legend of David Jendre. We were lucky to have him.”

Hancock had been talking to Jendre lately. The two would trade stories about the health issues as Hancock was recruiting Jendre to record a line from “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” for the televised version of “Miracle on Easy Street” that will be broadcast in December.

“He was always the first person to talk about how bad he felt — ‘I look like hell. My voice is shot. Let’s do this.’ He was always ready to give his all,” Hancock said.

Jendre was supposed to record his part a week before he died. The day before, he sent a text saying he was just too weak to do it. Jendre also was supposed to play Cogsworth in Easy Street’s production of the musical “Beauty & the Beast,” which was postponed last spring due to COVID-19.

Jendre gave Hancock his first role at Youngstown Playhouse, casting him as Lancelot in the musical “Camelot.”

“I was fresh out of high school,” Hancock said. “I didn’t think I could pull off Lancelot, but he gave me a lot of confidence and a I learned a lot being in that musical … David was a professional, and demanded professionalism out of everyone he worked with. You had to be at the top of your game when you were in a Jendre musical.”

Christopher Fidram, who has worked with several area theater groups as an actor and director, said Jendre had an ability to push performers beyond their perceived capabilities.

“He’s one of that small handful of people who pulled something out of you, and because of it, made you see yourself differently,” Fidram said.

John Cox, a frequent local performer and president of the Youngstown Playhouse Board of Trustees, remembers Jendre spending more than two hours working on a single scene during rehearsals for “The 39 Steps” as he focused on the importance of every gesture, every look.

“People who wanted to get better wanted to work with him,” Cox said. “To be told by David you did a good job, you felt you were accepted into a club you really didn’t belong.”

One of the most successful shows Jendre directed at the Playhouse was a sold-out run of the musical “Chicago” in 2012. Natalia Lepore Hagan, one of the stars of that production, now lives in New York as a professional actor, doing national tours of “42nd Street” and “Love Never Dies.”

“‘Chicago was the most important show of my life,” Hagan said. “I realized playing Velma Kelly in that production that I was truly where I was supposed to be in the world … Giving me that opportunity really put me in the place to have the career that I’ve had and gave me the confidence to move to New York.”

agray@tribtoday.com