How Did I Get Here?

David Korins

Founder and principal, David Korins Design
from
  • Education
  • Mansfield High School, Mansfield, Mass., class of 1994
  • University of Massachusetts at Amherst, class of 1999
  • Work Experience
  • 1997–2011
    Intern, design assistant, director of design program, resident designer, guest designer, Williamstown Theatre Festival
  • 2001–07
    Co-founder, Edge Theater Co., New York
  • 2003
    Production designer, Winter Passing
  • 2004–Present
    Founder and principal, David Korins Design. Clients have included McDonald’s, Target, Google, and Kanye West (2011 tour and Coachella performance)
  • 2006
    Set designer, Passing Strange
  • 2015–Present
    Set designer, Hamilton
  • 2016
    Production designer, Fox’s Grease: Live!
  • Life Lessons
  • “Don’t have a phone-it-in mode. Go hard or go home.”
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  • “The work expands to the amount of time allotted.”
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  • “There are no economies of scale on any project.”
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  • “I had good attendance, but I didn’t study. I won a write-in vote for senior class president.”
  • Drafting in the studio at the Williamstown festival, 2001
  • “It was the place I learned to build, paint, prop, and design.”
  • “I had never designed a film. It was a huge vote of confidence on behalf of the studio, Focus Features, to hire me.”
  • “We design theater, film, television, galleries, restaurants, hotels, interiors, rock concerts. Corporations come to us to do branded experiences.”
  • “I found it incredibly stimulating working with Kanye. He’s a real artist. It was also exhausting, because he wanted to make a new design for every city. We built different sets almost weekly.”
  • “This year I’ll have four musicals on Broadway at once, and they could not be more unalike: Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, War Paint, and Bandstand. The most satisfying thing is they’re all shows I took on because of interesting collaborations and unique stories.”
  • Accepting an Emmy for Grease: Live!’s production design, 2016
  • 1985
  • “We supported new writers who we wanted to see produced. Kurt Vonnegut came and took us out to dinner. Edward Albee came. To be a producer at 25 years old and have these titans of the theater come and support your work was incredible.”
  • “It was my first Broadway musical. I probably meet someone once a week who tells me it was their favorite show of all time.”
  • Presenting the Hamilton set model for the Public Theater production to the cast, 2014
  • “It was one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever done. That said, it was the most blissful experience, because I was in the trenches with my friends, doing a thing that we all believed in so much. It turns out, the whole world believes in it, too.”