James Maynard Theatrical Designs

I arrived a week early and the free housing promised ( the Dorms) wasn't available as yet, so I slept in this very room 20' square which would also be my Costume Shop for the next 2 months. It was located in a barn directly behind the Theatre building. Apparently all the funds raised had gone into the front of the Theatre,  the Auditorium and Stage...everything right in back was completely unfinished and in fact, barely standing when I worked there.  FUN!

Here we are engaged in that first and most important job as actors and technicians...Publicity Photographs! Although some of these people did in fact help me build the costumes for the shows, on this day we hadn't even met properly yet and were just being posed for the newspapers.

We were all very young, in or out of college and ready to take on the world. I still remember all of them with great fondness: pretending to study my design for her costumes is Marilynn Meyrick next to Me ( I would actually get a haircut at some point in the summer). To my left is Deborah Bigness, Patricia Skemp, Rhoda Clark and Peter Nichols. All of them played multiple parts in the repertory and they were all great!

( I just had a flashback...there was only one radio station playing rock music in Odessa that summer and they played "Afternoon Delight" and "Sarah Smile" every hour on the hour! I developed my drinking habit in this shop on that summer!)