Jim Baird Among 8 Performers for Theater in the Park Shows

Jim Baird will be one of the eight company members performing with the Raintree County Opera House Guild, Inc., Summer Theater in the Park July12-Aug. 13 in Henry County Memorial Park Shelter House.

Director of the Summer Theater in the Park Dick Willis said “I fell very fortunate to have Jim in the company; he is perhaps the finest college actor I have seen.”

A graduate of the drama department of Hanover College , Baird has compiled an impressive list of credits.

He received an American College Theater Festival Award of Excellence in 1973 when the Hanover Drama Department performed in the Eisenhower Theater of the Kennedy Center in Washington , D.C. Hanover ’s production of Bertolt Brechts’ “A Man’s a Man” was one of the 10 college productions chosen that year during the nationwide competition.

In 1976 Baird was nominated during the festival for an Irene Ryan Scholarship for his performance of the “Old Man of the Sea” in an original play “Heaven is Deep.” The Irene Ryan Scholarship named in honor of the late Miss Ryan is one of the highest honors a college actor can attain.

Baird won national recognition for his performance as Yank in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Hairy Ape.” The Hanover production of “The Hairy Ape” was chosen to tour California colleges last summer and wound up the successful tour with a production at Tao House, the former home of Playwright O’Neill, currently being restored and operated as a performing center for young artists by the Eugene O’Neill Foundation.

The past winter, Baird toured Indiana with the Midwest Children’s Theater Company in the title role of “Marco Polo, Traveler.”

In Indianapolis he has appeared in Herron’s Community Arts Program as a director and an actor in “Of Mice and Men” and “Sticks and Bones,” and has appeared with Black Curtain Theater in “Not Now, Darling.”

In the Theater in the Park productions this summer, Baird will be active in each of the five plays. He will perform as Ham, the middle son, the opening production of “Two by Two.” He will play Norman, one of the most delightful of Neil Simon’s characters, in the comedy hit “The Star Spangled Girl.” He also will be featured in major roles in “The Rainmaker,” as the young son Jimmy, Dan, the college big man on campus, in “The Prince From Pendlepoop,” and one of the “bad companions” in the musical “Goldilocks.”

Information regarding season or individual tickets for performances may be received from the box office located in Smith Auditorium or by calling the box office 529-1004