Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean 
by Ed Graczyk

October 7-22, 1988
Directed by Rhonda Clark

Inside a rundown Woolworth's department store in McCarthy, Texas, a reunion is planned for the members of a local 1950s James Dean Fan Club. 

Mona is a high-strung asthmatic who has spent the past twenty years clerking in the dime store. Former president of The Disciples Of James Dean, she still carries an obsessive torch for her idol. Sissy, the wise-cracking waitress at the local truck stop, loves to boast about her large bosoms as well as her sexual escapades. Only three other Disciples appear for the reunion, including a mystery guest named Joanne, an old acquaintance who has returned to settle several old scores.

The play shifts between 1975 and 1955, flashbacks show the Disciples frenzied over Dean's arrival in a nearby town to shoot the film GIANT. It is revealed that Mona got a job as an extra on the GIANT shoot and nine months later gave birth to a son, who she claims is James Dean's child.

By the end of the stormy evening, Joanne has exposed the secrets and self-deceptions with which her friends have been living.

Playwright Ed Graczyk has said of the play...

"...JIMMY DEAN can only be described as the result of my own observations and frustrations with progress that ignores a past; the lack of personalization and pride and the recurring need of people to build facades to conceal the truths of their lives. It is the facade that makes abnormal people seem normal and the sad people seem happy. A personal observation which I feel makes the people I write about, colorful, theatrical, but most of all, honest.

The inspiration for COME BACK TO THE FIVE AND DIME JIMMY DEAN, JIMMY DEAN came many years ago during my five year association with the Midland Community Theatre in west Texas. While I was there I had the opportunity to visit Marfa, the site used by Warner Bros. in filming GIANT. The only remaining evidence of the film was the facade of the mansion Reata used to film the on location scenes, now crumbling and supported by six telephone poles. It was the memory of that site, the pace of the people and the vivid recollection of the '50's idol James Dean on the youth of the period that resulted in the writing of this play."