Jones, Margo

Margaret Virginia Jones was born on December 12, 1913, to Richard H. Jones and Martha Pearl Collins of Livingston, Texas. She received the nickname Margo while a student at Texas State College for Women and was known as Margo Jones in her professional life. She began study at TSCW at the age of 14, graduating from that institution with a master's degree in psychology in 1932. She immediately went to work at Louis Veda Quince's Southwestern School of Theater in Dallas in a position she described as "glorified office girl." After a year in Dallas, Margo Jones attended the Pasadena Playhouse for the summer of 1933 and then assumed her first full directorship with the Ojai Community Players of Ojai, California. After a year at Ojai she had the opportunity for international travel as the companion of a wealthy woman, attending theaters all over the world.

Upon her return to the United States in 1936, Margo Jones became an assistant director of the Federal Theater in Houston. The project folded after a few months, at which point Jones traveled to the Moscow Arts Festival, financing her trip by covering the event for the Houston Chronicle . Jones returned to Houston in the fall to begin work with the Recreation Department of the city; as part of her program she organized the Houston Community Players. In the summer of 1939 the Community Players leased the air-conditioned ballroom of the Lamar Hotel in which to perform. Out of necessity, since the ballroom lacked a stage or proscenium, Margo Jones staged her theater in the round. Under Jones' direction, the Players gave the world premiere of Edwin Justin Mayer's Sunrise in My Pocket and attracted some national recognition through its review by Brooks Atkinson in the New York Times .

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