Sanford's Foreman Heard and Jolene Brubaker Baxter Release The Godspell Truth

The Godspell Truth, a collection compiled by Sanford resident Foreman Heard and Jolene Brubaker Baxter of Ijamsville, Maryland, collects anecdotes, original scene design sketches and dozens of rehearsal and performance photographs from the Fellowship Players’ Godspell productions in the summers of 1975 and 1976. The two cast members began collaborating over the internet in July of 2025 and worked for six months to assemble the material, then released the book through publisher Lulu for $20.

Foreman Heard contributed a first-person piece to the Sanford Herald under the byline "By Foreman Heard," framing the volume as a fifty-year retrospective that begins with the Fellowship Players staging Godspell in the youth building of the First United Methodist Church of Sanford. The 1975 run played to four sold-out audiences in August of 1975, the cast numbered ten actors with an equal number of stage and house crew, and the project spanned the summers of 1975 and 1976.

Local press reaction from the time is preserved in the book and in Heard’s piece: Jean Patteson, then the Women’s Editor of the Sanford Evening Herald, called the production “a show which appeals to all the senses, and to all ages. Its message is joy and can be shared by all.” The book documents the production logistics behind that praise, including the company’s small scale, replacement of three cast members during the two-year run, and travel anecdotes such as riding a non-air conditioned rented school bus in the heat of summer.

The project has a continuing local footprint. Many members of the original company remained in contact and gathered for a 2011 reunion in Sanford; most of the original cast attended that reunion, with only one cast member unable to attend and three noted as having passed away. A Saturday night vocal performance at First United Methodist Church drew almost two hundred in attendance and featured most of the Godspell songs alongside brief testimonies by cast members about what the experience meant to them.

Heard and Baxter’s compilation presents the two-year experience in granular form: rehearsal and performance descriptions, thoughts on auditions, dozens of photographs and original sketches. The book was assembled by two original cast members and made available in December through Lulu; it is currently sold only through that publisher, with plans to appear on Amazon and other distributors later this year.

For Sanford arts historians and alumni of the Fellowship Players, The Godspell Truth packages program-level details and visual artifacts from a local production that played four sold-out shows in August of 1975 and drew nearly 200 to a 2011 reunion performance. The book’s $20 price and staged expansion beyond Lulu will determine how widely those materials circulate beyond Sanford.