Christy Hutchinson and Tessa Stamp, owners of Theatre Garage, met while working at the Citadel Theatre - Christy as assistant head of wardrobe and Tessa on the lighting crew. While working quietly behind the scenes, they secretly had dreams of taking centre stage.
“We both had an idea to have our own space,” says Tessa. “Christy had a business of her own for five years where she was doing custom costuming. She wanted a place to do fittings that wasn’t her living room, and I wanted to make masks and puppets and things.” The two started chatting about their ideas, and then opportunity knocked – hard. “We suddenly found out that Shirley Potter’s had gone out of business and that all of their stuff was available for purchase.”
Christy, who once worked for Shirley Potter’s, knew that they were hitting the jackpot as far as costume collections were concerned. “Shirley Potter herself, when she started in the ‘60s, she built pretty much built the majority of them. We still have those items. They were made 50 years ago, and people are still using them, they were built so well,” says Christy. “That’s why we worked so hard to save it,” Tessa adds. “And both of us knew we had to save that collection from the garbage. It was going to be liquidated and thrown out.”
