Mixed Company needs your support

Mixed Company is making a comeback and we need your help!

Propelled by the joyous response to our recent production, “This place. These hills.” we’re launching a Go-Fund-Me so we can mount more plays. We’ve been closed for five years, but we’re feeling the call in these dark times to rise up and shine our small but bright beacon. We can’t do it alone.

For over forty years, our mission has been “We want you to feel better when you leave than when you came.” That mission still holds true. We aim to produce plays that reflect the best not the worst in humanity… plays that bring our community together.

For those unfamiliar with us, Mixed Company was founded as an actor’s theatre in 1982 by two best friends and fellow actors, the late magnificent Gillian Seidl and me, Joan Ackermann. Together we produced more than 170 productions over the years; primarily modern British and American plays, but also many of my own original plays.

Gillian and I found the perfect humble home for Mixed Company in an unfinished space in the Granary building up along the railroad tracks in the heart of Great Barrington. We’ve produced critically acclaimed work with some of the best actors, directors and designers in the county. I’ll brag and say the late New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael used to tell us we were one of her favorite theatres anywhere.

We’ve always survived on our box office receipts -- no easy feat -- and have never done much fund-raising. But now, we need an infusion of cash to get back on our feet again. We squeaked through the pandemic and managed to mount one play, but we can’t limp ahead without help. The stove pipe lights that Gillian and I built forty years ago still work, but there is plenty that doesn’t. For instance, we need a new sound system (we borrowed one for our recent show). With urgent repairs the theatre can become operable, safe and welcoming. We can get right to work on our Fall show.

Help Mixed Company come back to life. We’ve always thought of ourselves as the little theatre that could. With your help, we can again. Thank you, beloved audience, for considering supporting us.

Love, Joan and all of us at Mixed Company