In January of 1989, actor and director Barry Heins invited fifteen friends – all experienced stage actors homesick for the New York theatrical community – to a weekly play reading group held in a vacant apartment in Sherman Oaks, California. Before long, a pool of forty actors was involved in readings that consisted of everything from classic plays to new plays and screenplays. The quality of the work attracted other theatre professionals eager to collaborate. Directors came to hear plays, as...
In January of 1989, actor and director Barry Heins invited fifteen friends – all experienced stage actors homesick for the New York theatrical community – to a weekly play reading group held in a vacant apartment in Sherman Oaks, California. Before long, a pool of forty actors was involved in readings that consisted of everything from classic plays to new plays and screenplays. The quality of the work attracted other theatre professionals eager to collaborate. Directors came to hear plays, as well as playwrights and screenwriters who arranged to hear these talented actors breathe life into their new scripts. Ten months later, the group became the exclusive tenants of Theatre Exchange in North Hollywood, and Interact was born. On May 1, 1992, the company formally incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit theater.
Interact’s loyal and supportive audience has followed the company to various stages and venues in the San Fernando Valley, the Westside, and Downtown LA, enjoying more than forty full-scale productions of plays and musicals since its founding. Interact also presents high-quality free or low-cost community programming, such as the ITC Play Lab, its renowned summer arts education program for underserved youth, hundreds of workshops and special events, and, to date, over a thousand public play readings. Since 2019, Interact has partnered with the Los Angeles Public Library to present curated seasons of staged readings of Pulitzer and Tony Award-winning plays as part of the library's esteemed LA MADE cultural enrichment program. In 2023, Interact produced the Los Angeles premiere of Aaron Posner's "Life Sucks," in a production that Charles McNulty of the Los Angeles Times hailed as "exhilarating" and one of the nine best L.A. productions of the year.
Interact Theatre Company has received 95 performance and production awards (168 nominations), including Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle, Ovation, Stage Raw, Garland, LA Weekly, Telly, and NAACP Awards.