Our Mission: Dad’s Garage transforms people, communities, and perspectives through laughter.

Founded in 1995, Dad's Garage is an award-winning non-profit theatre company that brings in over 30,000 people a year at our new Ezzard Street home in Atlanta's historic Old Fourth Ward, public events across the continent, and festivals around the globe. Each season features original plays and world premieres created by our artistic family.

Dad's Garage serves a younger demographic not typically served by traditional arts organizations. We introduce them to other arts organizations like The Alliance Theatre, Atlanta Opera, and Atlanta Ballet through strategic programming collaborations. We’ve established ourselves as a “Gateway Drug to the Arts,” and are dedicated to building a new generation of arts consumers.

Until 2013, we were long-term residents in a rented building in Inman Park, contributing to the energy of the community, but we lost our theatre to a mixed-use development. The following two years became the finest in our history: we overcame the challenges of rebuilding by leveraging relationships across the community and developing a plan of action. We partnered with another local theatre, 7 Stages, for temporary performance space. We ended up raising over a million dollars from a mix of private foundations, corporations, over 1,200+ donors in 28 states and 6 countries and procured a preferential bank loan (check out the list of Capital Campaign individual donors here). Then we secured our new “forever home,” a former church in the Old Fourth Ward. We worked with experts who donated their time and services to develop a renovation design. We completed the project on time and on budget, opening our doors in December 2015. Our new “Forever Home” will allow us stay in our neighborhood as we help bring new energy to the area.

Most of the shows we produce are created entirely in-house by our artistic ensemble, and the work incubated here goes on to other theatres. While just about everyone in the artistic group at Dad’s is an improv comic, the artists also write, direct, design, and perform in our scripted shows and write, perform, direct, and edit pieces for DGTV, our YouTube channel. We support the creation of new and experimental works that travel around the country and transform the careers of their creators. The individuals who make up our artistic rosters consistently work in film, television and theatre on the national level. You may have seen them in such critically acclaimed works as Archer, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Too Many Cooks, and Selma. Our team even travels the film festival circuit, and have won awards at some very fancy film festivals

Through our High School Outreach Program, we kick-start a love for theatre and improv at an early age. The program is provided free of charge to high schools in Metro Atlanta each year and culminates in a performance on our Main Stage. We build the skills of confidence, failure resiliency, and teamwork in a positive and uplifting environment. We’re happy to give class clowns throughout the metro area a renewed sense of purpose, and also thrilled to bring shy students out of their shells.

We perform 52 weeks a year and host special event performances throughout our calendar. When you add it all up, we produce over 400 shows a year. Our facility has a large mainstage with flexibility for an intimate 90 seat show or larger 210 seat performance. And we have our own bar and lobby for pre and post-parties as well as an intimate cabaret stage.

Through our dedication to nurturing artists in the beginnings of their careers, Dad's Garage has become a launch pad for creative success. Our performers, designers, and other creative professionals go on to become leaders in their fields, and work with other theaters across the world. By saying "Yes, and..." to emerging creative voices, we give them the support necessary to succeed in the arts.

Our Business Side

Dad’s Garage has a business side? Yeah, we have staff meetings and budgets, just like everyone else. We keep everything off stage on the up and up so we can do whatever we want on stage. Our annual operating budget is around $1.3 million, we have 9 full-time staff, and over the year we work with over seventy artists. Our new home was a $2.9 million project--we raised $1.25 million, which means we’ve got a mortgage to pay off. Being a nonprofit doesn’t mean you can’t have money, it just means it all goes back to the mission. We got bills to pay, just like everyone else!