About Good Company Players
Founded in 1973
Good Company Players was founded in 1973 by Dan Pessano, Chris Moad, Cathy Glenn and Ronald J. Harlan and a group of enthusiastic actors, musicians and backstage technicians. Begun as a summer dinner theatre in Fresno’s Hilton Hotel, the young company performed at various locales until 1978 when Roger Rocka proposed that GCP settle down in a permanent year-round home. The gallant troupe worked feverishly to convert a vacant Sprouse-Reitz store into Roger Rocka’s Music Hall, Eating Establishment and Drinking Emporium, now known simply as Roger Rocka’s Dinner Theater. Thanks to loyal support from the community, the new venture thrived. In 1982, Good Company Players opened its smaller, more intimate 2nd Space Theatre as well. Between the two venues, Good Company Players currently produces 12 shows a year and since its inception has mounted over 450 productions.
Good Company Players’ main focus is to provide professional-level training to local performers of all ages while also providing the community with challenging and entertaining exposure to theatre. We believe that the performing arts keeps us civilized; teaching us to think and express ourselves coherently, to hear and respect other perspectives, to appreciate beauty and live a little more compassionately. We believe that theatre is a team sport and unites performers, technicians, writers and audience members at every performance in a common goal – to understand humanity a little better.
Dan Speaks…
Dan Pessano is one of the founders and the current managing director of Good Company Players. These shorts were filmed in 2020, while the theater had to go dark because of the global COVID-19 pandemic - on the set of the upcoming production of The King and I, which was originally set to open March 19, 2020 and never did. Dan uses The King and I set to recall some of Good Company Players' best memories while doing theatre in California's Central Valley - this being the longest duration of a dark theatre in GCP's history.