Melancholics Anonymous

Melancholics Anonymous is an award-winning independent theater company of ten Gen Z artists that champions tomorrow's playwrights. Centering queer and female voices, we’re developing wildly original new works for the Twin Cities, from large scale festival productions to free public play readings. 

We're dedicated to making sincere, accessible, eccentric, and exceptional theatre while fostering a creative environment built on respect, collaboration, and joy.

And thanks to our community, we've been able to do more of that than ever before.

What a Year!

Last year, we participated in Give to the Max for the first time, and our community helped us reach our goal of $5,000. That support helped us take on our most ambitious season yet!

We went bigger than ever with Worm Teeth. Our largest spring production to date brought together several musical artists, original compositions, and our first collaboration with an outside company: a dental company, no less!

We took Watership Down to the Minnesota Fringe Festival. Working with an author’s estate for the first time, we brought an original musical adaptation with newly composed music to the stage. The production drew the highest audience attendance at the festival and received Audience Pick, Venue Pick, and Artist Pick awards!

Our New Play Series continued to grow. We brought five new scripts to life through free public readings, creating opportunities for playwrights and artists to develop their work and connect with audiences.

We are very proud of what we were able to accomplish this year, and incredibly grateful to everyone who helped make it possible.

What's Next?

We're heading into another season with some exciting new opportunities!

This year, we're participating in Dread the Halls, a holiday horror festival, and have been selected for the Park Square LAB residency to develop a new devised work. Both are new experiences for MA, and we're excited to see where they take us.

We're also continuing our New Play Series, with a goal that's especially important to us: keeping readings free for audiences while beginning to compensate the playwrights and artists who make them possible.

As we grow, our priorities remain the same. We want to create ambitious, eccentric theatre, develop new work, make space for artists to take creative risks, and keep performances accessible to our community.

And we want to keep growing our ability to pay the people who make it all happen.

Help Us Raise $6,000!

We're back for Give to the Max 2026 with a goal of $6,000!

Your donations help us pay artists, rent rehearsal and performance spaces, build sets and costumes, develop new plays, and make the kind of theatre we love.

Whether you can give $5 or $500, you're helping us create opportunities for Twin Cities artists and audiences.

And if you can't give right now, sharing our work and telling someone about MA means a lot, too.

Thank you for being part of what we're building. We can't wait to show you what's next.

Melancholics Anonymous is a sponsored project of Springboard for the Arts, a nonprofit arts service organization. Contributions on behalf of Melancholics Anonymous may be made payable to Springboard for the Arts and are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law.