A Talented Team

AT HOME IN GREAT BARRINGTON WITH MICHELLE JOYNER & ROBERT EGAN

By Laura Mars // Photos By Gregory Cherin

“It was time to leave LA,” says actor/writer/director Michelle Joyner of their decision to move East. “Our children left for college, and we wanted more of a community.”

Joyner and her husband, producer/director Robert Egan, auditioned towns around the country before finding their way down a dirt lane across from Taft Farms in Great Barrington in 2017. At the end of the driveway is a 4,500-square-foot pre-Civil War house that had sat empty for over a decade. It was perfect in so many ways for the creative, energetic couple.

“We were looking for a project,” says Joyner. “I didn't want to buy a place where they handed you the key and it was ready to go. This was going to be our dream home.”

It wasn't just the home that sold them.

“We saw a lot of beautiful places but didn’t know if we’d find our community in any of them,” Joyner says as we chatted in her large, cozy kitchen. She was raised in nearby Westfield and returned regularly to visit her parents. “Every time we came, we got calls. Someone was directing a play in Williamstown or acting at Berkshire Theatre Festival, wanting to get together. We had this community that was built in. With five equity theaters in Berkshire County, there would be work opportunities.”

Joyner’s career started by playing the country western star Sarah Whiting on the daytime drama Search for Tomorrow. With numerous television and film credits, Joyner is still remembered as the girl that Sylvester Stallone drops off the side of a mountain in Cliffhanger. She also played the victim of a global pandemic in Outbreak opposite Dustin Hoffman (which became number one on Netflix during Covid), as well as Jim Belushi's love interest in Traces of Red, and the lead opposite Dwight Yoakam and Walt Goggins in Painted Hero. She appeared in numerous TV series, including Quantum Leap, Knots Landing, and The X-Files.

After her twin sons were born, Joyner moved into adapting novels into studio feature film screenplays. As a spoken word artist, she Joyner has performed in many story salons and is a repeat performer at The Moth. She leads The Long Table, a women’s writing group in Los Angeles and Great Barrington.

In the Berkshires, Joyner has directed plays at Shakespeare & Company, Great Barrington Public Theater, and Berkshire Playwrights Lab. Over the summer, she directed “Bring Back the Movies” at Saint James Place, an event to support the reopening of the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington, with Karen Allen, Jayne Atkinson, Michel Gill, and Lauren Ambrose, among others. “Bring Back the Movies” part two is scheduled for December 16 at Simon’s Rock, which Joyner also will direct. Some of the actors will be returning, with a few notable new names, like David Rasche from the TV hit Succession. (See page 70 for more on Save the Triplex.)

Egan’s career is equally stellar. He directed several episodes of the television series Frasier between 1999 and 2001, was producing director of Mark Taper Forum Theatre in LA for 20 seasons, and artistic director/producer of the acclaimed Ojai Playwrights Conference, which was founded in 1998 outside of LA to support playwrights grappling with social, cultural, and political issues. Large binders of Egan’s work—Arcadia, Common Ground, Dead Man Walking, A Distant Shore, Made in Bangkok, Richard II—sit on a wall-to-wall shelf in his office, topping bookcases that hold his theater posters.

Egan’s office, with lots of dark wood and looking all business, is situated between the dining room and a sleeping porch; Joyner's office, airy and graceful, is on the second floor, with photos of characters she has played, her Emmy nomination sponsorship, and her Cliffhanger script binder.

Wandering through the home is a warming, delightful experience; each room is beautifully appointed, as if it has always been like that. Yet, it was only quite recently that everything came together in this expansive house. A two-year renovation included moving walls and relocating interior doorways to create living and workspaces that matched the couple’s lifestyle. They worked with a contractor but did a lot of the work themselves, including painting and refinishing floors and furniture. “Robert really surprised us, this city slicker,” she says. “He’s really into it, especially the outside stuff.” Proving her point, Egan points out that he installed the patio stones outside the kitchen door. Joyner smiles proudly.

“If I hadn't been a theater director and producer,” he says with a laugh, “I would have been an architect or a journalist.”

When the house was completed, they celebrated with a party in February of 2019. A month later, they found themselves grounded in LA, quarantined with their children because that’s where they happened to be when the world shut down.

Then, in April 2020, while they were still in LA, a catastrophe happened in their Berkshire home. They got a call—and a video—from their contractor with the news that a flood from a waterless hot water heater turned the house into a hot, humid mess, destroying practically everything. A faucet blew off in the upstairs bathroom. The ceiling collapsed. Hot water poured through the house for four days. They had to rip everything down to the studs—which they didn’t do the first time—and start over.

“We lost everything in the house—but I saw it as a new beginning, an opportunity to build back better!” says Egan, ever the optimist and up for the challenge. With Egan as general contractor and Joyner as designer-in-chief, the second renovation included vaulted ceilings, soundproofed rooms, and a bedroom balcony. They both agree it’s a better house because of the flood.

“Something like that to happen in the middle of a pandemic was actually a blessing, because it helped put everything in perspective,” says Joyner. “So many people around the world were losing people they loved, and Robert made the point that all of this (gesturing around the house) is really just stuff, and everyone we love is okay, and how lucky is that?”

The Joyner/Egan home is decorated for the holidays, including the beautiful 7.5' Salem Pine artificial tree with white lights, provided by Ward's Nursery, 600 Main St., Great Barrington.

Family comes first for both of them, and that is clearly expressed in their excitement about the upcoming Christmas holiday. The six-bedroom house will be filled with family. “Up to 15 of us,” Joyner reports gleefully. “A full house!” The group will not only gather inside the festively decorated home, but outside as well, enjoying a fire pit and walking and hiking trails on their 85-acre property that abuts Monument Mountain.

Joyner has had some of her Christmas decorations since childhood and since her first New York City apartment when she was in her 20s. She rotates her collection each year and often leaves up holiday items all year—including a candelabra with an antique tree topper and boughs strung along the fireplace. “I left them there because I just like to look at them. They’re so pretty and festive.”

As we continue our walk around the house, it’s obvious that “out with the old, in with the new” is not Joyner’s philosophy. “I feel beholden to the integrity of the original house,” she says. “The original countertop, which we kept in the pantry in the first renovation, got ruined in the flood. But we salvaged enough to make the surround for the stove hood and fridge. And here,” she points to a weathered shingled wall in a bathroom, “this was part of the original garage that I did not want to cover up.”

Everywhere you look reflects the couple’s style, from the bright coral dining room and formal black-and-white living room where the Christmas tree proudly stands, to the comfy family room off the kitchen that can easily convert into a first-floor bedroom when they get older, Joyner notes. All of it, including the three-or four-season porches, is filled with extraordinary artwork and finds from local antique and artisan shops. Although they broke through a few walls, they didn’t want huge rooms. “I need walls for artwork and furniture,” Joyner says with a smile. “I’m a collector.”

Her collection includes framed family photos and genealogies that hang along the second-floor hallway, which is sectioned off in several places by thick, floor-to-ceiling velvet panels that, when drawn, create private “suites.” Wallpaper, most of which Joyner hung herself, creates visual feasts wherever you look, and window curtains that pool on the floor exude warmth and elegance—a testament to her love of texture and fabric. The roomy primary bedroom and ensuite bath was created by combining two smaller rooms, and the bedroom at the end of the hall with another of Joyner's favorite collections, paintings of women and girls, has a private balcony.

The house wasn’t the only reason this property was so appealing. These two theater professionals were eager to have a space for creative, transformative work in the Berkshires, and a 10,000-square-foot cement outbuilding they call “the Bunker” is a perfect home for their vision, the Ramsdell Project, named for their road. It will be a place for new play development, retreats, residencies, and rehearsals across different mediums, many of which will culminate in small public events. This is a far cry from what the Nichols family, the property’s original owners, used the building for—a metal shop where they worked on farm machinery, and a woodworking shop.

Danny Osman, MaConnia Chesser, David Rasche, and Michelle Joyner hanging out in “the Bunker.” Joyner will be directing these and other actors for a second “Bring Back the Movies” on December 16 with two performances at Simon’s Rock.

The Bunker’s renovation will include a new entry door, lounge/bar area, bathroom, and dressing areas for performers on the second floor. Joyner brought in salvaged church pews for audience seating but makes it clear that it’s not a commercial endeavor. “We’re not zoned for it, and we don't really have the energy to run a theater," she says. "Robert has run major theaters for decades and is ready to get back to basics with artists. We’ll develop projects and then take them to a theater for a proper run.”

Despite the Bunker’s less-than-finished state, the Ramsdell Project has seen some early action. “We held rehearsals for Leave Your Fears Here, performed in 2022 at Great Barrington Public Theater, which Robert directed and developed,” Joyner says. “He also worked with Christine Lahti in the main house on The Smile of Her, which premiered this summer at Berkshire Theatre Group. These were great trial runs for the possibilities of the property, and of course we love throwing cast parties. That’s when the property really comes alive.”