Over the past few weeks, someone named Deborah Sims has been posting cryptic messages on a local Nextdoor site, asking if anybody has a tarantula or a funky RV, among other curious items. Being the reporters we are, we were curious to find out who was posting these items and why. It made sense when we found out Sims is a line producer on an independent film being shot in the Berkshires. Searching for props is part of the job. Originally from Charlottesville, Virginia, Sims majored in theater education at Emerson College in Boston. She worked in the northeast for a while, moved to California, and came back to this area. She now lives in South Lee. “Let’s face it,” Sims says. “The Berkshires get under your skin.”

I was a managing director of Boston Youth Theater in the 80s, working with inner city teenagers. That led to a job at Shakespeare & Company, where I worked with Kevin Coleman and Lezlie Lee to produce the first Fall Festival of Shakespeare. In 1999 I left the nonprofit world and went to work for Blue Q, becoming manager of new product development. My title was “Thought Director.” I worked there for 12 years and guided over a thousand products from brainstorming to getting them delivered in the warehouse. I loved it there.

My husband, an actor, director and writer, had a play he’d written that he wanted to take to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I left Blue Q to produce his play at the Fringe Festival in 2011. It was a big production — eight actors, a tuba, accordion, puppets — and was performed for three weeks. The following summer we took it to the New York Fringe Festival. My husband wrote another play, “Coyote Girl,” which we made as a short film. I was also doing the typical Berkshire shuffle: created a company, Mighty Acorn Design;  did marketing for the Dreamaway Lodge; consulted with a gift manufacturer, all under my business Dearborn Projects. Basically, it was Deborah hanging out her shingle.

Producing is producing. Whether it was making a Dirty Girl lip gloss for Blue Q  or producing a play or film, it’s all about hiring the right people, getting creative people together, working within a budget, delivering the product on time. It’s all the same skill set. They all take creative people. That’s the fun part: you work with all these wonderful people. That’s what I really like doing.

I’ve done other things for films, like production accounting. That’s really interesting because you get to see everything it takes to make a movie.

I’m working on an independent feature film now with very well-versed production companies behind it. They were going to shoot it in Chicago, but the Massachusetts Film Office convinced them to do it here. They needed a mountain, so that meant western Mass. It’s one of the best scripts I’ve read. I’m the line producer, the liaison between production and producers. I make sure we don’t go over budget and hire the people we’re going to need once we start shooting. We’ve been working with the City of Pittsfield, which has been very supportive We’re supposed to wrap at the end of September.

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The Rural We