In June 2020, our theatre was one of many to make a public statement in support of Black Lives Matter and in condemnation of police violence against Black people and the system of white supremacy that perpetuates it.  In the months since, our community, city, and country have reckoned with the legacy of systemic racism that has pervaded all aspects of life; the arts are no exception to this accounting, nor should they be.

Our theatre owes a great debt to the We See You White American Theatre collective for their statement of demands, a transformative document outlining the exploitative practices and traditions that must be dismantled or abolished in order to create an anti-racist theatre.  This living document has sparked countless conversations within and between Chicago theatres, a starting point for a movement capable of real and lasting change, and we cannot and will not ignore its call to action.

We have committed, and remain committed, to a top-to-bottom organizational audit and overhaul, to ensure that our policies and processes are not merely 'not racist', but definitively anti-racist.  To ensure that our artists, audiences, and other collaborators of color have the best possible environment for the making and experiencing of theatre.  We passionately believe that these changes will massively strengthen organization, and that a more inclusive, diverse, and equitable theatre is one that will create its best art.  The profound changes required for this undertaking will not be made lightly, nor with undue haste; in order for these changes to be effective and lasting, we will need to plan and allocate our time, money, and will, in new ways, some of which will not be tested until our regular programming resumes post-pandemic.

The scope of the demands is broad and comprehensive, and our response, in action and in statement, will attempt to address that with specificity and transparency.  Accordingly, we present an accounting of the actions taken to date, the work that is in progress, and the plans in place for the future.

Cultural Competency

• We acknowledge that Chicago, where our organization primarily operates, we occupy land that is the unceded territory of the Council of the Three Fires: The Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations. Our ongoing acknowledgement of the mistreatment of indigenous peoples across the country has been and will continue to be reflected at all first rehearsals/gatherings, board meetings, company meetings, classes and in performance curtain speeches.

• As we work to educate ourselves and improve the experience for BIPOC collaborators, we must be aware of how we present ourselves and the signals sent by that presentation.  We are therefore changing the name of our company to remove the word “Colony,” to reflect the changes being undertaken, and to underscore the focused direction of our work.  We will be rebranding ourselves as The New Coordinates to better honor the work of artists that have come before us, and to reflect that new play development is not about staking a claim, but the new places we can go.

• We strive to be an anti-racist organization. As such, the staff, ensemble, and board will attend EDI, anti-racism training in February/March 2021. Our leadership is currently working with an organization to build a company-specific program. Participation in this training is a requirement to continue as an active member of the organization. 

• An EDI committee is being formed from members of staff, ensemble and board, to form and maintain our anti-racist practices.  The committee will also revisit our policies and initiatives on a quarterly basis. A member of the committee will serve as EDI liaison for every production.

• While front of house and box office hiring and staffing are set by our venue, we plan to coordinate with our fellow resident theatres to collectively advocate for intervention, disruption, and de-escalation training. We are investigating how we can facilitate this organizationally as well as financially.

Working Conditions and Hiring

• We will prioritize hiring artists who have EDI and anti-racism training. In addition, the EDI Committee will explore how we can provide this training to guest artists that may not have access to this training, in the form of a workshop prior to first rehearsal.

• Our anti-racism statement and policies will be stated at all first rehearsals/gatherings, classes, board meetings, and company meetings. These policies will also be reflected in contracts and will be a condition for employment by our organization.

• More time will be allocated to create work. We will eliminate 10 out of 12s and 6-day rehearsal weeks. This will be implemented starting with our first in-person production following the pandemic.

• Although we do not know when we will next be able to produce a show, we commit to being transparent around production hiring, and disclosing all hiring decisions to artists as they are made.

• We commit to diversifying our staff, particularly in the areas of casting, marketing, and literary management. Currently, our executive team is entirely volunteer-based, and we plan to move to a stipend-based structure before bringing on new staff.  We believe that this change is necessary for company involvement to be accessible to all.  This will require a fundamental shift in how our organization and budget are structured, and will require long-term planning to ensure that this change can be a sustainable one for the financial health of our company. 

• We commit to making our rehearsals and performances accessible to audiences and artists alike by the end of 2021. We are investigating how we can work more closely with our venue to help ensure a public elevator will be available when we are back in-person. Should that timeline not correlate with our future production schedule, we are committed to finding an alternate accessible rehearsal space and accessible performance space.

Artistic and Curatorial Practices

• We are committed to centering BIPOC artists and increasing BIPOC representation to at least 50% in all areas of production.

• As our productions are based entirely on developing new work, our pipeline of plays in process will also reflect at least 50% BIPOC representation to ensure that our options for programming come from a pool curated to be representative of our city and its people. 

• We will revise our script submission policies for greater access by removing barrier guidelines for consideration and more direct access.

• It has been a long-term goal of ours to guarantee accessible options for all of our programming, and to account for this in our budgeting. We re-commit to providing open captioned and audio described/touch-tour performances. 

Transparency, Compensation, Accountability, Boards

• We will be proactively transparent at all levels of the organization including board and staff, answering all queries and maintaining a publicly accessible location for our anti-racism policies and practices, as well as our plans and progress made.

• We commit to creating a board recruitment plan to increase BIPOC membership and include artist representation. This plan will be developed over the next six months to be implemented in full when we are able to be in-person again.

• A plan will be created to secure specific funding that is earmarked for equitable growth in compensation for staff and artists.

• Our developmental process has informally been an open environment, but it's important that this value be made official in policy. We re-commit to an open workshop/rehearsal environment, to remove that barrier between our community and our art-making, with the exception of any intimacy-related rehearsals or other times where the artists' individual privacy and comfortability takes priority.

Funding and Resources Demands

• We commit to forming meaningful relationships with BIPOC communities before entering transactional relationships.

• We acknowledge that many Primarily White Institutions engage in "parachuting" practices that consume grants funds in unsuccessful outreach programs, to the exclusion of the BIPOC organizations in and of those communities, who are best suited to provide arts programming from within.  We pledge to evaluate our grants and funding requests to ensure that we are working in tandem with the organizations already working within BIPOC communities, and not at cross-purposes.

Since some of what is pledged now will not be applied until further down the line, our plans can and will adapt with the benefit of further experience.  It is important that we acknowledge that this work will be ongoing and evolving, as we and our fellow theatres implement these changes and learn and improve again, and as new voices join the conversation with their own perspectives and ways in which we can address systemic racism.  An issue so deeply embedded in our culture and traditions will require long-term care and community organizing to uproot and excise, as well as time, money, and individual and collective commitment.

To maintain transparency and accountability, we pledge to provide an additional update from our EDI Committee in three months time, with further updates to be scheduled after that.  We promise this will be a part of an ongoing conversation, not a statement.  We are always willing and eager to answer questions, clarify our plans, and participate in discussions on how else we can work to achieve our goal of being an anti-racist theatre company.  Any success we find, we hope others will have as well; any missteps we make, we hope others can avoid.  It is our hope and our mission that we, and the rest of the Chicago theatre community, will build each other up while holding ourselves and one another accountable, in service of our shared goal. The changes demanded of us by this moment must be as lasting as they are profound, if we are to ever move past this moment and to a better, equitable future.