Nothing brings about renewal like a good retreat.

Last weekend, we New Leafers took twenty-four hours out of our busy lives, day jobs, and rehearsal schedules to re-connect with each other and with the company.  We talked big-picture concepts and strategy, we brainstormed, we worked on The Long Count, we got excited about this season, and about the future.

One of the first things we did was talk about our purpose–why are we doing this?  There are plenty of theatre companies in Chicago; what do we do that is uniquely valuable?   And after we’d spent some time articulating that, we re-visited our four-year-old mission statement, which was written when we were a much different company.   All the key words still fit us:  intimate, animate, renewal.  But something seemed off about the end of the sentence – there was this sort of misleading distinction between “artist” and “audience” that raised questions about which group was being valued more, and it was not quite right.

And so we changed one word.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you our new mission statement:

New Leaf Theatre creates intimate, animate theatrical experiences that renew artist and audience.

And then a surprising thing happened as we discussed our values.  (We’ve re-articulated those, too, and will be posting them on the website in the coming weeks.)  Kyra said something earlier in the day about honesty, which really struck a chord with me, and since I was lucky enough to be the person with the marker at the time, I wrote it down.  Honesty.  Meaning honesty in performance, in storytelling, in our connections with the audience, but also, and maybe more importantly, in our relationships and the way we work as a company.    I hadn’t really thought about it before, but as soon as the idea was “out there” in the world, it just seemed so true and so right.  I was so excited that we were able to name that quality and to claim it as something essential to our identity.

Now honesty is a wonderful thing.  Some would say it is the best policy.  But claiming honesty as a value brings a certain responsibility.  And so when the time came to dig in and talk about how we work together as a company… well, sometimes honesty means having really difficult conversations.   And we did.  We talked about hurt feelings, about resentments, about the ways we’ve failed each other.  And it was hard.

But honesty doesn’t necessarily mean truth without tact– we sat in this cozy hotel suite and talked about hurtful things without trying to hurt each other.  And when we uncovered a painful place, we addressed it, sometimes apologizing, sometimes affirming, always always committed to working our way through it.

I used to think that good communication meant that everyone always understood each other, there were no arguments, no hurt feelings, no bumps in the road. In my five years (almost) with New Leaf, I’ve learned that the truth is more complicated, richer, more rewarding than that.  In our work, we talk a lot about renewal, about going through the hard stuff not to reach a happy ending, but so you can earn a new beginning.  This weekend, we put our talk into action.  And now, we begin.  Again.