• Our community strives to be welcoming, encouraging the open exchange of ideas and practicing mutual respect for everyone’s right to freedom of expression.
• We nurture and support creative risk-taking in research, writing, projects, scenes, readings, and productions among our faculty, staff, students, and guest artists. 
• We pursue innovation and excellence in all our work by teaching cultural and global competency skills in the classroom, studio, community, research, rehearsal space, and on stage. 
• We ensure the well-being of students, faculty, staff, and collaborators, fostering personal and collective well-being in our artistic and scholarly practices. 

• Honor and center humanity.
• Foster and practice empathy.
• Encourage transparency and respect boundaries.
• Prioritize physical, mental, and emotional health.
• Assume everyone has the best intentions.

We foster safe and creative spaces to support our core values and community agreements through the following practices:

Dailies – Basic Tenets  

• Recognize what makes us different; celebrate what brings us together.
• Establish daily check-ins before and after to support shared authority and responsibility.
• Make time and space for everyone to have a voice.
• Provide dialogue, experience, resources, and materials that support our core values, including diverse viewpoints on production teams, production, research, and study of performance and practice from all perspectives, and diverse artist and guest representation from local, national, and global theatre-making communities.

Creativity and Risk-Taking 

• Our productions are a laboratory, supporting the freedom to experiment.
• Don’t assume knowledge. Acknowledge uncertainty and be okay with not knowing.
• Respect the process and be willing to fail; failure does not equal shame.
• Encourage and support interdisciplinary work.
• Build relationships by creating and respecting personal and professional boundaries, providing support for those taking risks, and moving at the speed of trust to engage without repercussions.

Building Relationships 

• Establish trust, be open to other perspectives, and respect when someone says “no” or “I don’t know.”
• Grant each other grace and take responsibility.
• Be clear about whether you want a sounding board or a solution.
• Honor feedback by holding on tightly and letting go lightly, creating a structure for feedback, and acknowledging that we’re all learning.

Speaking and Listening 

• Speak in draft; allow for pauses and differences in communication styles.
• Value silence and hold space for difficult and unanswerable questions.
• Make agreements verbally to avoid assumptions.
• Practice active listening and assume the best intentions to understand and learn.
• Encourage questions and discussion while being direct and respectful.
• Ensure all voices are heard and consider all differences.
• Make room for dissent and support self-advocacy.

Sharing Time and Tasks 

• Define and clarify expectations, roles, and goals.
• Respect the schedule and each other’s time by doing your part and following through with what was asked of you; be prepared.
• Put rest on your list; actually, take breaks.
• Goals do not equal product.
• Know your own goals and the goals of others.
• Reassessment is always possible.