A Strategic Vision and Purpose
By Alissa Doyle
The Origin of Balcony Theatre Collective
Sacramento has always felt like home to me. In a John Steinbeck kind of way, my bones feel like they’re made of Northern California earth. Though I did not grow up in Sacramento, I’ve created my family here, my career here, and I have found a creative home here. Sacramento is home to a thriving farm-to-fork food scene, countless abundant farmer’s markets, a boisterous music scene, independent bookstores, coffee shops, family-owned restaurants and bakeries, and a theatre community that is brimming with talent, passion, and drive. Sacramento is a beautiful place to live and it is from my love for this corner of the earth that I am committed to imagining, collaborating, and nurturing the next phase of our theatre community into existence.
When I first walked into my best friend’s home in Land Park (a beloved neighborhood in Sacramento), I saw what appeared to be a small stage in the upstairs room with a balcony off to each side. Legend has it, the woman who built the home in 1931 was an opera singer who made her own stage from which to sing for her neighbors. Inspired by this woman who had the tenacity to carve out her own space for her art in Sacramento, I founded Balcony Theatre with the initial vision that it would become a producing theatre company.
From the very beginning, I knew that I wanted something different for Balcony than the traditional model of a regional theatre company – to be artist-focused, sustainable, and not bound by old ways of creating theatre. Once I began to discuss with other local artists the possibility of producing a show, I realized quickly that unless I specifically founded the organization around something besides production, Balcony would soon go the way of so many other theatre companies - low on money and personnel, high on burnout. But, Balcony wanted to be something new, entirely – a space where Sacramento theatre artists could dream up what we want for the future of our community and to turn those dreams into reality.
I knew that if I flipped an organizational model on its head – creating a theatre community that was founded on something other than production – I needed a foundation to ground into and build around, a foundation that was sustainable, not made or broken on the money we did or did not bring in. It had to be a foundation that was flexible yet strong enough for something brand new.
Pillars of Balcony
Balcony Theatre Collective is a community organization centered around promoting and nurturing the well-being of Sacramento theatre artists. It is a space for our community to be connected, for artists to be rested, and to come together around what brings us joy - ultimately, to play. As a theatre artist, an actor, educator, and member of the Sacramento theatre community, myself, I’ve learned and seen that artists are at their best when they can Rest without guilt, Connect with their community, and Play without the pressure of production.
REST
The pillar of Rest is centered around the wild notion that theatre artists should not have to create from a place of exhaustion. As theatre artists, we’ve been trained to embody the show must go on mentality. We are so accustomed to pushing our bodies to the brink, to performing sick, production members snapping at each other at the end of multiple twelve hour tech days, actors leaving puke buckets in the wings during a performance. We have absorbed the capitalist notion that our product as theatre artists is more important than our health and well-being. We have been subject to the grind culture that is all around us, many of us having to resort to toxic addiction to function, our relationships in shambles, our mental and physical health in the gutter. Tricia Hersey says in her paradigm-shifting book, Rest is Resistance:
Grind culture is a collaboration between capitalism and white supremacy. Capitalism is from the plantation. Our current system of labor was made from this paradigm… What does it feel like to hold this knowledge and to understand you are unconsciously and consciously participating in a system that has its foundation in viewing human bodies as non-human machines? (pg. 38)
I am continuously compelled to address my own internalized capitalism and white supremacy as I take the long path in my education and unpack the innumerable ways these systems impact both myself and my community. If we want to be on the forefront of change, we must insist on a full-throated rejection of the harm that capitalism and white supremacy brings upon our human bodies and spirits.
CONNECT
As theatre companies all over the country struggle to keep open their doors and to keep shows running, I recognize that now, more than ever, we must double down on supporting our local artists in order to thrive as a community (not to mention as an economic entity). So often, in an effort to gain national recognition, local professional theatre companies prioritize hiring artists from New York, Los Angeles, and other major entertainment hubs, all the while leaving their talented local artist base scrimping by without work or creative nourishment. If theatres want to gain national renown and become the regional hub for great works that they so desperately claim to want, the answer is to look within their own communities, first and foremost. As adrienne maree brown talks often about, the way to create meaningful, lasting change on the grand scale is to start with those near you and around you.
Do you understand that your quality of life and your survival are tied to how authentic and generous the connections are between you and the people and place you live with and in? (adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. pg. 91)
Balcony is grounded in connecting community members with one another in order to inspire new ideas, new conversations, and to spark lasting change, the kind that will impact our greater theatre community, nationwide. Sacramento is, after all, the city of trees; why shouldn’t we be inspired by the ways that trees root themselves together in the earth in order to form a stronger foundation?
PLAY
As working theatre artists, inundated with hustle, deadlines, tech-rehearsals, auditions, networking, and the like, it is so easy for us to quickly forget that what we do is create plays. While Balcony’s current goals are not around production, we are grounded in designing space for Sacramento theatre artists to play without the pressure of production. This centering of Play as a pillar is based on the importance of dreaming up a new future for our community, one that values artists not because of their output but because of their inherent worth as human beings. Centering creativity and play that does not result in a product is a practice that is antithetical to capitalism and the hustle to which we are so collectively accustomed.
To dream, to rest, to turn away from the toxicity of grind culture are radical acts of love for ourselves and our culture… We can’t continue to attempt to dream up new ways of being while supporting systems of domination. We can’t simply talk about the hopes of a world centered in justice while we continue to exhaust ourselves and each other and remain in allegiance with grind culture. (Tricia Hersey, Rest is Resistance, pgs. 119-120)
While some arts organizations may encourage creativity as a means to an end, Balcony nurtures play, trusting that artists will always create. It’s who we are, it’s in our DNA. Rather than asking our artists to create in order to produce a product, playing for the sake of play is the goal.
Balcony’s three pillars go hand in hand. None are more important than the other. They cannot be extricated from each other. All three are in support of our mission – to support and nurture the well-being of Sacramento theatre artists.
What is the Purpose of the Gatherings?
With these pillars in mind, Balcony Theatre Collective has hosted a handful of events which we simply call “the Gatherings.” In a time when we are more and more isolated from each other despite our near constant online connection, Balcony believes in the power of in-person gathering. Theatre as an artistic medium, requires the gathering together of people in the same space at the same moment in time. Our Gatherings are centered on our three pillars and have thus far been designed specifically to be a warm, casual three hours to practice the pillars together. The Gatherings have been held at a local restaurant, after business hours, giving Balcony a cost-free physical space to host our community. We share food, potluck-style, play boardgames, color on coloring pages, and discuss thought-provoking questions as a group, questions designed specifically around how to nurture our individual creativity and our community as a whole.
In her book, The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker stresses the imperative first step in any event-planning process: specifying (really specifying) the purpose in gathering. While the micro-purposes of each individual Balcony Gathering may look different from each other, the overarching purpose for gathering our community together is to generate meaningful conversation amongst each other – conversations that can take hold throughout our theatre community to spark change that centers Sacramento theatre artists.
When we don’t examine the deeper assumptions behind why we gather, we end up skipping too quickly to replicating old, staid formats of gathering. And we forgo the possibility of creating something memorable, even transformative. (Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering, How We Meet and Why It Matters. pg. 3)
What is the Future of the Gatherings?
Sacramento theatre artists want a community that is truly collaborative. Sacramento theatre artists want local theatre organizations to prioritize hiring local talent. Sacramento theatre artists want a community that fosters artistic growth and education, that nourishes existing networks and connects budding artists with seasoned professionals. Sacramento theatre artists want a community that prioritizes their care and sustainability, not only as working artists but as parents, students, folks with day-jobs, family needs, accessibility needs, as multi-faceted human beings.
Balcony Theatre Collective will design the Gatherings with these needs in mind. The Gatherings are and will continue to be the foundation of everything Balcony does in the future. Whether we evolve into an organization that someday produces theatre or we maintain our current iteration as a space for exploration that’s not production-based (or some iteration of both!) Balcony will always be an organization that was founded on the power of intentionally gathering in real time with those that we want to connect with.
Balcony is committed to listening to and advocating for our community.
As Balcony Theatre Collective takes further shape and evolves into what it is meant to be, it’s important to further specify what we are committed to doing in our community. While we may not have the resources or personnel to solve all of the challenges facing our Sacramento theatre community, Balcony is committed to listening to the concerns and dreams of Sacramento theatre artists. In any way that we can, we will use our position and privilege to advocate for and to promote the voices of our community, no matter their race, ability, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
Balcony is committed to centering and nurturing Sacramento talent.
We want to see our community thrive. We want our theatre artists to not only stay in Sacramento but to be seen, appreciated, and nurtured in Sacramento. For this reason, Balcony is committed to centering Sacramento talent in all of our endeavors. We are committed to designing the Gatherings around the education and nourishment of theatre artists in their specific fields, whether it be playwriting, directing, tech, or acting.
…connection doesn’t happen on its own. You have to design your gatherings for the kinds of connections you want to create. (Priya Parker, The Art of Gathering. pg. 94)
Balcony is committed to sustainable, slow, intentional growth.
As we reject harmful, toxic systems that exist to treat our bodies as machines for production at the expense of our physical and mental labor, Balcony is committed to sustainable, slow, intentional growth. We exclusively use our email newsletter for online communication, rejecting the notion that social media is essential in the modern world to connect a real-life community. Balcony is committed to the well-being of our personnel, making it clear to our community that the folks guiding our organization into existence are doing so in ways that are truly sustainable for them, manageable amidst the other aspects of their lives. We are committed to the times of quiet, solitude, and incubation that new ideas need.
Real time is slower than social media time, where everything feels urgent. Real time often includes periods of silence, reflection, growth, space, self-forgiveness, processing with loved ones, rest, and responsibility. Real time transformation requires stating your needs and setting functional boundaries. (adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy, pg. 149)
Balcony is committed to valuing the artist as a human being, first.
Artists are not machines. Though we function in a capitalist, product-focused society, Balcony rejects the premise that artists should only define themselves by what they produce. We are committed to valuing the health of artists above what they create. Because of this commitment, we will center our community conversations around how Sacramento theatre leaders can prioritize first the humanity of artists, whether it be by enacting trauma-informed, consent-based practices in their organizations, creating on-site childcare for working parents, fostering new audiences, or enacting new models of healthier leadership. Balcony is committed to the hard work of meaningful change. We are committed to art created by our hands, not off our backs.