Language tools
Below you'll find some incredible expressions of Mission, Core Values, Vision, and Process from companies that we've consulted for. Please take a gander at what they've written if you're looking for inspiration. Just remember: they had a drafting process too! Take your time.
Missions
Broadway Babysitters (LLC)
Broadway Babysitters is an arts-focused childcare company led by an ensemble of expert childcare professionals. Our personally vetted and individually trained playmakers bring the stage to your living room, drawing on their skills to help kids meet the world with wonder and cast themselves in any role they imagine. By encouraging creative play, providing behind-the-scenes support, and sharing the spotlight with caregiver-focused nonprofits, we connect families to the arts, and empower artists to build families of their own.
East Side Stories (501c3)
East Side Stories is dedicated to sharing authentic expressions of the Asian American & Pacific Islander experience through film, media, and education. We nurture and develop the skills of AAPI creatives, collaborate and support their projects. By connecting the storytellers to the stories and sharing the stories with the audience, ESS ensures a legacy of AAPI stories for the next generation and beyond.
Group.BR (501c3)
Group Dot BR’s mission is to present the “calor” and diversity of Brazilian culture through the performing arts. By using avant-garde, physical, choreographic, and contemporary theatre as tools, Group Dot BR engages a multicultural community with a forward-thinking approach to its “presencial” and online programs. As the longest-operating Brazilian theatre company in New York, it supports artists by creating a bridge for exchange beyond borders and holds up Portuguese as a heritage language.
Kenjiro Lee (Individual)
Kenjiro Lee is many things: a playwright, a puppeteer, a director, and a master of pour-over coffee. But let’s make this easier on ourselves and just say he’s a multidisciplinary theater artist. Drawing from his own experiences as a Korean-Japanese American and rigorous consumer of the cerebral, the absurd, the serious, and the silly, Kenjiro crafts (usually) comedic plays that confront the uncomfortable aspects of daily life with a dose of remedial chaos.
NAtional Queer Theater (501c3)
National Queer Theater is an innovative theater collective dedicated to celebrating the brilliance of generations of LGBTQ artists and providing a home for unheard storytellers and activists. By serving our elders, youth, and working professionals, NQT creates a more just future through radical and evocative theater experiences and free community classes.
NightDRive (Fiscally Sponsored)
Nightdrive makes rigorously irreverent, demandingly vulnerable, borderline-impossible plays that use indelible moments of stagecraft to build thrillingly personal relationships with audiences, empowering them to reimagine themselves and what they’re capable of. Dispatching new, surprising ways of telling stories that we create in our hyper-collaborative playmaking process, Nightdrive chauffeurs our artists and audiences through the darkness of the world outside, the quiet horror of sharing their tenderness, and the clandestine rush of taking risks together anyway, practicing the collective compassion and boldness it will take to make a more profoundly imaginative world together in the morning.
What Will The Neighbors Say? (Fiscally Sponsored)
What Will the Neighbors Say? is an investigative theatre company that provokes questions through untold stories. Led by a collaborative cohort of international artists, the Neighbors present overlooked social, cultural and historical narratives that challenge the audience to reflect on the current moment. Through a combination of original plays, arts education workshops and dynamic community gatherings, the troupe incites rowdy and rigorous debate at the theatre and throughout the Neighborhood.
Core Values
Broadway Babysitters (LLC)
Collaboration- By starting dialogues about the future of childcare in our country, and partnering with organizations that harmonize with our values, we amplify our missions to grow our collective impact.
Dependability - By building the set with precision and care, we reassure both sitters and families that they are always in our spotlight. The behind-the-scenes crew of real live people casts a company of trained, responsible and adaptable playmakers who ensure everyone feels safe, supported and nurture understanding.
Empowerment - Honoring our playmakers’ inherent compassion, active imaginations and boundless energy, we construct an environment for kids to feel heard, celebrated and inspired to change the world. Our sitters make a safe space for adults-to-be to explore, create, and use the arts to learn about who they are and the roles they can play in this world. Standing ovation!
Family - In the theater community, a cast is our ‘chosen family’- the people we care about, support, and protect. We connect our theatre community of sitters with our ‘chosen family’ of members to foster a feeling of familiarity and connection.
East Side Stories (501c3)
We celebrate unique AAPI stories and narratives that are often marginalized and misrepresented. The intersectionality of our ethnic, cultural, and generational experiences are diverse, multidimensional, and unique. In securing agency for AAPI creatives and storytellers to craft art and media, they can take ownership of their narratives, composing the most authentic and resonant content.
We provide developmental opportunities to nurture professional growth in emerging creatives. We support and embolden the next generation of creatives who seek to overcome the disparities of AAPI representation in multimedia by equipping them with transferable and sustainable skills.
We know that a community where camaraderie and partnerships are forged is a community that thrives. It is integral that we weave in our local talent, AAPI owned businesses and other community organizations in broader conversations to foster solidarity. Together, we will enact meaningful and long-lasting change across generational, cultural, and AAPI diaspora.
National Queer Theater (501c3)
Belonging: We believe that everyone deserves to create and enjoy theater, to see their stories on stage and to be seen in their full complexity.
Fearlessness: We believe that theater, like social change, must be made courageously without reservation.
Pride: We believe that everyone in the LGBTQ community deserves to feel proud of their identity and that an abundance of queer stories instills a sense of pride in audience and creators alike.
What will the Neighbors Say? (Fiscally Sponsored)
NEIGHBORHOOD: We build accessible communities which are radically transparent, and allow folks to make new and enriching global relationships that lead to intersectional conversations and civic action.
REPRESENTATION: We value diversity amongst our collaborators and the voice it gives to the varied perspectives in our Neighborhood, multiplying conversations and elevating the artistic process and product.
INNOVATION: We know that with rebellious storytelling and expressive designs that confront and arouse, the Neighbors dare audiences to question their beliefs and be transported.
IMMEDIACY: We believe that, in order to galvanize our Neighborhood, we must present relevant work that speaks to the lives and concerns of its citizens.
VISIons
National Queer Theater (501c3)
Believing in the power of theater to effect sweeping social change, National Queer Theater cultivates a more just, joyous, and empowered intersectional queer community that is celebrated in all corners of society. Through our art and free community programs we create and organize together, working towards a more equitable vision of a world bursting with pride.
What will the Neighbors Say? (Fiscally Sponsored)
What Will the Neighbors Say? fights for a more empathetic world by presenting risky, provocative theatre. We provoke conversations and facilitate greater understanding. Championing our community's capacity to explore ambiguous and nuanced themes, we create morally complex genre-bending work that challenges our audiences before, during and after a presentation. Armed with the understanding that meaningful conversations require varied perspectives, we build Neighborhoods across borders to facilitate new connections throughout our communities.
PROCESS
National Queer Theater (501c3)
By building coalitions between artists and activists, National Queer Theater develops its artistic and education programs through collective decision making and service-driven partnerships in the pursuit of collective liberation.
What will the Neighbors Say? (Fiscally Sponsored)
So… what will the Neighbors say?
Every project starts through styles ranging from documentary theatre to devised projects to contemporary narratives, all our work is linked by our commitment to telling untold stories. All of the work we create is always original.
Every project starts with us sitting down discussing what theatrical experience we will build for the Neighborhood next. These conversations are often based on our Neighborhood’s response to our previous work.
Regardless of style or topic, the Neighbors conduct rigorous research, whether in dusty archives, on busy streets or in our exploration of the human condition.
When you come to a Neighbors show, you will always have a theatrical experience that is exceptionally performed, beautifully designed and will have you debating before you’ve even left your seat.
And so, without further ado, Welcome to the Neighborhood!
So… what can you expect?
From a mix of old friends and new collaborators, we’ve assembled the artistic team for this project. Welcome! We are thrilled to have you here.
First up, we always start with a round of introductions. Tell us what you would like us to call you (full names, nicknames or stage names and so on), your pronouns and a third mystery/project prompted/project specific question! Take as much space as you want to play in/feels good/right.
Now that we have gathered, we’re going to start by facilitating our unique core question process. This will help us all agree on the fundamental question our piece will ask of the world. We are democratic from the ground up, and don’t anyone working on a piece that they aren’t shouting about from the rooftops. This process can be as quick as two hours or as long as many week. However, long it takes, it’s worth getting it right.
What is a core?
The core is the beginning.
The core of a project is the central question that the project is asking of the world.
Together we will try to answer that question in a variety of ways. We are going to dive deep into different explorations promoted by our core question, our true north.
Armed with our core question, we will begin to build the piece together.
This process is going to include eternal/evermore/wild experimentation, bold investigation and rowdy collaboration, but specifically, you can expect a few things when you work with the Neighbors. - YOU ARE IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD.
In our Neighborhood, we -
Share Our Ideas, beginning with rigorous discussion-based table work, where we all unpack and debate the story, themes, character, arcs and dramaturgy - all of the juicy parts of the piece!
Flex Our Creative Muscles, stepping out of your comfort zone - if you’re a designer, you better get ready for some cold reading, and if your an actor, prepare to speak up on design ideas.
Move Our Body, as the Neighbors always work physically to explore character and text, and devise together in the moment.
Ingest a Healthy Dose of Joy, as the Neighbors love nothing more than a good party - it’s not all work - fun and games - community aspect - open social forum - boundaries! We fortify relationships with our comrades through community and celebration, and believe in the importance of work and play.
Get to Know The Neighbors! We are all committed and excited artists, working together to keep our small but mighty troupe growing. Expect a dose of healthy chaos - we are always doing ten things at any given time, but finding the play in each and every one.
Always Keep Our Door Open - cause once you’re in, you’re in! We are a scrappy grassroots theatre company that values tresnapercy and offers consistent facetime. Don’t be a stranger!
Once the piece is ready to share:
We will present the piece to our Neighborhood, making sure we welcome them all in (through a mix of relaxed performances, affordable and free ticket policies and language accessibility).
You’ll also make connections with our fantastic Community Partners, as we always make sure to find fellow grassroots organizations connected to the work we are doing.
We host robust community programming DIRECTLY after the presentations, as it is the best time to get feedback from our Neighbourhood. This goes far beyond your traditional talkback - from drinks parties to community forums to informal lobby chats, we can’t wait to introduce you you the fantastic folks in our community. And we hope you’ll bring yours along, too!
However you find us, you can be sure you will meet the Neighbours excited, energetic and thrilled to meet you.