With the understanding that theatre is therapeutic, our productions and workshops serve as vehicles through which we seek to become more complete human beings. As such, our work and methods are inspired by the 10 Essential Values of Peacemaking Circles, created by Kay Pranis, Barry Stuart, and Mark Wedge.
The 10 Essential Values
1. Honesty: Honesty starts with self-honesty – owning our thoughts, feelings, and actions. We lower our masks and let ourselves be as we truly are. Instead of dissembling to protect our agenda, we share our inner world and begin a dialogue aimed not at defending our perspective but at openly questioning it to discover a wider truth
2. Respect: Respect means honoring ourselves by acting in accord with our values, honoring others by recognizing their right to be different, and treating others with dignity.
3. Trust: Trusts begins with ourselves. Trusting who we are and that we can follow through on what our values call us to do. Trust challenges us to take risks, first in exposing who we are and then in reaching out to others.
4. Humility: With humility, we honor another’s voice by holding a listening receptive posture. Humility grows from recognizing our own limitations. Humility calls us to focus more on discovering the wider truth than on advancing our own needs.
5. Sharing: Sharing is about opening ourselves to others and allowing our relationships with them to develop as they will. For this to happen, we need to release the urge to control people and situations. Yielding power on one side allows others to take power as they assume responsibility.
6. Inclusivity: Inclusivity means actively seeking to involve everyone whose interests are affected. How you send participants away from the community is how they come back to the community.
7. Empathy: Empathy expresses the equality between ourselves and those who suffer. Understanding each other through our stories reduces the distance separating us and inspires compassion.
8. Courage: Courage does not mean the absence of fear but the ability to acknowledge fears and to go forward in spite of them. We need courage to find our own path and to grant others the space to do the same, especially when we or they stumble.
9. Forgiveness: Forgiveness emerges from the dynamics of each individual’s healing journey, which generally begins with learning to forgive ourselves. Forgiveness involves a much deeper experience of finding inner peace along paths unique to each person.
10. Love: Love deepens our awareness that we are not separate, however much we may appear to be.