To put our philosophy into action, it was important to come up with a plan for working.
Not a methodology, per se, since we plan to come up with that in rehearsal and do not wish to pre-plan it, but a plan for how the group will run.
Rehearsals
We plan to rehearse at least 3 times a week. At least every two weeks one of those rehearsal times will be a full-day (8 hour) rehearsal. (Probably on the weekend.)
Shows
We will only put on shows when we're ready. Shows will be entirely developed in rehearsal before performance dates are planned. When the show is developed, we will raise funds for production within a set deadline. If the funds are raised within that deadline, a performance space will be booked and the show will enter production phase. Two of our three rehearsal days a week will be dedicated towards the current show-in-production; one day a week will remain for creating new material.
Showcases
While it's important that we don't become product-oriented in our approach to Theatre, it's equally important to create things that we can get feedback on. To that end, we will have showcases at least once every six months (more frequently if we have a lot of material to show). The showcases will be low-priced opportunities for an audience to see what we have been working on. What we will show will not be fully staged (no production budget; all costumes and props pulled from stock), and will probably be short (20 minutes to an hour). After our presentation, we will have a conversation with the audience.
Not only will this potentially tell us what sort of things an audience is interested in, but it will help stop us from becoming a too inward-focused company, which is one of the great risks on an ensemble like this: the risk being that while we may develop a useful shorthand for working together, that the shorthand becomes, in performance, something indecipherable to an audience.