By Amy Poulson, Teatro del Pueblo

The collaboration between Teatro del Pueblo (Teatro) and Pangea World Theater (Pangea) led to our second combined board-staff retreat. In addition to the team-building and integration inherent in off-site retreats, Teatro and Pangea used this time together to further efforts on three initiatives established at the first retreat: 1) Attending to the Structure of the Collaboration, 2) Board/Staff Development, and 3) Expanding the Audience.

This initiative lies at the heart of our new collaboration paradigm, where by creating a common mission statement for the collaborative, Board Members are more apt to respond to the needs that are common to both institutions. We hope that by exploring this new type of framework, we are able to strengthen the collaboration, strengthen each individual board and maintain our separate identities. The second retreat provided an opportunity to review progress since last year’s retreat, identify what we can do better, and create a more effective action plan that will solidify concrete benchmarks to be completed in a timely manner. The retreat is a key component of this new concept in collaboration. It fits quite well in the best practices component of the overall framework.

During the retreat, Teatro introduced two new board members, one new staff member and one intern at the retreat. Pangea introduced one new staff member and one intern at the retreat. Interestingly enough, the intern for each theater is one and the same! Sharing an intern is another benefit of our collaboration. Board and staff members left the retreat with renewed inspiration, energy, and commitment — along with “next steps” to take to continue developing a stronger collaboration.