Passion. All Coil shows originate with a idea or need of one of our members, whether it be a complete script they want to produce, a role they wish someone would let them play, or just an idea that they want to explore.
Collaboration: Our shows are incubated inside the Coil itself, the core group of members who start from a place of “Yes, And” to see what these ideas might yield, while challenging each other to produce the best possible work. The model is the writer’s room of a television show or the Brain Trust at Pixar where ideas are played with freely and at the highest level.
Risk: A Coil show needs to push the artists involved to be worth doing. It’s not enough to just produce a good product, the people involved have to come out the other side better than they went in. That might mean casting a comedic actor in a dramatic lead, letting a writer cut their teeth directing something, or experimenting with edgy content or unusual presentation. Success shouldn’t ever be guaranteed
Originality: If the audience can go elsewhere to see it, then we aren’t going to do it.
Tight scope: Great ideas are nothing without solid execution. We want to find our most radical ideas, and then laser in on the smallest, tightest version of that idea, the one that can be nailed on a limited budget and time frame. Limitations are as much a source of creativity as freedom.
This isn’t the end: Most shows are produced by a one-time team of actors, designers and technicians, who move on to new projects immediately after. A Coil show extends past closing night into a lessons learned phase, where we can talk honestly about what worked, what didn’t work, and what future the show might have – is it a prototype that can be expanded? A complete work that can be published and licensed? A line of thought that can be explored in a new show? What can we as a team learn from it, how can we do better next time, and how can we take those lessons and put them in the next show?