Luna's 6-part Deep Collaboration Roadmap
May 14th, 2024 | By Alexandra Meda & Maya Malan-Gonzalez
This blog is a collaboration. It's a collaboration that is mostly easy and feels like your favorite pajamas because it’s been worn in, and you know, seemingly every inch of it out of the familiarity that is only bred over years and years.
But even our favorite pajamas need delicate soap to maintain their integrity. Care is one of the most underrated elements of a good, healthy, sustainable, deep collaboration.
I can already hear you scoffing, “What is with the current obsession with collaboration? Why is everything under the sun now a collaboration?”
Is it because theatres are restricting their budgets? Is it a marketing ploy? Do we blame TikTok influencers? Or, are more and more people understanding since the pandemic that working together might be harder, but is almost always better than working alone?
I can’t answer for the world, but I can say that for Luna- it is not a new fad we are picking up or capitalizing on as a fresh buzzword.
We have always been working, reworking, defining, and redefining what it means to collaborate. In a way, I have always suspected that this was actually a root cause of a lack of visibility for our organization and our work—we came out in the “singular genius” era. Believe it or not, we have always been ahead of our time, but without the skills and resources to capitalize on it.
25 years later, we are just starting to realize that we hold in our hands a lever of expertise that we need to pull on. Since our founding in 2000, some of our central questions have always been how best to collaborate to make art based on the real-life experiences of Latinas and Women of Color.
What new kinds of processes are needed in the era of technology and virtual communication?
How do we collaborate in the same room on the same project?
How do we collaborate across the borders of state and country?
How do we create sustainable containers for the development of not just new work, but of artists themselves?
We can’t possibly answer all of those questions in this blog, but we can give you a six-part roadmap we’ve developed over time to ensure we at least build the right container for collaboration and give people the right tools to play in it.
Lastly, before we go on our deep dive, we also think it is really important to name the elephant in the room. Collaboration isn’t just a set of agreements, a calendar, or even a project description. Collaboration quite literally requires a particular set of attitudes and mindsets– and those who are just getting started in this world might feel a bit of culture shock. In this life, we are socialized to distrust, to be unnecessarily competitive, and to come from lack. Collaboration requires a new kind of training, one that centers on abundance, trust, and our favorite word ever: grace.
The following roadmap is not complete, it is a starting point. It is some of the more foundational things we think really impact the potential outcome of a collaboration. This isn’t the structure, it is a framework. Structures can and should take a million different shapes. But these core tenets can be applied to any architecture you design. Another thing to consider here is that although numbered, these tenets aren’t linear, they are circular. There is a repetitive, weaving nature which you will have to revisit throughout the process. But generally, we don’t think you can start to understand where you are going until you really start listening. There is nothing to give feedback on until you have tried something, and you can’t slow down until you have started.
Give yourself the gift of deep listening
Start with check-ins so people enter feeling heard and communicating where they are today. This also hits the reset button and creates some distance from where they are coming from.
Get really good at forming questions. All kinds of questions. Especially ones that challenge your own or others' assumptions and clarify meaning or reasoning.
Develop an understanding that your role in “creating phases” or in collaboration in general isn’t solely to put your idea forward; it's to improve others' ideas. In a good collaboration, they will do the same for you.
You need a container to archive/document all ideas, images, songs, movements, thoughts, words, and phrases that might not have meaning yet but need to be held onto. Become an expert at listening for what to hold.
Discomfort, silence, and creative friction are necessary- get comfortable with them.
Train each other on catching non-verbals and practicing patience. Listen to what is not said as much as what is.
2. Slow Down, Use Breath, And Give Grace
Most problems come from going too fast, thinking that breathwork is cringe, and thinking a pause isn’t the exact tool you need to pull out with frequency. Slow yourself down. Slow the process down.
Practice Empathy.
There is a lot of talk about giving other people grace, but you can’t begin to know how to if you don’t first learn to give it to yourself— and make that a consistent practice.
Understand that your collaboration isn’t the center of the universe. It might have a powerful impact and bring joy, but you know what isn’t joyful? Forgetting that we are making art, not practicing surgery, which translates into tension and anxiety. Carry a sense of purpose, but never put that purpose before people.
3. Feedback is life
You don’t just develop a culture of feedback by valuing open communication and feedback. You do it by practicing it, coaching each other, and being vulnerable and not defensive.
Check whether your feedback is just your opinion disguised as feedback.
Continuously coach each other on how you naturally give and best receive feedback.
Always find a way to reflect on a learning or an element of someone else's offering that resonates with you. This isn’t sugarcoating—it's meaning-making. It’s building a shared vocabulary. It's learning from each other.
4. Boss It Up & Be In Service
Deep Collaboration isn’t about the right balance of leaders and followers on a team. It is about learning how to be both and which part to bring forward and at what time.
Consistently assess how you show up for each session. Communicate how you think you are showing up, and what you and others need from you to fulfill that promise.
Most importantly, have the courage to name what you cannot offer.
5. The more specific, the more universal
Making sense in your head and thinking that is enough is the death knell of collaboration. Communicating to be understood is a lifelong journey. Don’t rely solely on words. Learn to distill, learn to edit, learn to speak everyone’s language, and use images, music, movement, and gestures. If you can’t say it in a different way, you might not know what you are actually trying to communicate yet.
Metaphor is awesome, but specificity reigns supreme when making art, collaborating on anything, and even just being a good friend.
Pull from your own experiences and beliefs- not generalizations.
Contrast, contradiction, and tension are still some of your best friends in making good art. But it is only when all on the team share real clarity on what you are trying to communicate or accomplish that you can begin to layer on these good Judies.
6. Feed Everyone’s Need To Try Something
Make the space: We do believe there are bad ideas. We see them all the time. But our job when directing an ensemble project is to let the bad idea be tested. Either they will sharpen their instincts and eyes for when something is not going to move an idea forward, or I will learn that I am not always right in immediately knowing what is a good idea and what is a bad one.
Sometimes the best idea is hiding behind a bad one, learning to make connections, and ask the right “whys” and “hows”. Only then can you uncover the jewels.
7. BONUS: Make sure you eat together.
There better be snacks or I don’t trust you.
“The work of collaboration is the hard labor of creating shared meaning.”