Company workshops for long-running productions

At Tonic, we’re increasingly being called on by producers of long-running stage shows to run whole-company workshops that explore healthy and respectful working practices. Delivered to casts and crews, and held during rehearsals or at the outset of a run, the workshops aim to be pre-emptive; they create space for a conversation about how everyone can productively work together before unhelpful patterns of behaviour have set in. 

Making space for this is always important, but particularly so where there is a range of identities and lived experience within a company that will be working and sometimes living together over extended periods of time. Sessions are led by Tonic facilitators who themselves have had first-hand experience of being part of long running shows or of touring, so understand what can be brilliant about it and also what can be hard. They create a structured but positive environment in which frank conversations can be had about why boundaries can easily become blurred during long runs or tours and why personal parameters are so important to set for yourself and to observe in others. 

The feedback we have received for the workshops so far has been incredibly positive. Producers are finding that a few hours given to this early on in the contract pays dividends down the line and the cast and crew we’ve worked with have been incredibly grateful to receive the session at the start of their contract.

We’re now pleased to be working with some productions repeatedly, going back each time a new cast or crew is rehearsed in.

If you would like to find out more about the support Tonic can offer, please get in touch.