Longtime off-Loop Chicago theater company The New Colony announced it will change its name to The New Coordinates (TNC).
The rebranding is part of a larger restructuring process to actively work towards being an anti-racist organization. Over the past year, TNC has revised its company structure, budgeting practices and development process, with more work ongoing. These efforts are publicly available through the anti-racism page of TNC's website, with updates made on a quarterly basis.
In a joint statement, Co-Artistic Directors Fin Coe and Stephanie Shum explained, "Part of our work is to educate and examine ourselves, to be accountable to our history as a primarily white institution and improve the experience of collaboration with BIPOC artists. To that end, one of the changes we're making is the name of our company.
"It has been an increasingly awkward fit for some time now. It's a little absurd to call for de-colonizing [theater] and its labor practices when it's right there in our name, in our communications, an odd sticking point in all of our introductions. How we represent ourselves says a lot about who we want to be; so we looked to honor our past along with our future."
For additional information, people can visit the company's new website: thenewcoordinates.org .