Our Mission

As the storyteller for our community, Aurora Theatre Company inspires new audiences and longtime theatre lovers alike with the visceral power of live theatre. Our venues, the most intimate professional stages in the Bay Area, highlight great acting, nuanced language, and an immediacy that makes for exhilarating theatre. By telling deeply relevant stories, we’re building a new culture of theatre going in the Bay Area and contributing to a revitalization of theatre nationwide, challenging all of us to think deeper, laugh louder, and engage more purposefully and profoundly with our neighbors and our world.

 

VALUES

  • We are committed to racial equity and anti-racist practices and to recognizing and confronting racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, ageism, xenophobia, religious intolerance, and other forms of oppression in our artistic and organizational practices.
  • We earn our reputation for integrity by treating people fairly, paying equal rates, and being honest and transparent in our dealings.
  • We value Bay Area theatre artists for their excellence, their engagement, and the local authenticity they bring to our productions.
  • We value the great plays of the past for the way their lessons resonate with today’s issues, and new plays for the way they move today’s conversations forward.

 

THEATRE FOR EVERYONE

At Aurora, we believe that theatre belongs to everyone.

  • We are committed to creating spaces—onstage, backstage, in rehearsal, online, and wherever Aurora gathers—where artists, audiences, staff, and community members are treated with dignity and respect.
  • We welcome the different experiences, identities, perspectives, and ways of engaging that people bring to the theatre. We ask everyone participating in Aurora’s work to help create an environment rooted in respect, curiosity, generosity, and care.
  • We recognize that our individual reactions and perspectives are shaped by our own experiences and cultural backgrounds. Not everyone will experience the same story, conversation, or moment in the same way—and that is something to value.
  • We ask our community to avoid assumptions about others, respect personal boundaries, and consider the impact our words and actions can have. If something happens that makes you or someone else feel unwelcome, we want to know.
  • Our commitment to becoming a more equitable, inclusive, and anti-racist theatre has changed Aurora and continues to shape the organization we are building today.  

Aurora belongs to all of us.

Our ongoing commitment to equity, anti-racism, access, and belonging continues to shape Aurora and the theatre we are building together. Read more about our commitments and ongoing work.

 

LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Aurora Theatre Company acknowledges that our home in Berkeley is on the traditional and unceded land of the Chochenyo-speaking Ohlone people, who have stewarded this land for generations and whose descendants continue to live throughout the Bay Area today.

We recognize that this land was taken through colonization and that our community and institution have benefited from that history. We offer this acknowledgment with respect for the Ohlone people, past and present, and with a commitment to continuing to learn about our relationship to the land and the Indigenous communities of the Bay Area.

 

FINANCIAL INFORMATION

Aurora Theatre Company values responsible stewardship and transparency. Our financial information is provided as part of our commitment to sharing information about the organization with our audiences, donors, artists, and community.