Ratio Theatre Company

Our Mission

Ratio Theatre Company has introduced professional theatre to Eastern North Carolina
and will sustain this endeavor through:
• employing professional artists and staff;
• producing thought provoking, artistically diverse performing arts events that broaden the awareness of the community;
• expressing its aesthetics through contemplative design and actor-centered work; and
• providing a variety of educational offerings that inspire both young and old in a diverse community to embrace the arts.

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t.” Hamlet (II, ii)

“Ratio” is rooted in the Latin word of the same name. Its meaning being, among others, system, method, and reason, and it is the root from which the word "rational" is descended. Ratio Theatre Company believes in the fulfillment of theatrical endeavors through the rational exploration and justification of literary and aesthetic choices.

Another connotation of “Ratio” is that taken from the “Golden Ratio” and the “Fibonacci sequence.” The Fibonacci sequence is an amazing set of numbers that tie nature and mathematics together in surprising ways. From deep sea creatures to flowers to the make-up of your own body, Fibonacci is everywhere.  In art it is a geometric proportion devised to give the most pleasing composition, divided so that the smaller part is to the larger part, as the larger part is to the whole. Ratio Theatre Company also holds that through contemplative design, we may produce more accessible and aesthetically engaging theatre.

Applications for the golden ratio have been found in architecture, economics, music, aesthetics, and, of course, nature.

Evolutionarily speaking, the best way to ensure success is to have as many offspring as possible. The sunflower naturally evolved a method to pack as many seeds on its flower as space could allow. Amazingly, the sunflower seeds grow adjacently at an angle of 137.5 degrees from each other, which corresponds exactly to the Golden Ratio. Additionally, the number of lines in the spirals on a Sunflower is almost always a number of the Fibonacci sequence. We as Ratio Theatre Company hope, by taking the name, to imbue ourselves with the qualities of its etymological, scientific and natural origins.