Stripping to the undercoat: A review and reflections on a piece of organization theatre

• Main Authors: CLARK, Timothy Adrian Robert, MANGHAM, Iain
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2004
• Subjects: organization theatre; forum theatre; Augusto Boal; Organizational Behavior and Theory; Theatre and Performance Studies
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/lkcsb_research/6282; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/lkcsb_research/article/7281/viewcontent/Stripping_undercoat_Org_Theatre_2004_av.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

In this article, we review one 'tailor-made play', one piece of organization theatre called Varnishing the Truth. We then reflect on the questions we asked of ourselves while watching this performance and reviewing the video of it: how does this activity relate to its claimed theoretical foundations (Boal's forum theatre)? Is forum theatre an appropriate model for organization theatre? Can 'things be made to move' by an activity such as the one to which we were an audience? In the process of answering these questions, we emphasize the reductive adoption of radical techniques (that is, Boal's forum theatre); the depoliticization of corporate theatre; and, the limitations of the theory of negotiated order as a model for learning, given the discursive construction of organizational roles.