Taking theatre into the workplace

July 10, 2013

Taking theatre into the workplace

Feelings and emotions are often marginalised in the rational world of business, but one academic has spent his life’s work trying to change that – and he’s visiting New Zealand to spread the word.

Massey University has secured funding under the Fulbright Specialist Program to bring Associate Professor Steven Taylor, a business academic and playwright, to New Zealand for a series of workshops on Massey’s three campuses.

His visit to the Albany campus will also include a staged reading of his play The Invisible Foot, followed by a panel discussion with business and arts academics and industry representatives.

Taking theatre into the workplace is a new concept in New Zealand, but the practice has a long established following in the United States and Europe. The idea, Dr Taylor says, is to get people to think about aspects of the world of work in a different way.

“I see the plays as a way of opening up a conversation about things that we usually take for granted or don’t think about,” he explains. “My hope is that the images and metaphors in the play stick with people and provide them with a way to talk and think about aspects of their lives that they may want to change.

“For example, I’d be delighted if a year after seeing The Invisible Foot someone said at a meeting, ‘there it is, the invisible foot of the market kicking us in the backside’, and that started a different sort of conversation about what the organisation might do.”

The Invisible Foot explores the relationship between capitalism and Christianity and critiques the commercial world’s addiction to growth. Students from Massey’s theatre studies programme will have a day to familiarise themselves with the text before performing a reading of the play in the university’s new Theatre Lab performing arts space.

Dr Taylor says when his plays are performed in workplaces he usually gets “a fair amount of laughter and knowing nods” and a lot of good discussion. “I feel like I have succeeded when the play resonates for people whom I have never met and whose organisations I know nothing of.

“With my New Zealand workshops I hope people will come away with some idea of the possibilities of how we can use the arts in organisations – and maybe even be a little inspired to do so.”

Massey senior lecturer Dr Ralph Bathurst, who secured the Fulbright scholarship to bring Dr Taylor to New Zealand, says he hopes those present at the reading will “be provoked into critiquing the system we are all locked into”.

He also hopes Dr Taylor’s visit will be the first step towards Massey embracing these methods of understanding and discussing organisational behaviour.

“My longer-term plan is to bring our business and theatre programmes together to offer a troupe to go into organisations and be involved in professional development,” he says. “I’d also like students to consider turning their research into a play – that’s much more accessible than a dissertation that sits on the library shelf and never gets read.”

Both academics believe the business world can learn much from the arts, with workplace theatre being just one example of how the arts can inform leadership development.

“The arts represent a powerful way of making sense of the world that can be easily marginalised in the overly rational and instrumental business world,” Dr Taylor says. “Much of what is truly important – our ability to connect to others, to feel empathy and work together for the common good – is based in the feeling and emotional parts of being human, so it’s critical that business learns to explicitly include those abilities.”

Event: Staged reading of The Invisible Foot, followed by panel discussion.
Venue: Theatre Lab – Sir Neil Waters Building, Albany campus
Date: Wednesday July 17, 2013
Time: Networking 5.30pm; Performance 6.00pm; Close 7.30pm.
The event is open to the general public and is free of charge. RSVP to D.OMeara@Massey.ac.nz

Panel discussion:
Dr Steven Taylor – Associate Professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute School of Business
Professor Ted Zorn – Pro Vice-Chancellor College of Business, Massey University
Dr Ralph Bathurst – Senior lecturer, School of Management, Massey University
Dr Rand Hazou – Lecturer, School of English and Media Studies, Massey University
Anna Campbell – General Manager of Human Resources, The Warehouse

ENDS

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