The Play’s The Thing

Description

For larger-scale projects run in partnership with Culture Vitale, we can research, write and
deliver a piece of Forum Theatre.

We get to know the specific 'soft skills' issue a client company needs to address - performance appraisals, leadership styles, inter-team relationships, customer care… there’s a long list of possible subjects.

We create a scripted play or series of scenes, performed by our team of actors (subcontracted), that illustrates behaviours and attitudes in need of change - without featuring or criticising actual company individuals.

We collaborate closely with the client company throughout our development phase to ensure that our script will hit the mark. On the day, the characters in our play demonstrate the kind of situations and unhelpful behaviours with which the audience is typically grappling.

Next, in a ‘Stop-Start’ replay of the same action, the audience is encouraged to offer the actors-in-character advice about behaving differently in each moment. The actor responds in character, improvising around the suggestion - which usually means they ‘get it wrong’ many times: there are no such things as 'magic wand' personality transplants!

This challenges the audience to put their suggestions more specifically, and/or in a different behavioural style that will persuade that character more effectively. This often leads to debate between the audience members about what will work best.

It usually makes the audience laugh a lot, too!

Benefits

The audience sees 'the mirror held up to nature': unhelpful attitudes and behaviours that they recognise from their own working world, reflected back in a way that avoids judgement or individual criticism, but makes the consequences within and outside the business absolutely plain.

As they interact with the characters, they quickly begin to realise that getting someone to take behavioural suggestions on board does not depend on a one-size-fits-all approach: in order to influence others, you have to flex your own style of communication.

Forum Theatre can also powerfully demonstrate why relationships go wrong inter-departmentally, or in more general terms with customers, by illuminating the enormous difference it makes to communicate and empathise, in place of a rigid silo mentality. It's a great way of nurturing Emotional Intelligence.

Additional Experience Info

A Forum Theatre project usually demands a lead time of around 3 months, and a
team of between 2 and 5 professional actors for its delivery, whom we would supply from a large number of expert players who are well-known to us. The piece can fit very well within a large conference format, or a modular training programme, at which we'd usually need a timeslot of 90 minutes minimum; our norm is at least a couple of hours - sometimes considerably more, depending on the client's objectives.