Act I - Scene 1 – Antenarrative Theatre
From the book,
Theatres of Capitalism:
Managing Corporate Spectacle, Resisting with Carnival, and creating
Festival on the Global Stage
By David M. Boje, Ph.D. November 13, 2001
All the World's a Stage,
And All the Men and Women merely players:
They have their Exits and their Entrances;
And one man in his time Plays many Parts
-William Shakespeare, As You Like It.
Scene 1 – Antenarrative Theatre
Antenarrative theatre is the Poetics of Capitalism. The poetics of antenarrative theatre are not
coherent in plot, the scripts have multiple authors, and the characters are playing scenes on
different stages throughout the day. Antenarrative is the fragmented, non-linear, incoherent,
unplotted theatrics. Spectacle, carnival, and festival emerge as centers in the antenarrative pretheatre. Antenarrative theatre is not inside a Broadway playhouse, or even on MTV. Rather
antenarrative theatre is where we work and live, gamble and play. There are antenarrative
spaces outside plot, characterization, script, and stage; but these spaces are fewer, and the
dynamics between the pre-theatric and theatric spaces sets off interesting dynamics.
Antenarratives are constructed out of the interactions, characters, plots, and theatre of many
people. Antenarrative theatre takes place in between, behind the stage, before he carnival,
outside the festival. Antenarrative theatrics is about the flow of events, the lived experience
that is not yet scripted, or spirals out of scripted lines and sequences. We will look for example
at Tamara a type of theatre in which the spectators do not sit in their seats and watch a play on
the elevated stage (Krizanc, 1981/1989). Rather, the audience fragments into smaller groups of
spectators, who chase after actors, who are headed to different rooms in the mansion. Tamara
helps explain the dynamics of performers caught in a network of stages, as they make choices
of whose drama to participate in next. If organization and interorganizational behavior is a
network of theatrical production, in distributed networks of consumption, then the question is
what are the complexity and chaos dynamics?
Capitalism has many theatres of action, opposed by theatres of opposition. Capitalism is a
spectacle theatrics on all the World's stages, opposed by carnivalesque street theatre and
cybertheatre protests. Here and there we find festive theatrics, usually just appropriated by
spectacle or carnival, but sometimes there is the festival guilelessly celebrating the seasons and
community. All the world's corporations are merely players; they make the Exits and their
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Entrances'; and one corporation in its time, plays many parts. Theatres of Capitalism are an
intermingling of three theatres of action, the spectacle, carnival, and festival. This trilogy is
performed on the global stage of capitalism is the theme and contribution of this book.
In this book, I want to examine carnival activism in its relation to the theatrics of corporate
spectacle, and explore festive options. My thesis is that much of global protest is carnival, such
as 400,000 WTO protestors facing the police overdressed in Vader masks and riot gear facing
protestors costumed in sea-turtle shells, or without costume, ladies prancing naked with "Better
Naked than Nike" or "BGH-free" scrawled across their chests, and satire, gigantic puppets and
floating condoms the size of blimps with the words "Practice Safe Trade." The street carnival
theatrics of the WTO protest in Seattle has become our contemporary parody of corporate
power; carnival performed the way Bakhtin imagined the peasants confronting feudal power.
The trilogy, spectacle resisted by carnival, and festival, once explored, I hope will result in a
more conscious understanding of the relationship between theatrics and capitalism. Here and
there, I will post conscious alternatives to spectacle.
I have been working for several years to develop a global perspective on theatrics that builds
upon the spectacle work of Guy Debord (1967), the carnivalesque resistance theory of Mikheal
Bakhtin (1973), and the potential for what Victor Turner (1967; 1982) said was carnival, and I
see as festival as a more Dionysian play or folkloric and natured rite of passage (Boje, 2000a,b;
Boje & Rosile, 2000; Boje, 2001d, f, g, h; Rosile, Best & Boje, 2001). Here are some starting
definitions, but keep in mind; one theatre is never absent totally from the other. These theatres
are never compartmentalized, though spectacle does dominate. It is interplay we seek.
Spectacle Theatre - Spectacle Theatrics of Capitalism is about corporate showmanship and
strategies of operating in global theatres. My thesis is simply that corporate theatre is a refined
and carefully scripted repertoire of theatrical illusions, but as these intermingle with the
movements of anti-globalization and their penchant for the carnivalesque, sometimes the
theatre and counter-theatre spins out of authorial control and into the abyss of chaos. In the
theatrics of late capitalism, the global stage has fragmented into a 1,000 local theatres, in an
eternal struggle between spectacle and carnival, where festival is harder to find than ever
before. Spectacle work of Guy Debord (1967, Society of the Spectacle), for example, has
something important and critical to say about how spectacles of production and consumption
relate to post-Marxist critique. Another example is Heather Hopfl’s (2001) work on how
theatricality of organizations can create and re-create metaphoric appearances that suppress
critical differences, mask ambivalence, and sustain a world of make believe would equally
apply. Corporate Spectacle Theatre is being vilified in carnivalesque street and cyber-theatre
productions that rebelliously reinterpret the experience of consumers putting on garments in
Fetish-exposé acts scripted to raise consciousness of the difference between use-value and
surplus-value. The spectacle theatre does not forsake the stage or the script, fearing that
“improvisatory anarchy” will preempt the official and sanctioned ways of representing power
(Derrida, 1978: 239).
Carnival Theatre - Carnival Theatre resists the power, knowledge and exploitation of
Spectacle Theatre. It is what Mikhail Bakhtin and Julia Kristeva would call "carnivalesque," the
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use of theatre to parody and resist spectacles of global corporate hegemony. For Bakhtin
(1973), the carnival is "...that peculiar folk humor that always existed and has never merged
with the official culture of the ruling classes." Bakhtin (1973: 7) said, "Carnival is not a
spectacle. " Carnival is something lived and embraced by people, even if the rest of the year is
spent in spectacle, in anticipation of carnival time. Bakhtin goes on to add, "While carnival
lasts, there is no other life outside it. During carnival time life is subject only to its laws, that
is, the laws of its own freedom" (Bakhtin, 1973: 7). Turner (1984; 40, additions mine) say
carnival as carving out a “piece of space and a period of time in which [society] can look
honesty at itself.” Carnival has lost some of this reflective and critical gaze. In the Rio
carnival, people work in bureaucratic arrangement all year, then toss that aside for some sweet
chaos; yet the antics are not that critical of the social order. The spectacle of postmortem
architecture of Disney and Las Vegas, the moving postmortem theatrics of NikeTown, and the
sports hero worship and label-fetishism playing in these and other corporate theatres, is being
opposed by a more critical carnival theatrics. This was evident in the 1999 World Trade
Organization (WTO) protests and what we have seen on city streets and university campuses
since. Opponents in the drama are characterized as “predators,” and “villains,” or with even
more derogatory terms as “capitalist pigs” and “vampires sucking the last drop of labor’s
blood.” Consumers use street theatre to oppose corporate theatre. Carnival Theatre, today,
mixes outrageous satire, popular music, costumes, and critical pedagogy to problematize
globalization and free trade as reinvented ideologies of colonization and global racism in the
21s' century. Some call Globalization the "Economic Irrationalism" ideology. The German
tradition of the Frankfurt school of critical theory (Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer) as well as
the postmodern approach of the Situationist movement (Debord) combine in ways that create a
critical postmodern approach to theatres of capitalism (Best & Kellner, 2001: 226-242; Oswick,
Keenoy, & Grant, 2001: 220).
Festival Theatre - I seek, in Festival, an alternative to violent Spectacle and Carnival Theatres
of Capitalism. Festival was once tied to the Earth, to celebrations of the seasons, the harvest
time. It was once about community. Now we have Renaissance, music, craft, and even cyber-festivals, and it is hardly about Nature anymore, hardly different from spectacle theatrics. As it
is, festival is co-opted as a sideshow to spectacle, or as a pause within carnival. I also link
festival to "Ahimsa." In the Jain philosophy, Ahimsa is the quest to be non-violent in a violent
world of Himsa (violence). Festival tinged with Ahimsa, is my hypothesis of non-violence, a
way to get beyond Fetish to necessity and simplicity, a way to be a bit less exploitative of
Nature and human. Conscious capitalism can never be totally nonviolent, but it can be a less
violent Theatre. Theatres of capitalism are currently saturated with violence and oppressive
social control that masquerades as a celebration of betterment by recycling pseudo-reforms,
false-desires, and selective sightings of progressive evolution, never devolution. We could not
say that capitalism is making the world a more festive time or place. Beyond the extreme,
oftentimes violent (to humans and ecology) spectacle theatre of "free market" capitalism and
"state-bureaucratic" communism there is a third path I am calling festival. The global theatrics
of capitalism, as the carnival of street theatrics and more recently e-protests greet spectacle
theatrics of corporate/state power demonstrate, is not too festive.
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My friend Alfonso Montuori raises some questions that need answering. “It’s all good and well
to deconstruct everything in sight, but one does end up with two resounding questions: So
what?, and what are they actually affirming, if anything, after all that palaver?” (Montuori,
2001: 4).
So What? There are many books and articles on theatre. There are also many books crucial
and laudatory of capitalism. Theatre for me is more than a way to deconstruct capitalism. It is
more than a metaphor for looking at elements of capitalism in a different construction,
theatrics. I answer so what, with an assertion. Capitalism is theatrics, part spectacle, resisted by
carnival, and here and there some festive options. The scripted nature of McDonaldization,
Disneyfication, and Las Vegasization do not allow for much improvisation. Carnival
improvises in order to articulate the limiting and oppressive aspects of spectacle.
What is this book affirming? Not all festival, but a festivity that is non-violent, intertwined
with a conscious awareness of how the theatrics of capitalism seduces its audience and players.
For me the study of non-violence begins with Ahimsa. Can Ahimsa be fun? Ahimsa is an
awareness of the violence of our material condition, our consumption society, all the ways that
violence is produced. Many readers many not understand how Ahimsa can be sexy, making life
more pleasurable, enjoying life in the “fullness of festival.” For me, relating festival to Ahimsa
is fun, sexy, and enjoyable. It is a challenge to find festival in a world so consumed in the
dialectic of spectacle and carnival. There are related social movements, such as the Simplicity
movement, where people are trying to unplug from the spectacle of TV programming, and find
something more festive than the advertised life style. They want to break out of the matrix of
their conditioning. Others turn to vegetarianism to find ways of being in the ecology that do the
least damage to animal life. Still others work in animal rights movements, or just become better
informed about where their clothing is made, and the conditions of labor in factories making
their clothing. Some of this is the carnival of protest and resistance, but other people just want
to experiment with finding a life style that is less harmful to civilization, Nature, and their
humanness. With conscious awareness of the dynamics of the Trilogy of spectacle, carnival,
and festival, comes the ability to improvise, to move away from scripted behavior, and find that
celebration of “Existenz” and “taking responsibility for, our human potentialities” (Montuori,
2001: 11).
Theorizing the trilogy is my main contribution. Carnival, festival and spectacle, are intertwined,
not found separate but together, opposing and transforming one into the other, and
interpenetrating at every turn. There is a theatrical nature to the evolution of capitalism. The
constant interaction and interweaving of spectacle, carnival, and spectacle is the antenarrative
theatre context of complexity. This awareness of complexity is tied to a shift from theatre as
metaphor (or representation) to an epistemology of how it is that capitalism constructs the
theatre within which we work and live (Montuori & Purser, 1997: 12-13).
We are each performers caught in a web of theatres, never just one. Carnival and sometimes
festivalism is opposing the spectacle theatrics of corporatism. Carnival has always resisted
spectacle. After finishing this book, I re-read Foucault; I found he had also put the three into
dynamic relationship. Foucault (1979), for example, makes the relevant point that
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(carnivalesque) resistance accompanies power and knowledge. The spectacle of a torture and
gruesome execution was the exhibition of the “terrorizing power of the prince,” and one aspect
of “carnival, in which rules were inverted, authority mocked and criminals transformed into
heroes” by their acts of resistance (1979: 61). “Yet out of the ceremony of the public execution,
out of that uncertain festival in which violence was instantaneously reversible, it was this
solidarity much more than the sovereign power that was likely to emerge with redoubled
strength” (1979: 63). I think festivalism is still a political danger, and when mixed with
carnivalesque resistance, the spectacle co-opts all the more. Where I disagree with Foucault is
how he sees spectacle leaving the outdoor stage, heading indoors where it can be controlled. I
see the opposite, that spectacle has become the outdoors, the theming of America and the
world, converting center city, suburban mall, airport and state park into theme park.
I think one requirement for conscious capitalism is that we understand the social process and
dialectic of creativity and oppression. Some oppression is highly creative, and some forms of
resistance are not all that creative. Much of the resistance is individual, thought in the
postmodern turn, a wide variety of different social causes and movements are networking to put
on large-scale carnivals of protest. This partly affirms social creativity, and partly rechannels
individual expression in postmodern carnivals of resistance. The Society of the Spectacle, is a
form of theatre that imposes constraints upon individual improvisation, deviances from some
script, carry severe punishments. Yet, in the most oppressive, most McDonaldized scripting of
our work and consumption lives, there is room from creative resistance and improvisation, one
might call festive.
I conclude that theatre is dangerous. We are addicted to spectacle theatre, there is not enough
carnival to resist, and we do not know how to perform work and leisure in a more festive
relationship to Nature or each other. We witness the contest of spectacle and carnival in the
Battle for Seattle, and the subsequent off-Broadway performances in Canada, Switzerland,
Italy, and in post-September 11, the war on terror. These are not festive theatrical
performances, they are increasingly dangerous, and the blood is flowing.
Global theatre has too few critical reviewers, and a corporate-dominated media that keeps the
spotlight on spectacle illusions, while marginalizing the messages that the carnivals of
postmodern networks of resistance, various groups are staging. Never seeing festive
alternatives to the current capitalist theatre. Resistance coverage is reduced to reruns of the
more violent protests, ignoring the non-violent attempts to be critical of global corpatocracy.
Until academic research and management practice can look beyond spectacle PR image making
we will not find much festival theatrics. Until we look more rigorously at the Theatres of
Capitalism we cannot resolve the sociopolitical and socioeconomic crises that globalism
reverberates in its current staged performances.
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