Act 1
S6 What is Corporate Theatre?
What is Corporate Theatre? There are three roots of the theatrical perspective on
organizations and capitalism: Aristotle, Burke, and Goffman. First, Aristotle’s Poetics
(written 350BCE) is the least applied of the three. Therefore my contribution to corporate
theatre study is to explore how spectacle, carnival, and festival leaders, for example,
perform all six poetic parts of theatre that Aristotle (1450a: 5, p. 231) wrote about in 350
BCE. But, I shall hypothesize that in corporate theatre, their ordering has changed in this
postmodern world, where spectacle has more value than plot. The following lists the
elements in the order of importance Aristotle gave them:
1. Plot - Aristotle believed story (plot) the most important of the six parts; plot is a
combination of incidents and is the purpose of the theatrics; the incidents arouse
pity and fear in the spectators (e.g. seeing the suffering by some deed of horror),
other times amusement or irony. In comedy, the bitterest enemies walk off good
friends at the end of their conflict.
2. Character - Second is character, "what makes us ascribe certain moral qualities
to the agents (actors)" (1450a: 5, p. 231). Characters reveal the moral purpose of
the agents, i.e. the sort of thing they seek or avoid (1450b: 5, p. 232). Moral
purpose of the character is revealed by what they say or do on stage (1453: 19, p.
242)
3. Theme - The third element is thought (i.e. theme), shown in all the characters say
and do in proving or disproving some particular point, or enunciating some
universal proposition.
4. Dialog - Fourth, is the diction (dialog), the verbal and non-verbal exchanges
among characters. This is resource to express character, plot, and theme.
5. Rhythm - Rhythm can be fast or slow, repetitive or chaotic, gentle or harsh. I.e.
The leader character can be a workaholic making everyone work at fast and harsh
pace. The rhythm can slow down or build up to give emphasis.
6. Spectacle - Aristotle thought spectacle, though an attraction, to be the least
artistic of all the parts, requiring extraneous aid (1450b: 15, p. 232 & p. 240); it is
the stage appearance of the actor; what the costumier does; pity and fear may be
aroused by spectacle, but better to arouse these emotions in the spectators by the
plot, the incidents of the play (1453, 13, p. 239).
Since Aristotle's day, spectacle has moved from sixth place to first, and leadership has
become more about conducting spectacle than plot and character; the scenery has
overtaken attention to the story (or plot). Augusto Boal (1979, 1992, 1995) has done
pioneering, groundbreaking work interrelating capitalism and theatre, in his work on
Theater of the Oppressed. Boal prefers Aristotle as a foundation, for reasons that have
summarily escape organization and leadership scholars applying Burke or Goffman’s
dramaturgy to organization. As we shall explore, the Poetics of Theatre, is a device of
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elite control over the masses (purging tragic flaws from spectators through the persuasion
of spectacle).
Second, Kenneth Burke’s (1989) “dramtistic pentad” modified Aristotle’s framework to
explore events in five theatric concepts, the old five Ws, plus H (adapted from Burke,
1945: xv; Boje, Alvarez, & Schooling, 2001: 157):
1. Act – What was done? Names what took place, in thought or deed (sequence
of actions).
2. Scene – When or where it was done? Background of the act, the situation in
which it occurred; physical, geographic and cultural environment or setting in
which the act or action takes place. Acts can dramatically affect scene and
vice versa; scenes can motivate or influence characters to take action (e.g.
crisis on a battlefield versus reunion after give different motivation or a more
comic frame).
3. Agent - Who did it? What actor or kind of person (agent) performed the act?
The Actor’s identity and role- played out in terms of the action. Non-human
elements can be agents, e.g. the tornado tore up the town.
4. Agency – How it was done? The instruments (means) agents used; how
characters initiate and accomplish action. Or characters can claim there are
instruments, tools of those they report to in the chain of command.
5. Purpose – Why? Intended effect or outcomes of the action.
Burke then looks at ratios; that is, what are the dominant elements of the pentad in any
particular story/theatre, and what are their relations? Also known as “scene-act ratio”
Burke’s pentad, is widely used in organization studies to explicitly explain how and why
the scene-act ratio connects to corporate behavior. Studies explore, for example, how a
scene invites certain acts by agents who enact various purposes (Czarniawska, 1997).
Burke’s dramatistic pentad has been used widely to analyze organizations as theatres of
action (Czarniawska-Joerges & Wolff, 1991; Kendall, 1993; Mangham, 1990; Mangham
& Overington, 1987; Jackson, 1999; Jacosson, 1995; Walker & Morin, 2001).
Organization scholars disagree about the purposes of an act, the motivations of a scene or
agent, and the plot of act or scene. When used as the old five W’s, plus H, the pentad
becomes mechanical, and the collision of different interpretations by various stakeholders
and critics looses the dynamic quality Burke originated. What, When, Where Who, How,
and Why are not the only critical questions to ask, but also How the What and
When/Where interrelate (Scene-Act ratio), how the Who and Where and When interrelate
(Scene-Agent), and so on.
Third Erving Goffman’s (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is a
dramaturgical perspective that has become quite central to leadership studies (Conger,
1991; Gardner and Alvolio, 1998; Harvey, 2001; Howell & Frost, 1989; Jones & Pittman,
1982). For example, Gardner and Alvolio's (1998) dramaturgical perspective is that
charismatic leadership is an a combination of Goffman’s impression management process
enacted theatrically in acts of framing, scripting, staging, and performing.
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1. Framing – Frame is an overall point of view according to which a situation can be
interpreted. Goffman (1974) describes frames as being our conceptual or cognitive
views of particular situations. It is also a quality of communication that causes
others to accept one meaning over another (Fairhurst & Sarr, 1996:xi). For more
on framing see Goffman (1959, 1967, 1974).
2. Scripting – Provides a set of stage directions to guide performance, define the
scene, and includes aspects such as casting characters, creating dialog and giving
direction to a performance (Benford & Hunt, 1992: 39). Scripting outlines
expected behavior, and cues when events occur and actors enter and exit (Gardner
& Alvolio, 1998; Harvey, 2001). For example, in this book we will examine how
in McDonaldization, scripts are written to integrate activities in a very repetitive
and integrated way, with few spaces for improv in the scene. Gardner and Alvolio
(1998) include dialog and directing as main aspects of scripting:
a. Dialog - Aristotle defined dialog (or diction) as the verbal and non-verbal
exchanges among characters. Dialog is a resource to express character,
plot, and theme of the charismatic leader script.
b. Directing - Leaders are directors for corporate performances. This can
include rehearsals by leader and staff to give desired impressions, and
coaching people in their dialog.
3. Staging – Leaders stage-manage their performances. General George Patton
always his pearl-handled pistols. General Douglas MacArthur wore strangely
formed hats and a long pipe. Both wore uniforms that were dramatic in their stageeffect to characterize charisma.
4. Performing – Leaders and other cast members take the stage to enact (more or
less) scripted dialog and set up the frame to construct their characters. Martin
Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi are examples of exemplifying trustworthiness
and moral responsibility; to be examples to their followers of the non-violent
characters they expected followers to imitate.
Harvey (2001) applied Gardner and Alvolio’s (1998) dramaturgical perspective to study
Steve Jobs. Jobs uses exemplification (embodying the ideal of being morally responsible,
committed to the cause, and taking risks) and self-promotion (and less often organizationpromotion) to enact his characterization of charismatic leadership (Harvey, 2001: 257).
When leaders cast themselves in the charismatic roles and their followers are cast as
allies in pursuit of the charismatic leaders vision (Gardner & Alvolio, 1998: 42; Harvey,
2001: 254), there are three contradictions.
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First, the charismatic leader balances self-consistency over the longer term with
the desire for shorter-term social goals.
Second we have two paradoxes: "exemplifier," and "self-promoter." The
exemplifier paradox is being "one of us, but not one of us (Harvey, 2001: 258).
Self-promoter's paradox is to be charismatic you must promote the glory of your
leadership skill and ability; but to do it too much and people find it more pompous
than charismatic. It is an apparent conflict in the charismatic leaders' tendency to
construct personalized versus collective accounts of aspirations,
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accomplishments, and histories; leaders attribute extraordinary personal power to
themselves or to the accomplishment of followers.
Third, there is the dark side. There is the opposing forces of the positive and the
negative sides of charisma. Yukl (1999) argues that charismatic leadership
research has dismissed the dark side, lead by Burns' (1978) interpretations of
charisma as a heroic form of leadership that is absent of conflict. Yukl points out
that charismatic leaders also use manipulative behaviors, such as "exaggerating
positive achievements and taking unwarranted credit for achievements," "covering
up mistakes and failures," "blaming others for mistakes," and "limiting
communication of criticism and dissent" (1999: 296).
In the final chapter we will look at how leadership occurs in corporations, but in the
interplay of spectacles of power, carnivals of resistance, and festive respites. It not only
corporations that lead, but a myriad of postmodern social movements seeking to rescript
the performance of capitalism, and embrace a new casting of characters, dialogue in a
redirection of the performance on the global stage.
In sum, the Aristotle, Burke, and Goffman frames are inter-mingled in the book, as
methods of exploring the theatrics of capitalism. Oswick, Keenoy, and Grant’s (2001)
special journal issue, Dramatizing and Organziing: Acting and Being provides the
interested reader with a good historical overview and collection of articles applying
theater to organizations. They make the point that the field uses theater in two ways.
First, “organizing-is-like-theatre” and second the more literal “organizing-is-theatre.” As
Maital (1999) studies it, “organizing is not like theater – it is theatre” (as cited in Oswick,
Keenoy & Grant, 2001: 219). I believe capitalism is not like theatre; it is theatre.
Leaders, managers, workers, and customers are taught to act, to be characters in an array
of plots and purposes. We are being “stage-managed: and there is proliferation of
increasingly spectacular “theatrical productions” in postmodern capitalism? It is a
postmodern theatrical capitalism that privileges a plurivocal (many-voiced) and
polysemous (many-meaning). I seek here a non-linear approach to theatres of capitalism.
It is not just that there are many frames for seeing capitalism as theatrical (e.g. Aristotle,
Burke, Goffman); it is that there are simultaneous and interpenetrating stages, scenes, and
entire web of intertwined theatres in postmodern capitalism.
The three theatres (spectacle, carnival, and festival) were once one, but with the
emergence of agricultural, feudalism succeeded by Renaissance, then by industrial, and
post-industrial, and now cyber-capitalism, they have fragmented. Spectacle is by far the
most powerful theatre, and does appropriate the other two. Yet, here and there, carnival
resists spectacle, and festival makes a cameo appearance, but not enough to change the
basic script. I want to change the very script of capitalism, not its money script, but the
script of violence and greed, by creating more festive theatre. I think that this can be
done in two ways. First, by raising our consciousness of the theatrical illusions that
capitalism parades before us in its spectacle of advertising, but also in the scripts that
become the lines we say at work, our lines as consumers, and the storylines to explain the
rape of Nature as simple expedients of postindustrial progress.
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By looking at antenarrative theatre, the complexity out of which the trilogy of spectacle,
carnival, and festival emerges. I will explain and define these themes, but first, I want to
begin with a story that is more about spectacle, but here and there about carnivals of
resistance, and a festive moment or two.
In the ancient marketplace spectacle, carnival, and festival were indistinguishable. The
marketplace lived and embodied the spectators and the actors. In the word Augusto Boal
concocted, we were and still are, "spectators" (part spectator, part actor in the theatrics).
To get to the spectacle, carnival, and festival of the ancient marketplace, you walked
across the moat, and through the castle gate. Peasants, clergy, and nobility mingled in the
marketplace. I want to examine the genealogy of spectacle, carnival, and festival, these
three Theatres of Capitalism. How did the one Theatre become three theatrics, and how
can we unsubordinate festival from its enslavement by spectacle?
Capitalism is a multiplicity of spectacle, carnival, and here and there festive
theatrics. I am witness to the mass destruction of Nature in genocide of animals, in
species reduction, in patenting plants used by indigenous farmers, and in the
reengineering of life itself in the Biotech Century. Finding festive options to this
spectacle was never more important. To proceed, we must define the different theatres of
capitalism, then look at how the inter-mingle on today's global stage.
Spectacle Theatre - Spectacle is storytelling and theatrical showmanship that
legitimates, rationalizes, and oftentimes camouflages violent production, distribution, and
consumption. Spectacle is both a masking of, and an enabling of questionable social
engineering, workaholism, shopaholism, and inhumanity to labor and the ecology. I am
wage-slave, workaholic, and shopaholic. Spectacle can be total manipulation of meaning
making processes through theatrical events to serve the production of power and
managerial needs to control and spin a good story in the face of bad news. Spectacle
theatrics intermingles, contests, and co-evolves with two other Theatres of Capitalism.
The second Theatre is Carnival, and the third is Festival. Carnival preceded capitalism's
entrance onto the global stage. So did spectacle and festival. At one time, I think
spectacle, carnival, and festival were indistinguishable. There was a marketplace inside
or just outside the castle walls and not far from the Church where farmers brought their
animals, fruits, and vegetables for sale. A stage where apprentices, journey-persons, and
masters sold their handicrafts. It was a time before corporations turned family farms into
factory farms. It was a time before corporations turned trades where apprentices might
become masters of small business owners into the division of factory labor.
The ground is always moving in global theatre. Capitalism Theatre is migrating to the
Internet, and what looks like a good performance can draw a critical, outrage review.
Staying stuck in traditional paradigms of Burkean scene act ratios of nostalgic views of
modem theatre, and not up to the task of analyzing the totally hyper-theatre and its
fragmented multiplicity of simultaneous global stages. The phenomenal complexities of
the interactions of spectacle, carnival, and festival, do set off chaos effects that Burkean
concepts of theatre do not address.
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In the next Scene (7) I introduce my version of Dramatism, one I hope is up to the
task of analyzing spectacle dynamics in the Theatres of Capitalism.
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