Corporate theater
Corporate theater is the collective term for various methods of using theater in companies and companies , for and with employees.
Examples are the Scharlatan Theater, founded in Hamburg in 1985, and the Mentagen - Institute for Unlimited Happiness , founded in 1988 by Ernst Meibeck and Wolfgang Lüchtrath , which offered theater productions for companies under this term until 1993.
differences
Simple forms of corporate theater are event-like appearances by professional actors for the purpose of motivating and entertaining the workforce. Diverse forms of entertainment are possible here between cabaret and musical performance.
Qualified forms are developed together with the employees of the company and are tailored as precisely as possible to their work situations as well as the development and current changes in the company. For this purpose, viewers are sometimes integrated into the performance as participants. Some of the very common improvisational theaters can be found here. The more individual the staging is, the easier it is for employees to identify and transfer to their own work situation. Since change situations in companies are often accompanied by a high level of emotionality on the part of employees, it is precisely in these situations that the company theater is used. The corporate theater is able to represent emotions, offer alternative courses of action and open the viewer to new perspectives.
Training-oriented forms bring the employees of the companies to the staging and sometimes also to the presentation of their changing situations and working conditions. Here are theater methods for training for future action, also used in explosive conflict situations. Since these scenes are usually only played for an internal audience, this way of working is not very well known in theater studies.
Working methods and goals
With training-oriented company theater, a problem posed by the participants
- spoken by these and brought into the picture,
- distanced from themselves through the play of others,
- can be changed by the identifying action of the audience.
Improvisation techniques and the use of specialized company theater actors in interactive theater interventions result in behavioral alternatives that can be observed and imitated. A method that is common in companies is topic-oriented improvisation . Forum theater and playback theater are also used in companies .
There are transitions here to the consulting methods of the company structure (work processes to cooperation) and participatory personnel development , which, however, are by no means only feasible in companies with a flat hierarchy . Large companies with many hierarchical levels in particular often make use of the corporate theater, since a large number of employees with similar development issues can only be served with conventional training at a very high cost. Psychological interpretations and generalized personality patterns as a means of corporate theater come among others. U. HR developers oppose, but are rather viewed critically by the employees and are therefore controversial.
literature
- Michael Hüttler : Corporate theater - from the theater of the oppressed to the theater of the entrepreneurs? ibidem, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-89821-508-3 .
- Schreyögg, Dabitz: corporate theater . Wiesbaden approx. 1998 (first theory)
- Peter Flume, Karin Hirschfeld, Christian Hoffmann: Corporate theater in practice - Shaping change processes with theater - a non-fiction novel. Wiesbaden 2001, ISBN 3-409-11630-3 . (many differentiated practice descriptions)
- Markus Berg, Peter Flume, Jörg Ritscher, Frank Michael Orthey, Friederike Tilemann, Reinhold Wehner: Interactive corporate theater - topic-oriented improvisation (TOI) in personnel and organizational development. Beltz, 2002, ISBN 3-407-36385-0 .
- Malte Leyhausen: Corporate cabaret as a paradoxical intervention at manager conferences. In: Joanne McNally, Peter Sprengel (ed.): Hundred years of cabaret. Würzburg 2003, ISBN 3-8260-2488-5 . (first article on the sub-genre "corporate cabaret")
- Stefanie Teichmann: Corporate theater to support change processes - effects, influencing factors, procedures. Nettetal 2000.
- Amelie Funcke, Maria Havermann-Feye: Training with theater - From the individual scene to corporate theater - How to successfully bring elements of theater into training. managerSeminare, Bonn 2004, ISBN 3-936075-17-4 .
- Andreas Heindl: Theatrical Interventions - From Medieval Conflict Management to Contemporary Constellation and Theater Work in Organizations. Carl-Auer Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-89670-901-1 .
- Brigitte Biehl Missal: Business Aesthetics . How companies use art as inspiration and a tool. Gabler, Wiesbaden 2011, ISBN 978-3-8349-2429-2 . (detailed descriptions of the use of different art forms in organizations: corporate theater and painting, poetry / literature workshops, sculpture, music)
- Michael Hune: Corporate theater as an instrument of organizational change. 2002, ISBN 3-8386-5637-7 .
- Susanna Tschui: corporate theater . In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz . Volume 3, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9 , pp. 1985–1988.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Charlatan Theater for Change :: Whoever experiences understands! In: scharlatan.de. Retrieved January 12, 2020 .