Performing Corporate Bodies: Multinational Theatre in Global India (Routledge, December 2024) offers the first look at corporate theatre, a global management trend that uses dramatic techniques in workplace learning.
Drawing on a decade of research with artists, consultancies, drama schools, and multinational firms in India and across the "Global South," the book explores why theatre and performance are finding new legitimacy in corporate economies under late capitalism. Chapters spotlight how theatre is wielded by management to advance urgent corporate agendas, while examining corporate theatre’s impact on broader social transformations, such as the theatrical dimensions of management and shifting creative horizons for performance practitioners.
Performing Corporate Bodies argues that corporate theatre has become a mode of physical and psychological conditioning used to encode the cultural dimensions of global capitalism. Simultaneously, the book uncovers how corporate theatre employs humor tactics that enable individuals to navigate systems of power, becomes a remedy for corporations grappling with the crushing competition of capitalism, and offers a critical perspective on artistic agency within the creative economy. This book will be of interest to readers across the interdisciplinary humanities including theatre and performance studies, anthropology, sociology, and South Asian studies.
Pre-order available December 3, 2024: https://www.routledge.com/Performing-Corporate-Bodies-Multinational-Theatre-in-Global-India/Saddler/p/book/9781032421421?srsltid=AfmBOopSc6P8v_lpidjgF9Df6nlnIi4oQn9zENFjrMP_P5gnmjCcY5BL
Reviews
Is corporate theatre a sophisticated tool for organizations to control and constrain employees or is it a site of resistance and rebellion from neoliberal capitalism? Saddler’s answer is "yes, and." It is both and more and this lovely work that explores that complexity illustrated by ethnographic data from around the world – and perhaps most intriguingly from outside of Europe and the United States. A must read for every serious consumer of theatre and organizations.
Steven S. Taylor, Founder of Organizational Aesthetics and Associate Professor of Business, Foisie School of Business, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA
Performing Corporate Bodies in an incisive and indispensable exploration of theater as one of the central mechanisms through which our social worlds become corporatized. Steeped in ethnographic detail, Sadler’s book takes the reader through the theater’s central role in the “new managerialism,” from US university campuses, to the tech hubs of India, to the post-Apartheid workplaces of South Africa, and the city-corporation of Dubai. Able to conscript the most liberatory of theatrical schemes, corporate theater has now risen to become one of the most common and powerful of global performance paradigms.
Shannon Steen, Author of The Creativity Complex and Associate Professor, Department of Theater, Dance, Performance Studies, UC Berkeley, USA
Performing Corporate Bodies is an exciting contribution to anthropology and South Asian studies. Saddler’s sensitive exploration of the uses of theatre in corporate training programmes in India provides novel insights into global business cultures and their social implications in postcolonial contexts.
Carol Upadhya, Author of Reengineering India and Associate Professor of Anthropology, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, India
For speaking engagements, reach out to Sarah at sarahlsaddler@gmail.com