1st Edition
Performing Corporate Bodies Multinational Theatre in Global India
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Dramatic Economies: Capitalism’s Theatrical Transformation
Chapter 2: Theatre as “Designer Resistance:” The Humor Politics of the Body Corporate
Chapter 3: Cultivating Peak Performers: Corporate Theatre in a VUCA World
Chapter 4: The Performance Ecology of Corporate India
Chapter 5: Corporate Theatre: A Global Performance Paradigm
Conclusion
Index
Biography
Sarah Saddler is an Assistant Professor of Theater in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at Baruch College CUNY, where she teaches courses on arts management and leadership, applied theatre, theatre history, and improvisation.
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, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru
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, Foisie School of Business, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
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, Associate Professor, Department of Theater, Dance, Performance Studies, UC Berkeley
