Drama management

Say the word, “theatre,” and images of dramatic lights, vivid makeup, elaborate costumes are conjured up. While it is in the business of bringing reality to the stage, Arts in Action, have started taking a different tack by getting the corporate world hooked on drama.

With a  suitcase of costumes, some cubes as props and sets, a small piece of circular carpet, the group is bent on taking drama to the corporate world. This is no two-bit operation. Started in 1994, it is a viable small organisation based at UWI, St Augustine, an outreach unit for the Centre for the Creative and Festival Arts. What the small enterprise has is eight core employees and twenty part-time ones, a mission statement and a list of impressive clients like Lever Brothers, TIDCO, TSTT, BP,  FCB, Republic Bank, Atlantic LNG, BHP Billiton, and various government ministries.

The group has performed for everyone from clerks to CEOs. They have performed in a hotel ballroom filled with staff which BP reserved for a day-long programme involving other facilitators. They have also performed for a select group of technicians at TSTT - at 7 am. In the past, in preparation for the performance the cast has analysed evaluation forms from employees and utilized statistics provided by the corporate office. Their corporate workshops include themes of safety in the workplace, employer-employee relationships, sexual harrassment, motivation, tardiness, drug abuse and change management. For the average person the group may impose an admission fee of one dollar per person, with the maximum capacity per workshop being 150 persons. Companies, however, are charged a project fee of $5,000 to $10,000 per workshop.

Arts in Action, Assistant Director, Samantha Pierre, says tertiary education institutions, including UWI,  have faced the stigma of being elitist and untouchable. In order to ditch this stereotype view, the group try to use drama to explore social issues and issues that impact on people’s lives, especially in the workplace. To do so, they have had to revamp their  marketing strategy. From calling up people on the phone, the group now finds it has to advertise. Pierre says it is now becoming a business, noting though that is not what they set out to do. Arts in Action, she says, has the potential to become a profitable entity. The group is not  subsidised by anybody and operates on grants. “We don’t have a steady revenue, or budgets.” Rawle Gibbons, Director of the Centre for Creative and Festival Arts, and Dani Lyndersay, Project Director of Arts in Action, both conceived of Arts in  Action as a stepping stone for students to entertain, educate and inform. The group has moved from one where “everyone did everything” to one where they had to implement a formal structure.

Projects can run from the primary school projects to secondary school as well as university projects and corporations. “Our stage is any place that we have an audience - on the side of the road, in the middle of a junction, on a basketball court, even on the beach.” A performance can last between seven and twelve minutes. “It is always about conflict resolution,” explains Pierre, regarding the nature of the scenes they portray. “We stop at key points and ask the audience if this is the only answer.” The audience is such an integral part of the process that without them nothing can be resolved. Members of the audience engage in roleplay by being invited into the forum to interact with the cast. They assume roles, even donning the appropriate costumes. Pierre recalls one workshop  which was performed for a local company. The group did a workshop on domestic violence and  six male employees turned to the resident counsellor to discuss violence within their own households. “We’re not counsellors. We’re not psychologists and we are not claiming to be. We just present facts. We also help those who might break down and come to us for help by contacting the professionals for them.”

Every workshop is designed according to the specifics of its target group. Hand puppets may be used for small children. Colours, mime and music might be emphasised over dialogue in exploring race issues.  The group has also created workshops around international concerns and targetting NGOs and large corporations. For corporate workshops, the group works through the Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) of the company. Itead of firing the employee for drug abuse, companies find recourse in the teachings of Arts in Action. First Citizens Bank (FCB) used the group’s synergy workshop to launch an internal video to motivate employees, target punctuality as well as highlight turnover and which underscored the bottom line. BP has also used the group for a motivational video, safety workshops, and to help reconcile employees to company changes.

One example of the latter is BP’s current initiative to help employees deal with the advanced technology being used in their new building. The group has found that employees are always willing to participate, in both the pre-production work and the actual performance. The positive response to corporate workshops has inspired Arts in Action to prepare a package of set workshops which can be accessed by companies. They are marketing this package through videos and brochures. “Just as computers are the way forward in business, drama is also the way forward. Men are becoming obsolete but there is nothing like human reaction and human response. Drama has a role in every aspect of society.” says Pierre.

Arts in Action’s latest projects target the differently-abled members of our society and their employment concerns. “For a long time our society kept these people in the background” says Pierre. At present, Arts in Action performs a minimum of one workshop per day, including weekends. The costs incurred by the group in producing workshops range from as little as $300 for a one-man-show to $2000 for a team of six actors. Once the topic and target audience are decided, statistics are compiled, the relevant NGOs are contacted, cases are studied, people are interviewed and hot lines are located. This is followed by brainstorming, improvisation, “cleaning” or perfecting and, finally, the workshop.  Pierre indicates that Arts in Action has had many stereotypes to overcome in establishing their service in the marketplace. There are many erroneous assumptions, she contends, that drama can’t effect change, that drama can’t be about serious issues and that only certain types of people are involved in the dramatic arts. Arts in Action has had to battle for respect, she continues, and prove that being an actor-teacher is a real profession. “We created a space where there was none. We could have done like a lot of people - graduate and put on a suit and tie and look for a job. We decided to create our own jobs without any type of help and utilizing a form that hardly anyone took seriously.”