Negotiated dramaturgy - industrial theatre as communication in the organisation
This study investigates Industrial Theatre as an effective form of corporate communication against the backdrop of South Africa's unique situation that distinguishes it from other countries in the world. As the post-apartheid South African society is concerned with development and transformation of its workforce, particularly among those who have previously been disadvantaged, communication in organisations has become vitally important in achieving these goals as well as in increasing productivity. This study identifies four specific problems that relate to the effectiveness of communication within an organisation, namely the historical problem, the literacy problem, the credibility problem and the problem concerning the traditional adversarial relationship. Problems concerning the corporate media and the definition of the term "Industrial Theatre" are also treated. In this study, Industrial Theatre is equated with a form of corporate communication and thus has a public relations function within an organisation. It therefore needs to ground itself firmly within public relations theory and practice. It must be a deliberate, planned and sustained effort that establishes and maintains mutual understanding between the organisation and its internal and external stakeholders. The uniqueness of the South African environment necessitates a communication model that creates an enabling environment for effective corporate communication. The Mersham graphic communication model for development as used in this study achieves this by contextualising both the communicators and the recipients firmly within their own sociocultural and autobiographical circumstances. The Mersham model is ideally suited to the Industrial Theatre context, as it also advocates that communicators and recipients should exchange roles, thereby enabling effective communication on a continuous basis. The current trends in corporate communication encourage transparency and "ownership". All the stakeholders of an organisation are encouraged to interact and to participate in the management of their organisation, hence achieving a sense of "ownership". The key to this entire process is negotiation. As this study contends that any theatrical process used as a communication tool should have negotiation as its main constituent, it was necessary to create a dramaturgy that incorporates negotiation into all its facets in order to serve the purposes of the thesis. The Negotiated Dramaturgy thus created has three distinct parts. The first consists of the pre-production forums in which the stakeholders discuss issues that create objectives for the dramaturgy to achieve. The second section contains the dramaturgy that enacts the objectives through story lines created by the stakeholders and analyses the results through the in-role forums. The third section evaluates the effectiveness of the process. This approach to Industrial Theatre ensures that all stakeholders are involved in the entire process from beginning to end. They, therefore, have total "ownership" of the process, which is characterised by transparency.
Theater--South Africa, Industrial theater
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