Organised by Andy Harmon and Fiona Coffey

Questors Theatre, Ealing

21-23 May 2001

Colston Sanger, Fiona Coffey, Garth Spiers, Hazel Jennings, Karen Lee, Richard Cooke, Sukhwant Bal, Terri McNerney, Tony Page, Tony Williams

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We discussed what oppression means including examples of oppression such as receptionists in a government department showing a "couldn't care less" attitude to the visitor, the fearful citizens and mayor in a Mafia dominated village in Sicily, the pressurised staff in a Call Centre beneath a big banner saying "innovate" and the inhibiting style of management in an "ethical" High Street retailer. Change programmes using vision and values statements can be highly oppressive.

The conversation revealed the co-dependent element: how often it suits the oppressed for the oppression to continue, as in the victim-persecutor-rescuer triangle. In every organisation there is some sort of giving up of individuality in order to join or belong, but organisations vary in the degree to which they suppress individuality, and maybe individuals self-select organisations that suit them from say low discretion McDonalds, to higher discretion places like 3M.

Maybe the opposite of oppression is responsibility-taking and working in a team or partnership with others… and maybe transformation is about a shift to as heightened sense of responsibility involving dialogue.

There are many sorts of oppression, some of them subtle and many of them hidden. For example, the oppression of judgement by which I make you or myself wrong, and stop you or me from taking responsibility.

Theatre is… in the moment. Moment by moment by moment. Otherwise you might as well read the f***ing play! Andy Harmon

This was one of many impassioned declarations by Andy. He reinforced the point by leading us through an extended series of body awareness exercises to "get us out of our heads and into the moment". We had to play with the space in the room. And noticed when we're getting bored and switching back out into our heads. And we observed how getting bored can be "judgement in disguise", the self-judgement being perhaps that we are not good enough at play. But the opposite can also happen where we commit to play, and start to find it's fun, then our involvement calls out to another person's involvement. So in that sense, when we commit, we start to be leaders.

We noticed the difference between "polythene bag acting" where there is a sort of skin between you and the audience, as in the worst Broadway plays, which have to go smoothly, according to script, where nothing unexpected can happen and no one must get upset.…. And the other kind, the authentic, peak moment which is dangerous because as actor you realise you don't know what you will say, or what the other person will say. This is the kind of acting that gets you in the gut, as the visceral level, and keeps the audience perched on the edge of their seats.

In passing Andy asks if as consultants we want to deliver the kind of performance that brings the Board to sit to the edge of their seats. I think so!

In passing Andy also noted that his two key improvisation teachers/influences (Viola Spolin and Keith Johnstone) take a different approach to getting the scene going. Spolin's view is you create the conditions and let it happen whereas Johnstone's is you tilt the platform, disrupt things and make it happen. This took us back into an earlier unresolved discussion about leadership and change, whether you regard an organisation as a shoal of fish (complexity, co-evolution) or as a chimp colony with a hierarchy of dominance presided over by an "alpha chimp", the cleverest and most dominant, as leader. Once again it was unresolved, but I know which organisation I prefer to work in, and it is not ruled by an alpha chimp!

The difference between normal theatre (audience sit in seat, identify with hero-protagonist, then are released by the curtain fall) and interactive theatre begins with an "activating scene". This is not a role play, or skit, but something more powerful which grabs everyone in the gut and pulls them into the drama of it.

The activating scene must satisfy a number of criteria:

• It is previously structured but not scripted
• There is a hero-protagonist that the audience care about
• There is a credible enemy-antagonist and a clear conflict going on
• The location is understandable
• The stakes are high - lots to win and lose
• There is a moment of decision when the hero could have done something different but didn't
• The hero-protagonist fails, but the audience desired him/her to succeed

When the hero does not win, the Facilitator calls "Freeze! Is this real?". If no, then "It's Magic!", which is not good because it means not real and credible, and the scene is adjusted until experienced as real. When real, the facilitator/theatre director gets a member of the audience up onto the stage into the hero's role to try to effect change. The scene is replayed with the enemy still pushing and fighting the hero as hard as they can while the hero tries a different tack.

There's more to it, but that is it in a nutshell. Somehow the hero's fight on the stage, and the audience's engagement with it make explicit and visible the hidden oppression, causing dialogue, responsibility taking and systemic change rippling out through everyone present into the hidden web of relationships they inhabit. The point is to reveal the system to itself, awakening awareness, dialogue and responsibility.

Having understood the basics of Forum Theatre it was time to leap in and experiment. We divided in three groups, and we agreed to do 3 quick performances one after the other without deep analysis. But what happened departed from this plan!

The first performance was Garth running out of time at work short-changing his colleague Terri, arriving home late short-changing his wife Fiona, trapped in a work-life imbalance. Although there was lots we could have explored after the performance, after a brief but good discussion (of who was the hero, who was the enemy, what was the conflict, and what was at stake) we moved on to performance no 2…

This was Richard as managing partner calling Hazel, a recently promoted manager into a discussion about her department's performance. This is where it all started to happen. In the first run through, Richard was confronting Hazel, a techie, on problems with her staff something like this:

The conversation continued and you could put many interpretations on it, but mine was Richard attempting to get Hazel to agree to step down from the management post before she ruined her career with the company. This had the air of a typical corporate conversation, a thin veneer of rationality masking the undiscussable but truthful emotion. The stakes were high but the true intentions and risks motivating both parties were not being spoken about. At the end of about 10 minutes the performance came to a halt.

Then Andy, in the guise of theatre director, began some coaching with Richard and Hazel, that seemed to be driving at polishing the drama to bring us more to the edge of our seats. R & H then seemed to go defensive, asking what were we doing, trying to produce a good play, or just offer up some material to work with. As this happened it started to become apparent that we were in a different drama, one that was happening in the moment between R & H, Andy and the rest of us. Some identifying with H were outraged at how R seemed to be threatening her, some identifying with R, but R feeling isolated and criticised and H looking exposed and vulnerable.

Out of a tense bit of conversation then in which Andy admitted to playing the Theatre Director rather than the facilitator, came Garth's suggestion that because so much of what was going on in the performance was implicit, unvoiced, we replay the performance with Angels standing behind both characters. In this replay, at any moment the Angel (Garth) standing behind Richard could touch him on the shoulder and say what was not being said, and so could the Angel (Terri) standing behind Hazel. In this way the oppression was brought to the surface.

And under Andy's questioning we discovered the dramatic ingredients of Forum Theatre operating in this performance: we were rooting for someone (a strong hero-protagonist), there was a stuckness manifest as a lack of emotional engagement in the conversation (oppression), there was lots at stake (career, self-esteem, wanting to appear nice while doing necessary dirty work for the organisation…).

And Andy admitted that his way of being is often to make dramatic and emotional scenes which are missing in life because of some sort of brick wall that stops everyone from getting engaged. This sort of happened at the end of the first R & H run through. And somewhere around here Andy burst into an impassioned speech at the top of his voice along these lines:

The next stage was to replay the scene with someone from the audience stepping onto the stage to take the place of the hero. This led us back into discussion of who the hero was, Hazel or Richard, but since Hazel had to leave, this helped us decide to treat her as hero and Karen volunteered to step up. Karen's role was to try to break the oppression in this situation while Richard's was to continue to work his intention, thus keeping the pressure on Karen, not making it easy for her to "win".

And we played the scene again. This time Karen's character brought in authentic emotion and stood her ground more, for example:

And later

As we reviewed the last performance we noticed K wanted hard facts, got none and was really annoyed, but still she managed to ask questions, which in turn seemed to help R to be clearer. There was less buck passing and dodging and the scene seemed more direct. The oppression that you could sniff but was unspoken in first run through was more present in the words and more visible somehow in the last version. Between the first and last we had heightened and maybe exaggerated the conflict, to "out" the oppression.

As we were doing this we were learning both at a general (about all organisations today) and specific level (about R's character, and K's character interacting). In terms of all organisations, this seemed to expose a shocking, mass incompetence with authentic conversations, the dice being loaded in favour of those with more power, a massive oppression being held in place, a widespread denial of responsibility.

In specific terms, the further we went with our discussion of the theatre of oppression, the more uncomfortable Richard seemed to be. Another oppression seemed to be alive in the room. Fiona noticed that R was still sitting almost in his stage position, and that a lot of projection seemed to be going on. R was feeling judged by the audience. He was uncomfortable we had departed from the facts of the true organisational setting. And we realised you can get stuck in role, and in a way we were holding R in role. Andy made us notice that when you get immersed in reality it can be hard to tell the story, and that you do not necessarily want to play yourself in the story - making us consider role reversals, masks, deliberate stepping onto and off the stage to actively identify/disidentify, how actors learn to take on roles without being lost in them etc

Anyway, at Fiona's invitation R spoke about his oppression, moved his seating position, left his "stage" and rejoined the group.

A third performance followed with Sukhwant and me playing out a conversation between boss and subordinate about 360 degree feedback. I noticed how vulnerable I felt in playing this role and how the Forum Theatre process offers no hiding places for shy actors! Off-line in the break, Sukhwant and I had been interested in how many oppressions there are and how widespread coming from perhaps from power differences, assumptions about roles, gender, stereotypes, introjects/should and oughts, withheld communication, pretended rationality and covered over emotion. There is a self oppression by which I stop myself from saying what I think and sharing what I feel. There is a collusion in many organisational situations NOT to discuss what's going on, not to reveal the oppression, making the situation "political" and dangerous. And as Chris Argyris says, this is self-sealing in that the undiscussability becomes undiscussable and the issue becomes invisible, hidden.

And at the end of day one, some were tired, some energised and transported from day to day into global, philosophical domains, some confused about what to take this, some wanting more structure and others wanting to give Andy more freedom to direct us.

But we seemed to have exposed conflict and oppression in some everyday organisational settings, learned about how to heighten the conflict through the use of theatrical technique, and to be ready to learn more.

Many of us noticed that things had got "heated", and that perhaps we got deeper, faster, further and more real this way than through the more heady dialogue we are sometimes in eg. last week.

Day 2 began with lots of pace and activity: Begin-end game for fast dialogue, physical stretching, throwing imaginary balls of goo at each other, blind touching to find position in circle, and an enjoyable game Andy invented called Blind Kangeroos.

During the course of the morning we started to develop thoughts with Andy, or to learn from him about why heat is necessary for change. James Souttar had just posted something on email about the use of rattlesnakes as a prelude to a good fire and brimstone sermon in the southern states of the US. This underlined the point that stress produces neurological changes allowing us to become receptive to new ways of thinking, so stress does not always shut people down, sometimes it is what wakes us up. I remember the effect on me of a recent Tony Williams email in which he expressed annoyance, and this felt hot to me, raised the game, gave me permission to express my annoyance, to include my emotion, to put more skin or commitment in the game and the debate seemed to get to fresher, more real, faster and more incisive.

Andy got us working on stories in pairs about our first date….giving us fun… but showing us the power of stories to turn issues and facts into people and lives, into something really engaging. Sensory data seemed key to this: sights, tastes, smells etc

And then, late morning on day 2, Andy sort of burst, as if he could not help himself, and an energy sort of took him over, into declaring his rationale for using theatre in organisations, along these lines:

Some found this speech really exciting, a compelling synthesis, useful, making sense at last of what we were doing, and why we were working in this way with Andy. Others wanted more doing less talking, more activity and pragmatic answers to their questions such as Can we lose the terms audience, actors, stage? Do we have to have good and bad guys?

It seemed to be that the upshot of this is that Forum Theatre is a doorway to dialogue. Anyway it was lunchtime.

And in the afternoon we learnt how to be better actors through a whole series of games. And on day three we put it all together, having a second taste of the Forum Theatre process that we had experienced on day one, but with a different case and with heightened skills and awareness.

The situation: Post-Hatfield, a boss who rules by fear, bollocking tracklayers for making a costly mistake

The big boss - Company C Ex - Richard (why are we losing money?)

Bollocker - Contract C Ex - Garth (I want results)

Conscience - HR - Fiona (Do I collude, take a professional stance, or a human stance?)

Tracklayers (Do we lay track quickly, or be safe and responsible citizens?)

• Cynical old union leftie - Tracklayer - Colston
• New moderate convenor - Tracklayer -Tony P
• Colluder who speaks out - Tracklayer - Terri
• Mr Reasonable Waverer - Tracklayer - Richard

Team leader - Tony W (Let's hush this up, pass the buck onto tracklayers and get on with next job)

All: Do we still have a job?

The inciting incident: A problem with the electrics on last section of track laid.

Scene 0 (added later): Team leader with tracklayer - covering up problem

Scene 1: Tracklayers pre-bollocking

Scene 2: Bollocker on phone to boss & HR in car on way

Scene 3: Bollocking tracklayers, tracklayer stands up

Scene 4: HR meets bollocker and tracklayers aftermath

How did it go? Well it gave us a chance to put together what we were learning. Andy got out of the way and let us figure it out, then helped us in working out how to bring out the oppression. There was lots of shouting. Garth did his full six cylinder management by fear performance. Fiona did a highly credible HR performance, trying to break up a fight between union man and bollocker, but being ignored by both.

It became clear that the union and the workforce really had no power in the situation and the bollocker knew it. Everyone was afraid for their jobs and under pressure to produce results. Tony W intervened to challenge the reality of the bollocking, and became involved as Team Leader in a new first scene, getting a tracklayer Terri to take responsibility for hushing up some bad work in the interests of meeting targets and avoiding high cost of rework.

Each time we replayed Garth seemed to get a little less oppressive and more gentle. Not sure if we took this all the way, but it gave us a real sense of how to orchestrate the process.

In the final afternoon our attention turned to where to take this. We gave our selves 3 questions as a focus:

• Who is the audience?
• What is special and different about this?
• What could be the outcomes?

• The oppressed when they're ready to rise to new level of responsibility
• Hookup with McKinsey - making strategy reports more visceral
• Seeing the big picture rather than head down doing my job eg. Railtrack, M&S
• Beware using it in one system leading to self-blaming, seeing the stuckness more highly, oh fuck feeling eg. organisation of 100 people, pulling down their pants in front of them
• Multi-agency eg. hospitals - managers,/consultants/patients. Stakeholders with different agendas.
• Where there are natural antagonisms that can't be fudged - without the God of shareholder value
• Where 2 organisations are joining - getting under the skin of projections
• Partnerships where power is distributed eg. Prison Service first letting contract to Group 4
• Timing critical - do it at start-up
• Where leadership is muddy, not one structure with a clear CEO
• Roffey Park mergers & alliances project: getting from heady work to the more visceral

• Awakening the system - getting people to take responsibility
• Doorway to dialogue
• Going deeper and quicker
• Getting under the skin of 2 organisations joining
• Digging down to get to the drama
• It shows us the whole system in one scoop - like BPR, open systems, cognitive mapping

• Level of engagement beyond the head - makes feelings come alive - in a safe (ish) way
• Making the invisible visible
• Break the cycle, addresses the adult in people
• Evokes people's sense of responsibility for the solution
• It's as big skill give away - relies on responsibility taking by a team of people
• It's fractal
• It's scalable - can move closer or further from real story, can have real people or actors

• A little bit wild - a risky product - more likely to go off the rails than most?
• Depends on quality of facilitation
• Goes quickly from denial/absence of feelings, to talking about feelings, to intense feelings

• Not just stirring things up but bringing the boil to a head at the right moment, and cleaning up afterwards.
• Like Systemic Family Therapy - idealistic, requires enlightened parents, and are children ready for an equal say?
• What sort of facilitation/support is needed?

• It's not right to think of this as a product or tool you sell in
• Ends and means confusion: get clear with client/leader what outcomes are sought
• By asking Martin Narey to do Forum Theatre you are challenging, or reworking authority
• The product does not stand alone like a widget: it intereacts with leadership
• The relationship to Martin Narey is key here.
• In dialogue terms, the relationships provide the container
• If Martin N wanted honesty, then "I know of a process which will produce a lot more honesty"

At the end of the 3 days I felt impacted on more than one level. As an individual I had stretched outside my comfort zone, tried new things, shouted and ranted a bit, and noticed times when I stopped myself and wondered why.

I realised my work is all about improvising, each time I open my mouth, or write at a keyboard like this, a flow starts to happen in the moment. My interest is in being sufficiently tuned to the people, the situation, the possibility, to bring the best out of me/us to the moment, and to be less hesitant, less needing to be right.

It's an unconscious, intuitive process which I can kick off both by inquiry, and by just, well, risking myself, facing the possibility of ridicule and rejection, and doing something, then taking in and working from the reactions this creates. Finding knots, blocks and moving towards them while staying in touch with feelings. And remembering that sense data is the key to contact - real observations, sensations and feelings, and by bringing this out enables people to make meaningful contact with one another.

The bigger whole system awareness and the systemic change potential of Forum Theatre is the big question for me. It is a dramatic doorway into dialogue. It feels exciting, dangerous, and something to experiment with. It is a rattlesnake that raises stress and what's at stake. With or without labelling the work as Forum Theatre I will bring greater awareness of below the surface conflict, polarity and oppression. I will continue to learn about how to show the system to itself, the organisational shadow, how to evoke it and facilitate/support people through this.

Tony Page

May 2001

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Background to the event:

Afterwards