Organisational Theatre and Polyphony: The Negotiation Bazaar

This paper details the conditions leading up to and influencing an organisational theatre intervention as part of an organisational change program at a newly established cancer clinic. The paper explores the social and political interactions and negotiations shaping the structure and conditions of the organisational theatre event. It focuses in particular on the alignments and clashes between the different human resource voices in defining the ‘surface’ formal purpose for the intervention and the embeddedness of such interactions and negotiations in ‘deeper’ cultural and social conditions. The paper provides the first in-depth longitudinal study of shaping and negotiation of an organisational theatre event and the ways in which it is influenced by a polyphonic multivocality and takes the form of selective and partial forms of harmonious expression in establishing meaningful cooperation. The paper reveals the limitations of existing two- dimensional approaches to the meaning and purpose of organisational theatre and illustrates the manner in which polyphony can play out in organisations.