Actors in Business is an offshoot of Language Works, specialising in learning support via performances, customised events, forum theatre, improvisation, and a trio of innovative experiential learning workshops: Get Your Act Together, Time 2 Act and Leading Role.
Through live performance, role-play or improv, our Actors in Business work experientially to develop your people, motivate or improve productivity. Because role-play and forum theatre are interactive, scenes are created especially for your business. Use the skills of Actors in Business to create the next best thing to real-life business situations, enacted and enlivened for your workplace.
Using Actors in Business allows you to create and deliver innovative training and development projects. You use theatre techniques to deal with vital learning issues, to coach people, to spice up conferences and gatherings, or to heighten the impact of services and experiences.
Role-play and improv encourage corporate audiences to comment on, change and control scenes, and to work with our actors to try out effective behaviours.
Whatever the format, Actors in Business provide you with innovative, memorable and highly effective ways to develop, learn, involve, and inspire.
Contact us for further information.
High involvement
Forum theatre’s potency lies in how your delegates straight away engage with a play written especially for them. A bond forms between the play and the audience. The drama captivates and entertains them. They follow the same path as the actors.
Taking the stage
Nevertheless, the real key to engaging audience hearts and minds is the capacity of Actors in Business to remove barriers between actor and audience, allowing participants to interact directly with the characters on stage. Participants have the power to alter the script, as well as the actions of the characters following the suggestions of their colleagues to observe and consider.
REALising
The fact that the participants can talk to, question and change the dialogue and behaviour of the characters is a distinct and memorable experience for every participant – including the actors.
Participants experience REAL, Responsive, Energising, Activating Learning. They have the chance to try out the closest thing to a real-life setting with new approaches, relationships, procedures and service.
Drawing on inner resources they never knew they had, the participants themselves feel that sense of pride and accomplishment from creating best practice, along with enjoyment and excitement from witnessing it acted out in front of their eyes. The results are rejuvenating.
"Do you like to be involved in the action? Learn from observing others in action? Imagine possibilities and see situations unfold before coming to a decision? Or analyse and discuss the drama in theoretical terms? Or try out new techniques and ideas? The high involvement and interaction generated by Actors in Business forum theatre is perfectly suitable.
In forum theatre you can suggest solutions to the actors, then watch and listen to them transform your suggestions into living dialogue and practical action."
Customisation, Communication, Creativity: The Process
All projects are customised and designed to align with your organisation's objectives and exact requirements. However, the process usually follows this path:
- Preliminary Dialogue
Actors in Business note your objectives, the issues you want the actors to deal with, audience profile, timescale, and method of evaluation. We suggest ways to get the best results. - Research
At this stage, interviews, observation, study of documents and the Internet reveal other relevant issues that can be incorporated into the learning experience. - Writing
The play script is created, with a recognisable story line and structure, as well as clear learning aims. - Rehearsal
Individuals are selected from within the Actors in Business team who combine acting, facilitation, presentation and feedback skills with business knowledge. The team then begins rehearsing the play, allowing time for the facilitators to rehearse their workshop techniques. - Delivery
Actors in Business can follow a number of project formats, depending on such factors as number of people, length of programme, venue, and participants' job function and extent of involvement. - Evaluation
If requested to evaluate the project, Actors in Business do this both during and after the delivery stage, bringing the curtain down with a project report.