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Faculty
Each member of The Corporate Theatre Core Faculty brings commitment, expertise, and belief to the design and implementation of our learning processes. The input of faculty members, individually or collectively, feeds into the design of programmes, widening their boundaries and deepening their content. Each member is available to take part in facilitating and leading aspects of any Workshop programme according to requirements.
The most important member of the faculty, in our view, is The Client . The client's objectives and needs are central to the conception and design of every Workshop. The special ability of The Corporate Theatre is to understand and interpret the client's problems and objectives while delivering an experience of learning and change that far exceeds the expectations of the client team.
Dr Melissa Lane lectures on the history of ideas and political thought at Cambridge University . She is the author of Plato's Progeny: how Plato and Socrates still captivate the modern mind and has published widely on corporate moral responsibility and accountability. In our Workshops, she highlights the relevance of the great philosophic ideas of the past and present to current problems of business and leadership. Delegates are thereby enabled to approach such problems with maturity, clarity and a much clearer perspective on the purposes, responsibilities and accountability of their organisations and of themselves as leaders. Above all, she introduces clients to a new sense of context, new powers of reflection and more powerful, more relevant thinking processes.
Jon Stokes MA, C.Psychol, Business Psychologist, is founder of the Tavistock Consultancy and President of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Understanding of Organisations. He is a leading specialist in leadership development, team dynamics and Executive Role Consultation, and holds a visiting professorship at Strathclyde University . Stokes designs processes for us that enable our groups to hold disciplined conversations which arrive at practical group solutions to problems and dilemmas - processes they can take away and apply in the day-to-day conduct of their businesses; they lead to remarkable improvements in the speed and quality of decision-making. Stokes also helps design pre-coaching questionnaires for many Workshops in order to raise levels of self-knowledge among delegates. He ensures that The Corporate Theatre's processes and Workshop designs are in line with current thinking about the culture of organisations and with the latest professional procedures and best practice.
Joan Bakewell MA, CBE, is The BBC's most distinguished Arts Correspondent, presenter of the BBC's Heart of the Matter, Chair of the British Film Institute, Board Member of the Royal National Theatre, and Hon Vice President of the Citizens' Advice Bureau. She contributes to the design and execution of many of The Corporate Theatre's symposia dealing with the thinking, insights and attitudes needed for clear-sighted leadership in a complex world. She helps design and execute the interaction between text, faculty and delegates so that the richest kind of learning can take place when exploring different and possibly unfamiliar ideas. She has an ability, developed over more than 40 years, to coach people by very quickly arriving at an understanding of what they really want to say. Through questioning and probing, she shows business leaders how to ask and answer questions at a deeper level than they might have before . Her example helps delegates to become better coaches themselves, and shows them how to encompass complexity with clarity and brevity.
Paul Jamieson is a graduate of the London Academy of Music and Drama, and specialises in interactive learning. He has designed, written and led training programmes on Change Management, Diversity, Team Building , Media Management and Personal Coaching for leading international corporations including BP, Pfizer, Accenture, Lloyds TSB, and Deutsche Bank. For The Corporate Theatre, he leads Workshops and creates/directs Forum Theatre scenarios. He is our leading expert in the art of helping people to `unlock' during a Workshop, using the sheer physicality of theatrical expression. He also ensures that every process runs smoothly and is in line with stated objectives . Jamieson undertakes pre-coaching of clients - a feature of most of our Workshops - using his skills as a theatre director to help people prepare to communicate in ways that are visual, powerful and inspiring. This gives delegates new confidence and freedom, enabling them to ‘unblock' as they discover how to harness their physical powers to provide a basis for inspiring leadership.
Dr Stephen Tuck is a Fulbright Scholar and lectures in History at the University of Oxford . He is also a leading expert on the Civil Rights movement, has published widely on race relations topics, and is deeply involved in the development of fuller understanding of the tensions which arise between diverse communities. He is a key process designer and implementer for The Corporate Theatre, using drama, dialogue and a scholar's perspective to stimulate thinking and action within the political and historical contexts of today's corporations. He works with actors and with Paul Jamieson to create dramatic theatre scenarios which bring to life the whole historical context of an organisation's policies on inclusion, race, equality and diversity. This brings the whole political and social context of the client organisation to vivid life. His approach enables delegates to think about their place in today's society and to arrive at fresh insights and ideas about the strategies they are pursuing.
Dr. Andrew Lovett lectures on composition at Trinity College of Music, London . He studied music at Cambridge University and composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London and City University , London . He specialises in electro-acoustic composition, and his work has been internationally recognised and performed. Within The Corporate Theatre Lovett creates frameworks of music that lead delegates to a new awareness of interaction . He uses keyboards and improvisation to play back to the delegates how they are experienced by others. Not only does this reveal some deeper layers of t he Workshop process; it also emphasises the uniqueness and value of the delegates as people . Lovett's music has the power to connect them with their whole selves by giving due respect to the non-rational and intuitive side of their natures. This process then leads to greater awareness of what Peter Senge has called the ‘field of being', the ability to influence one's environment and the people within it.
Paul Herzberg is an actor and award winning theatre and screen writer, with extensive theatre and teaching experience to his credit . His work in recent years has begun to include the corporate arena, and he has worked for firms as varied as BP and the BBC. He is a key member of The Corporate Theatre, working both as a writer and performer for the dramatic and Forum Theatre scenarios that form a vital part of the learning process. Once briefed on what the client wishes to achieve, Herzberg creates powerful scripted scenarios, ensuring that they are as true to the client's experience and as rich as possible. These are then performed by professional actors in such a way that t he delegates can interact with the performed scenario, testing new ways to resolve dilemmas by means of changed thinking, behaviour and communication. Herzberg has a very special ability to turn the client briefing into a real piece of theatre whose learning the client can own and use in the future . This technique operates at a level which is far above that of ordinary role play - the whole dynamic of any described situation is brought into the searching light of dramatic truth.
Bill Brand is a highly respected writer and producer. With a writer's love of the nuances of language, and a producer's understanding of administration and management, he is a crucial member of the team which carries out research for the texts and material used in our Workshops. Whenever we need selections of writings, or quotations, or references bearing on issues that the client wants to examine, Brand will seek out and assemble a body of source material, information and data that the client might not otherwise be aware of. This can range from high level business articles to more subtle material that opens a window onto the different cu ltures in which a global corporation operates . These are supplied to the client in specially created booklets, with illustrations and bibliography.
Susan Digby is the founder and Principal of The Voices Foundation, a leading national music education charity which she established in 1993. She has worked internationally with children's and adult choirs for many years and she adjudicates for the Sainsbury's Choir of the Year competition. She is highly skilled and widely respected and her sessions play an essential part in many of our Workshops. Through group singing, rhythm and footwork she enhances the ability of delegates to listen, to observe, and to work as a team. Her approach frequently takes delegates to levels of self and group awareness they have never achieved before.
Martin Best has overall responsibility for the design and lead ership of every Workshop, and is responsible for ensuring that the client's needs are precisely and effectively met. He choreographs all the talents available in the Faculty. bringing them together in such a way as to achieve the client's defined objectives with precision and power, and without distorting their integrity, so the client organisation achieves the precise learning objectives it has set for itself within a unique e xperience that remains true to its culture and values. He also leads the coaching process that precedes each event. (See History for details of Best's early career.)
Sue
Best is Co-director of The Corporate Theatre Limited and Project
Director. She is a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
and winner of the Stage Design Award. She first worked in Stage
Management for The Royal Shakespeare Company. She has managed and
produced concert tours both in the USA and Europe, including performances
at the British Pavilion in Seville and designing and producing opera for
the Siljan Festival in Sweden. She has taught speech and drama in
both the public and private sectors, and has been part of Artist in Residence
programmes at Universities in Canada and the USA. Together with
Martin Best she founded Musica Humana, an annual accredited programme
based on Medieval and Renaissance Studies for American University students
of differing academic backgrounds.
Pam Shaw joined Martin Best Associates eight years ago as Personal Assistant to Martin and Sue, and has been a part of The Corporate Theatre since its inception. She has had extensive managerial, secretarial and administrative experience in a variety of companies including working on product design and organisation and attending promotional exhibitions in Frankfurt, Paris , London and Birmingham . She is deeply interested in literature, the theatre, innovative design and in the ideology and philosophy of The Corporate Theatre. She plans and manages schedules for briefings, meetings and coaching sessions; ensures that Workshop materials are assembled, bound, and delivered to the client at the right times; and keeps everyone fully informed about timetables, attendance schedules and all other on-the-ground arrangements.
We recruit other, equally distinguished and talented people to meet the special needs of any Workshop or production. We have routine access to, and commission study material from, leading academic institutions including:
- Faculties of Philosophy and History, Oxford , Cambridge , and London Universities
- The Democracy Collaborative , University of Maryland USA
- The Walt Whitman Centre for the Culture of Politics and Democracy ( Rutgers University )
- The Tällberg Foundation , ( Stockholm , Sweden )
- The Association for Creative Theatre, Education, search ( University of California )
- The School of Oriental and African Studies, London
- Asia House, London
- Actors from the London Stage, Notre Dame University, USA