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Why should I consider using professional business actors from Corporate
  Drama?
Why should I consider using professional business actors from Corporate Drama?
A popular misconception is that anyone with some performance (acting or training) experience can roleplay or real play effectively. Sadly this isn't the case, being a successful professional business roleplay actor takes all the following skills:
  • Understanding the appropriate and realistic level of emotion to give the greatest challenge and stretch
  • The understanding of the behavioural development skill being practiced or assessed
  • Understanding the relationship dynamic between the facilitator/coach and the participant and the learning activity
  • Understanding the energy in the training room and flexing their behaviour accordingly (e.g. when is the use of comedy appropriate)
  • What good participant behaviour in the scenario looks like and when to reward it and how to reward it realistically
  • What poor participant behaviour in the scenario looks like and when to challenge it and how to challenge it realistically
  • How to create a real person that participants will accept and allow themselves to learn with
  • How to be supportive in a participants' development, particularly if they dislike the roleplay experience
  • What the scenario situation is, who said what to whom, key data, the stakeholders involved
  • The culture of the sector/organisation/team – how to make it really real
  • Balancing the performance of the roleplay and the behaviour of the character with the constant awareness of what the participant is doing well and not so well
  • Giving detailed feedback at the end of the session and working with the coach/facilitator to maximise the learning
These skills are rare, not every professionally trained actor, L+D professional or someone in the office who does an occasional bit of Am-Dram makes a successful business roleplayer. The Corporate Drama team has been delivering professional business roleplay for over ten years and on hundreds of programmes. This is why the Corporate Drama recruitment process is so rigorous, and our ongoing team development so important - to ensure you and your participants always get the very best learning experience.
What is Forum Theatre?
What is Forum Theatre?
Forum Theatre is a type of theatre created by the innovative and influential Brazilian practitioner Augusto Boal as part of what he calls his "Theatre of the Oppressed." While practicing earlier in his career, Boal would apply "simultaneous dramaturgy". In this process the actors or audience members could stop a performance, often a short scene in which a character was being oppressed in some way. The audience would suggest different actions for the actors to carry out on-stage in an attempt to change the outcome of what they were seeing. This was an attempt to undo the traditional actor partition, and bring audience members into the performance, to have an input into the dramatic action they were watching.


Forum theatre is fun, fast moving and happens in the moment, audiences love this dynamic and interactive form of learning by observing.

We use Forum Theatre to allow a development centre audience to see what happens when inappropriate behaviour takes place in a business meeting or setting. Through facilitation the audience can comment on what they saw and then they can suggest through coaching and feedback how the protagonists could better resolve the meeting. We can use "mind-tap", "pause", "rewind" and "fast forward" techniques on the action. Individual audience members can join the action and head to the "seat of greatest learning" relieving one of the roleplayer protagonists and demonstrate how they would do it!

Some of the many applications:
  • Giving/receiving feedback
  • Visual, verbal, vocal behaviours in business meetings
  • Coaching for Success
  • Fierce Conversations
  • SDI motivational value system behaviours
  • The Art of Assertiveness
  • Customer Service
  • Successful Sales
  • Hey McBer Managerial Styles
Since Boal's concepts, Forum Theatre has become a development centre favourite and Corporate Drama have become industry leaders in its application.
What is the difference between roleplay and real play?
What is the difference between roleplay and real play?
Roleplay is when a business roleplayer and a participant use a scenario brief constructed by a 3rd party. Typically we will work with you to design scenarios highlighting specific behaviours in realistic and familiar situations for the participants.

Real play or bespoke roleplay is where the participant is given a pro-forma scenario sheet to complete with details on his or her challenging person and situation. The participant then gets to re-live a recent real situation or rehearse one that is approaching.
This is a very powerful development tool because it’s a very real experience. The Corporate Drama team are all real play specialists.
What organisational experience does your team have?
What organisational experience does your team have?
All the Corporate Drama team have an operational background. Mark has developed a team who, like him, combine real world operational experience, professional drama training and career, together with many years of experiential development experience.

Our team contains: Barristers, Lawyers, Finance Consultants, Insurance Claims Specialists, Sales and Marketing Consultants, Company Directors,
Retail Managers, Horticulturists, Project Managers, Translators, Accountants, PAs, Administrators, Teachers, Production Managers.

And we have role-played and real played characters from Operator Level to Ops Directors!
Do you stipulate a minimum and maximum number of roleplayers
   per development centre?
Do you stipulate a minimum and maximum number of roleplayers per development centre?
No we don't! We fit to your delegate numbers and needs. We can provide one business roleplayer, and frequently do, for 1-2-1 Executive Coaching Sessions, through to enough roleplayers to cover two hundred BAA Assessment Centres with excess of 1400 applicants.
How do you recruit business roleplayers?
How do you recruit business roleplayers?
Our core business roleplayer and real player team has worked with Mark since the creation of Corporate Drama back in 1999. From time to time we may have slots for new business roleplayers. We recruit by interview and assessment. We ask all applicants to answer these questions by way of introducing themselves:
  • How have you added real value to the delegate's experience during a roleplay? Please describe the scenario(s) in detail.
  • How have you been able to consistently develop your flexibility as a roleplayer?
  • Why is the "how" more important than the "what" when we come to look at an individual's development?
  • What do you find most challenging when role-playing?
  • What do you find most rewarding when role-playing?