Performing Corporate Bodies is an exciting contribution to anthropology and South Asian studies. Saddlers sensitive exploration of the uses of theatre in corporate training programmes in India provides novel insights into global business cultures and their social implications in postcolonial contexts.
Carol Upadhya, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru
Is corporate theatre a sophisticated tool for organizations to control and constrain employees or is it a site of resistance and rebellion from neoliberal capitalism? Saddlers answer is "yes, and." It is both and more and this lovely work that explores that complexity illustrated by ethnographic data from around the world and perhaps most intriguingly from outside of Europe and the United States. A must read for every serious consumer of theatre and organizations.
Steven S. Taylor, Foisie School of Business, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Performing Corporate Bodies in an incisive and indispensable exploration of theater as one of the central mechanisms through which our social worlds become corporatized. Steeped in ethnographic detail, Sadlers book takes the reader through the theaters central role in the new managerialism, from US university campuses, to the tech hubs of India, to the post-Apartheid workplaces of South Africa, and the city-corporation of Dubai. Able to conscript the most liberatory of theatrical schemes, corporate theater has now risen to become one of the most common and powerful of global performance paradigms.
Shannon Steen, Associate Professor, Department of Theater, Dance, Performance Studies, UC Berkeley
