Sarah Saddler, "Performing Corporate Bodies: Multinational Theatre in Global India" (Routledge, 2025)
Apr 19, 2025
01:10:32
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Quick takeaways
Dr. Sarah Sadler's journey from community theater to academia exemplifies the intersection of performance, social change, and economic dynamics in corporate environments.
Her research highlights how corporate theater in India and beyond serves as a vital tool for shaping worker identity in the context of late capitalism.
Sadler's exploration of performance ethnography reveals the nuanced emotional expressions fostered in corporate training, illustrating power dynamics often overlooked in conventional analysis.
Deep dives
Journey into Academia
Dr. Sarah Sadler discusses her unique background that led her to academia, growing up in a working-class family in rural Ohio where education was not prioritized. Her early experiences in community theater formed her passion for the performing arts and provided an escape from her environment. She pursued a double major in theater and political science during her college years, which shaped her understanding of the intersections between performance, history, and power. This foundational journey fueled her academic ambitions, ultimately directing her focus towards theater as an essential site for exploring social change and economic dynamics.
Evolution of Corporate Theater
Sadler's book, 'Performing Corporate Bodies,' reveals the intricate relationship between performance and corporate environments, specifically in the context of India. Initially, she discovered corporate theater accidentally while conducting ethnographic research and realized its significance in shaping corporate training and development practices. Over time, her perspective shifted from viewing corporate theater as a peripheral phenomenon to recognizing it as a vital tool for cultivating a new type of worker in the globalized economy. By tracing its evolution, Sadler notes how these workshops adapt to current management ideologies, reflecting broader economic transformations.
Impact of Performance Ethnography
Sadler emphasizes the methodological contributions of performance ethnography in understanding how cultural practices like theater inform workplace dynamics. By closely observing the embodied and spontaneous interactions in corporate training, she captures the nuanced emotions and social cues that often go unacknowledged in scripted environments. One poignant example illustrates how a communication skills workshop unexpectedly became a space for participants to express anger regarding their corporate frustrations, highlighting the power of improvisation and emotional expression. These moments reveal the deeper undercurrents of power and agency within corporate structures that might be overlooked in a purely discursive analysis.
Challenges of Positionality
Sadler reflects on the complexity of her positionality as an intern and researcher within corporate theater, navigating ethical and epistemological tensions throughout her fieldwork. Her role provided her access to corporate environments, yet raised questions about her authority and the employees' perceptions of her presence. This dual identity compelled her to critically assess the dynamics at play, particularly regarding how her observations might shape or alter the interactions within workshops. Additionally, she faced challenges in addressing sensitive issues such as caste, illustrating the difficulties of engaging with deeply entrenched societal structures while maintaining an ethical approach to her research.
Transnational Perspectives on Corporate Theater
In broadening her study to include contexts outside of India, such as Dubai and Cape Town, Sadler identifies corporate theater as a global phenomenon shaped by local cultural and economic dynamics. In Dubai, corporate theater is framed as a tool for nation branding, promoting a specific image of progressiveness tied to corporate identity, while in South Africa, it intersects with post-apartheid efforts to address enduring social inequalities. By contrasting these diverse approaches, Sadler argues that corporate theater serves as a transnational performance paradigm, revealing shared logics of neoliberal transformation across different cultural contexts. This comparative analysis deepens the conversation around the role of theater in corporate environments and emphasizes the necessity for ethnographers to engage with global perspectives.
How do corporations use theater to reconcile the crises of late capitalism? In our latest interview on Ethnographic Marginalia, we speak with Dr. Sarah Saddler about her new book Performing Corporate Bodies (Routledge, 2024), where she describes how corporations have borrowed techniques from activist theater to manage their workers in India and beyond. Sarah explains how she came to ethnographic techniques from a theater background, before discussing how she managed the challenges and misunderstandings caused by her identity as a western researcher. And finally, she describes how doing performance ethnography helped her understand how individuals play roles, not just in theater, but everyday life.
