Theatrical Performance as Unfreezing

Abstract

The author conceptualizes the staging of a theatrical play within the main session of the Academy of Management as an organizational intervention intended to facilitate unfreezing as a first step in bringing about change. He suggests that the theatrical performance facilitates Schein's three requirements of unfreezing: It creates disconfirming data through second-order observation and by creating a common language, it facilitates anxiety or guilt through the social sharing of emotion, and it creates psychological safety through catharsis and communal audiencing. The author illustrates this based on cast and audience responses to a play, called Ties That Bind, that was performed at the 2002 annual meetings of the Academy of Management in Denver as an all-academy symposium.