"Artful Making" -- what business folks can learn from theatre rehearsal process

"Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work" is co-written by Lee Devin (dramaturg for People's Light and Theatre Company) and Rob Austin (Harvard Business School), and outlines how businesses can learn to do what theatres do: consistently deliver a valuable, innovative product under the pressure of a very firm deadline.

Devin and Austin talk about replacing the industrial process with a process of "emergence," in which ideas are generated without prior expectations regarding their future significance. They also encourage knowledge industries to embrace uncertainty, improv, ensemble work, and play.

This book is less for theatre folks than for business folks in "knowledge work" industries, but the discussion of the rehearsal process as a template is still interesting. A good book to recommend to non-theatre friends and family -- AND another great example of how dramaturgs can serve as an important bridge between theatre artists and the larger community!

Full citation: Rob Austin and Lee Devin; Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know about How Artists Work; Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Prentice Hall, 2003. www.ft-ph.com