The Theatre of War: leader development between personal identity and person-in-role

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to develop new knowledge about theatre as a form of and platform for learning in leadership development. We asked: How is theatre perceived as learning in leadership development? The context of our study was leadership training at the Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy, where a group of 14 leaders was given the assignment The Theatre of War: Planning and performing a five-act show for an audience of 50 people at the city theatre. Eight in-depth interviews were conducted and participatory observations were documented in the educator’s logbook. Our data analysis developed five categories of findings. Our research points out at the ways in which theatre is perceived as learning in leadership development, broadening from the feeling of uncertainty and anxiety to the experience of community, holistic identity, empathy towards the other and oneself, and transformative learning.

KEYWORDS:

• Leader development
• education
• arts-Based
• theatre
• performance

Acknowledgements

This research has been funded by the Erasmus+ Strategic Partnerships Programme. We are grateful to the students who participated in this study and wish to acknowledge their openness and their enthusiasm during the investigation and the educational experience.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 The first author served as educator and researcher throughout the entire process, while the other authors served as researchers and theatre professionals.

2 The extract (field notes from participatory observation) and the following unreferenced extracts (utterances from interviews) are part of the original empirical material collected for the present study. The extracts have been translated from Norwegian by the authors.

3 Part of the excluded empirical data is in the process of being analysed for further research with focus on the multidisciplinary alliance between artists/educators.