Creating Community Based Dialogue
By David Diamond (c) David Diamond

PAGE 3

Corporate U

Corporate U, a Forum Theatre production on globalization, was produced by Headlines in 2000 in partnership with Check Your Head: the Youth Global Education Network, at the Firehall Arts Centre in Vancouver and on Shaw Community Cable TV (Shaw bought Rogers this year) throughout the Lower Mainland and Southern Vancouver Island. We also webcast this production around the world, with Tao Communications and MyCityRadio. The first live, interactive Forum webcast in history.

In 1999, just prior to the anti-World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle, I attended a conference on globalization put on by the Council of Canadians, a group that has successfully led the opposition against implementation of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, emerging as a world leader in the struggle against the oppressive aspects of "free trade policies." It was there that I ran into Kevin Millsip, who had trained as an actor but decided to focus on activism. He had co-founded a group called "Check Your Head: the Youth Global Education Network," which ran wonderful workshops in schools that began by asking students to look at the labels in the shirts of the people sitting in front of them. From this, discussions were started about international trade agreements, sweatshops, corporate responsibility and the negative impacts of globalization.

It didn't take long for Headlines and Check Your Head to decide that a collaboration that would try to translate the complex issues of globalization into understandable human terms would be both fun and valuable. Proposals were written and fundraising began.

The process of creation was similar to Squeegee, but this project came together very differently. Its mandate was to take very large global issues and translate them into human terms so that audiences could strategize individual responses to globalization inside the theatre, then take those strategies back out into the world. In Squeegee the actors, although not playing themselves, were telling their collective story. In Corporate U, we had to invent a story, and the actors had to take on characters. We had to discover how to develop a story line that was connected to the cast's lives enough so that they would be able to do Forum each night - that is, respond to audience interventions from an honest and rooted place, not just speculatively.

In preparation for Corporate U, Kevin and I interviewed approximately 30 people in three days for the 18 spaces in the community workshop. The group ended up consisting of hard-core activists as well as people who were concerned about the issues but lacked knowledge and felt paralyzed by that. It included people in their early 20's to people in their late 50's, a cross-section of gender, orientation, race and ethnicity.

The week-long research workshop was very rich. It was a very courageous group. Here are just a few of the powerful moments:

One image emerged early on from group "sculpting" in which many people gazed at the sky. Someone said, "It was as if a bomb went off." This led to a conversation about how many people have a sense that something big has happened recently, while they weren't looking. The bits and pieces of the globalized world have been put into place slowly over many years, but too many of us haven't been paying attention. Now, because the negative effects are becoming so apparent, it seems like it has happened very suddenly. Many people felt similarly when the global picture first came into focus for them: they experienced a life-altering moment when it was possible to see clearly, behind the controlled media coverage and secret meetings. One is never the same, can't go back, can't not know anymore.

One of the strongest and most disturbing images gave birth, in a way, to the heart of the play: a child/woman (some saw her as a nation, others the earth) lay on the back of a woman representing an altar. She is being offered to a male figure as a sacrificial rape. Everyone watching (everyone in the room) was complicit in the ritual.

Another very clear image: a puppeteer - a person who holds another by strings - is being aided by two other characters. The puppet tries to break free. With gentle firmness, the three surround him, restricting his movement, forcing him to remain and do what they want. Some people saw the image as foster care, others as a learning institution, others as World Bank policies or family violence. This led to an interesting conversation about how the image fit so many visions simultaneously; the microcosm of violence in the family is perceived to be the same as the macrocosm of World Bank and International Monetary Fund coercion of impoverished nations.

Late in the workshop this improvisation arose: the police bring a teenage daughter home to her family; she has been caught shoplifting. Her mother is fed up. The police mention that they know the mother is on welfare, has a criminal record and that they are starting to assess whether or not the child will be taken from her. The mother's lover is all for the girl shoplifting, just not getting caught. While an argument about this ensues, the TV starts to talk to the girl, suggesting she turn him on. Once on, he starts to throw things at her through the screen, things she "must have" but cannot afford. As the argument escalates, the girl starts asking her mother for these things. The mother lashes out, pushing her away. The girl storms off to her room and pulls out a razor blade.

After the workshop, our team had almost three weeks to bring all the elements to opening night. A central mandate from the workshop was that it was vital that the audience leave the theatre with a deeper understanding of how we are all complicit in the oppression that flows from globalization, in the sacrifices being made to a particular concept of growth. We had to find a way to connect global issues into people's lives.

Corporate U was more than an experience in the theatre. We tried to create a world. Audience members approaching the theatre building encountered large, beautiful banners reading "Corporate University," with a logo consisting of a bar-code design that also appeared on the theatre doors. The box office bore a sign, "Corporate U Registration," where people were asked to pay tuition and received a bar-code stamp on their wrists. Every tenth person got a special bar code: red instead of black.

All of the art on the lobby walls had been replaced by corporate logos (Microsoft, IBM, Shell, etc.). There were also signs that read, "This stairwell donated by Otis Elevators," "This smoking lounge donated by Phillip Morris." Every space bore its corporate credit. Also on the lobby walls were framed, authentic quotes from CEOs of real companies and Brian Mulroney, the former Canadian Prime Minister who signed the Free Trade Agreement: they said terrible things about consumers and promoted ways to make more money degrading the environment or human rights. Each quotation bore the imaginary date of its author's graduation from Corporate U.

Video cameras peeked out from places in the lobby. When anyone bought something at the bar, that person's bar code was scanned. The toilets were filled with advertisements, even under the toilet seats!

Near the theatre entrance (in the spot where actors' photos would normally stand), there was a shrine to our fictional character Andrew Hamilton, Graduate of the Millennium - the most famous graduate of Corporate U. He was depicted holding a pager, and the display featured his Corporate Bio.

On top of the theatre entrance was a large sign reading, "Andrew Hamilton Hall of Communications." When audience members entered the theatre, their bar codes were scanned. On the seat was our 'zine containing a lot of information about the corporatization of the planet and the names and numbers of organizations who were working on the issues.

Once the audience was seated, the doors remained open and the lights on. We burst onto the stage, explaining that we were students and faculty from the University who were fed up with the Corporate sell-out to HamCom Communications (Andrew's company) and what it would mean on campus: bar-codes to track our every purchase, video surveillance, curriculum affected by corporate sponsorships. We apologized for inconveniencing the audience (now the "students") by subverting the campus orientation for which they had come. We told them they were free to leave if they wanted, but we wanted to give them our own orientation to how the recent events on campus linked up to events in other parts of the world. Finally the lights dimmed and we began the play. Here's an excerpt.

Nikki sits on the sidewalk, panhandling. It is Christmas. Behind her is a slide-image of The Hudson's Bay Company (a large Canadian shopping chain) and their 2000 Christmas logo: "Shopping is Good."

Claire enters laden with Christmas gifts in Gap and Club Monaco bags, rushing back to work after lunch. She trips over Nikki and goes sprawling on the sidewalk. As Nikki helps her pick up the gifts, it becomes obvious that Claire cannot "escape." Nikki notices the labels on Claire's clothes. "Tommy...nice...," she says as she replaces them in the bag. In a self-induced guilty rage, Claire throws $40 at Nikki. "Here. I want you to have this. Just keep it." She rushes off.

It is the previous night. Andrew Hamilton and Mei-Ling are finishing a very expensive dinner meeting in which Amerasia Trading, the transnational corporation Mei-Ling represents, is buying Andrew's high-tech company, Hamilton Pagers. Andrew has a problem. He has been building the company for ten years, doing well. In today's speculative economy, the 15 - 20% profits he is making are not enough. He must give in to the merger or the company will die. Isn't there a way that at least some of these jobs can stay in Canada, he asks. The answer is no. We get a passionate, evangelical lesson in global economics. Andrew signs the deal. Mei-Ling informs him of the short deadline for closing the Vancouver plant and moving production to Thailand. She leaves.

It's the next day. Andrew hasn't slept. Claire enters, straight from her "terrible" experience with Nikki on the street. She works as the head of human resources for Hamilton Pagers. Andrew gives her the "good" news. She knows it means the 250 people she has hired and nurtured for the last six years will all lose their jobs. Andrew explains that it can't be helped; he's been backed into a corner. Claire's new job will be to lay everyone off. She does not want to do this, but if she doesn't, Mei-Ling will accomplish the task with a video from the parent company. Claire asks Andrew to promise that she will keep her job, and he does. She is relieved.

At this point the Joker enters. "Can we have some house lights, please? At this time we would like to ask all the people enrolled in the HamCom course on global economics to join us on stage. You'll know who you are by the red bar code on your wrists. You are the crème de la crème of the Corporate U campus. We aren't going to ask you to act a scene or anything, we would just like your physical presence on stage. Please come join us." We seat the ten or so audience members in two rows perpendicular to a shipping crate with "Amerasia Trading" stamped on it. Seated amongst them is one of the actors playing a sweatshop worker. The audience members have become factory workers.

"We want to take you on a symbolic field trip to these places: The Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Toronto, China, India, Guatemala, Mexico, Montreal, Nicaragua, Haiti, Burma, Winnipeg, Pakistan, Honduras, Taiwan, South Korea, Vancouver, Saipan."

Under the following scene, a slide lists companies named in a class-action lawsuit for human rights abuses in Saipan, a U.S. Protectorate. (The actual suit on which this was based was well-documented in print and electronic media on January 14, 1999; the complaint was filed by Sweatshop Watch, Global Exchange, the Asian Law Caucus and UNITE.) Abuses by these corporations included physical and verbal beatings of workers who refused to work unpaid overtime, as well as forced abortions: Tommy Hilfiger, The Gap, Nordstrom, J. Crew, The Limited, Wal-Mart, Oshkosh B'Gosh, May Co., Warnaco, J.C. Penney, Cutter & Buck Inc., Dayton Hudson Corp, Dress Barn, Gymboree Manufacturing, Jones Apparel Group, Lane Bryant, Sears Roebuck & Co., Tommy Hilfiger, Wal-Mart and Warnaco.

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