Creative Strategy: Reconnecting Business and Innovation

THE ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANYACT IV: THE ORGANIZATIONAL ACT

A true ensemble requires dynamic difference. The most successful open-source projects on the web have involved extremely diverse and different skills. If you have the same skills rushing towards the project they'll bump into each other…

Michael Boyd, Artistic Director of the RSC, 8 June 2008

Organizational slack and intensity are both necessary to the creative process. In the case of rehearsal, this dynamic depends upon the organizational culture within which decisions are made. As with our first organizational virtue, rehearsals seek a culture which balances between disintegration and homogeneity of values and intentions. Intensity and focus build energy and momentum, but can shut out new ideas and new people. However a slack, open culture creates space for new ideas and new players, but may be harder to unite into a coherent purpose or focus.

The British director Tim Supple has spoken to us of his need to ‘control the culture within which decisions are made’ and to create a ‘culture of seeing’. He relates this shared culture to the bank of sense-memories, described by Stanislavski, which actors draw upon to develop their roles. In the case of Richard III, the company's culture had developed through their work together on the preceding plays in the RSC Histories cycle. This legacy of shared experience, relationships and knowledge was a significant asset for both actors and audiences across the cycle, and a resource which ...