David Boje

August 1, 2001

Department of Management, MSC 3DJ, New Mexico State University, P.O. Box
30001/ Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001, Tel: 505-646-2391, Fax: 505-646-1372,
dboje@nmsu.edu Web: http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje This is a joint symposium of
the Research Methods, Organizational Development & Change, and Organization &
Management Theory Divisions of the Academy of Management for presentation August, 2002
in Washington D.C. August 6, 2001

See Related article Boje (2001) "10 Reasons why Business Week Missed the Dynamics of G-
8 Theatrics"

INDEX EXPERIENTIAL EXERCISES

for TEACHING THEATRICS
Abstract
APPENDIX
Absent Referent
 E1 Factory Girl
Nike War Room Interrupted
 E2 Questioning
FIGURES Owners, Parents &
Daughters
 F1  E3 Sweatshop
Tamaralan Fashion Show
d map of  E4 Electronic
Theater of Disturbance Theater
Operation  E5 Wage Slave
 F2 Nested Auction
frames of  E6 Psychodynamic
spectacle, Theater
carnival,  E7 Leadership of the
festival Absurd
 E8 Merchants of
PHOTOS Sweatshop
 E9 Just In Time Nike
 P1 Thai Gameboard (dice
 Tiger
Woods
Protest
 P2
Women-
Absent
Referents
 P3 Naked
Feet
Campaign
 P4
NikeTown
game)
Melbourne
 P5
 E10 Nike
Melbourne
Tamaraland
Protest
Theater
 P6 Nike
Billboard
Fakery
 P7 Culture
Jamming
Archive

REFERENCES

Global Theatrics and Capitalism

Abstract

This paper discusses the postmodern play of Tamara as a metaphor for behavior of
organizations on the global stage. Using Tamara, it is possible to describe and
explain why neither corporate actors nor members of the audience ever have a full
picture of the global stage, and why some actors are even missing on it. The theatre
metaphor helps to understand the dynamics that guide interaction between
organizations on a global arena. In the appendix are the beginnings of eleven plays
that can be used for Tamara training in global theatrics.

Tamara and Global Theatrics

And All the Men and Women merely players: war room" (Nike's Terminology)
who script and enroll such characters as GA, FLA, PwC, along with Nike
advertising to promote a stable of star personalities and sports teams to appeal to
spectator fetish for heroic plots (Boje, 2001a, h).

What is backstage?

Nike's War Room - Inside Nike, is a “war room” (their emic term). Dusty Kidd,
former Ernst & Young auditor (now VP of Labor Practices) heads up the war room,
along with Amanda Tucker, formerly of the ILO, Veda Manager (hired in 1997 as
Nike’s director of Global Issues Management), who tracks the activist protests on
universities and NikeTown, Todd McLean, who flies around the globe putting out
fires, and finally Maria Eitel, Nike’s VP and Senior Advisor, Corporate Social
Responsibility. Like a war room in a political campaign, the job of the 95 staff
members and VPs is to combat one Nike scandal after another. Nike maintains a
network of spies through its FLA affiliate universities that give early warning of
factory, campus or NikeTown visits and demonstrations. I picture a room where on
the wall pictures and dossiers of activists adorn the walls like wanted posters.
Security forces and off-duty police can then be dispatched like bounty hunters to
the scene (See Boje, 2001a for more on "war room").

And it is an inquiry into the spectacle theatrics sustained by the 'absent referent' and
able to keep the "referent" absent from the public mind.

Absent Referent

Behind every spectacle is an absence: the material reality of production whose place
we see the theatric performance. The "absent referent" described by Adams (2000)
is that which separates the spectator or consumer from production or worker by
substituting a simulated referent. For example in the meat industry "the function of
the absent referent is to keep our 'meat' separated from any idea that she or he was
once an animal, keep the 'moo' or 'cluck' or 'baa' away from the meat, to keep
something from being seen as having been someone" (Adams, 2000: 14). And it is
not just the meat industry.

Photo 1 - Nike Spectacle Greets Anti-Sweetshop Carnivalesque Theater

This is a photo of the spectacle of media-coverage of Tiger Woods (off-stage) who
is being escorted out of camera-view by the Nike entourage in a hotel in Thailand.
You can see women Nike workers holding up a banner that says "Tiger Woods:
Stop Putting Around" (For more See Boje, 2000). Tiger Woods signed a
sponsorship agreement in September with Nike for 5 years worth $100 million.
With all winnings and endorsement earning this year, Tiger Woods will get
$55,000 a day. A Thai worker would have to work for 14,000 days or 38 years to
receive the same amount. One of the Nike workers is dressed as an executioner
swinging a Swoosh (Golf-Ax). 100 sacked Nike employees in Bangkok staged this
carnival of resistance, wanting to get Tiger Woods, who was in town performing in
the Johnnie Walker Classic (and aware that his mother is Thai) to pose for a photo-
opportunity in their carnival theater. A phalanx of Nike bodyguards and officials
insured that no such photo would happen. The 100 demonstrators said they were
part of a group of 1,016, mostly women workers who were still waiting to be
compensated a total of 41 million baht (932,000 dollars) after being laid off by
Nike in September. You know I asked a Nike executive (Amanda Tucker) in a
conference panel session, we shared in New Orleans, about these women. Her
reply, "that is not a Nike factory." Clever. The factory contract is void, the contract
having moved out of Bangkok into peasantariat regions of Thailand where women
are less apt to engage in the carnivalesque theater of Photo above.

What if Tiger Woods were to "see," "touch," and "hear the voice" of the
absent referent? Would seeing the exploitative labor conditions of young women
working in Nike factories in Thailand result in a shift in Tiger Woods' choice of
corporate endorsement contracts? "He should be able to really understand why that
company can give him so much money," said Thai Labour Committee official Lek
Junya Yumprasert (See Boje, 2001b for more on Stories of Thailand). While
Michael Jordan made repeated (empty) promises to visit Nike factories in Asia and
see for himself the labor conditions, Tiger Woods keeps a Swoosh in his mouth
(See Photo Exhibit 7 ).

In the theatrics of advertising garments, Nike, Gap, and Wal-Mart do not display the
suffering lives of women working in sweatshops to sell their goods. These women,
the producers of the apparel, are the absent referents, while on the global stage,
Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, and Kathie Lee Gifford, or some Barbie-model
delivers a substitute performance.

Once the production of goods and services is disconnected from the existence of
people who are 'sweated' and animals who are 'killed' various free-floating images
become the referent and substitute.

Photo 2: "Absent Referent" Photos of Athletic Apparel Women Resisting their

Quality of Work Life

This is a Thailand adidas female worker with a sign in German, that

translates "Red Card for Adidas." Red Card is what the referee at a
soccer match holds up to send a player (or team) off the field. This is one
of thousands of heroic women who are trying to get their voice heard.
 As are women working for Reebok

And around the world, it is the women workers who are taking to the
street to change the working conditions of Sweatshop Capitalism

These are women in China lined up to enter a Nike factory, that is

managed in tightly controlled militaristic and authoritarian rule. These is
what Weber would now call the "iron cage" of late postindustrial
capitalism.
Women work in sweatshops because the global economic model does not
sufficiently monitor and surveillance the working conditions.

Kukdong Nike & Reebok Women factory Workers after being beaten
by 200 Pueblo Police for Daring to Organize an Independent Union and
demand no more maggots in their cafeteria food. Two pregnant women, I
am told, by two sisters who were there, had miscarriages after being
forced to run the Police and Goon Squad gauntlet of swinging clubs and
shields. Someone really is working hard to keep these women's voices
from reaching mainstream academia. See Kukdong Slide show

It is time we as academics, begin to really listen to women exhausted

from working 10 and 14 hour days, seven days a week, with one day off
(maybe) every other month. Surely, the Western world can hear and be
answerable to their stories.
 This is a Nike factory where there is a few minutes to eat, and vouchers
(money deducted from their pay) is exchanged for food, to be eaten in
un-ventilated cafeteria, lest these women think that rest is a normal part
of their workday. Even Frederick Taylor of scientific management claim,
advocated rest breaks (and living wages) for all workers. Point: when we
listen to their (silenced) voices, what we hear them saying is, "rest and a
meal break is a human right, even Taylor would understand."

Here the voices of the women making clothing for Nike are asking why it
is that Tiger Woods, who is staying at this hotel in Bangkok Thailand will
not honor his Thailand-Mother by listening to the voices of working
women, who want a non-starving wage, who want us as consumers to
know "we are the women who make your clothes." The sign to the right
is about Tiger Woods, "Stop Putting Around" reads a sign just off stage.
In the background, you see a henchman, a golfer (Tiger) dressed in black
swinging a SWOOSH-AX to cut off the heads of women workers in
Thailand Nike factories.
More Nike Slide Show Images
 Kukdong Slide show

WTO Slide Show

Who could stare into the faces of these women and children making garments (or in
the "meat industry" foxes about to become coats, or the lamb on its way to the
dinner table) -- and not identify with those we are about to consume?

The absent referent must have a suitable substitute, so the play can go on. In Global
Theatrics, the absent referent and the substitute referent (celebrity and sports
heroes) are ubiquitous, a necessary condition for the illusion to continue. In the
language substitutes for reality, sweat-work becomes wage-work, and animal
slaughter becomes gourmet-cuisine. The spectacle presents plays with many
reversals. The resistant worker is presented as the obstacle to Third World economic
development, the animal is presented as the source of life, the savage is presented
as the cannibal, the white man is presented as the enlightened, and the feminine is
presented as the weaker. Nike, Reebok, Adidas, and New Balance are restoried by
spectacle theatrics as heroic saviors of women of the Third World.

The spectacle illusion depends upon fragmenting the relation between consumer
and producer. In Tamara, we as spectators to the global economy, do not follow our
consumption habits, from the stage of the mall displays, backstage to the
warehouse, along the truck routes to the manufacturer, to China, where most
manufacturers are settling, to the shop floor where forced overtime and poverty
wages and even a beating are part of the daily reality of production. Spectators are
not able to confirm with their own eyes, hearing, touch, and smell the oppression of
animals or women, and instead their attention is drawn to the thousands of daily
advertisements that say the exploitation is not real. And it is an attention sustained in
the Business College.

By now you know I am an activist opposed to sweatshops, global racism, corporate

colonization, meat-eating, the animal slaughter and human terror that sustains late
global capitalism. My theory and my practice are connected: I am a vegetarian and I
refuse to wear clothing that comes from factory houses of terror. I have begun my
Naked Feet campaign of pacifist protest, until Nike, Reebok, Adidas, and New
Balance will let me into their factories, to record the women workers' stories, and
guarantee what happened to Lap Nguyen, will not happen to the women who
disclose their personal experience narratives.

Photo 3 Naked Feet Campaign

 Boje's
NAKED FEET Pacifist Protest - When will
Nike, Reebok, Adidas, and New Balance allow
us access to their SECRET factories, the ones
academics do not get to see on the Virtual
Tours.

Through spectacle, the majority of the world who are primarily vegetarian or who live
on poverty wages making the products (over) consumed by the First World remain
hidden backstage, the conspicuously absent referents to global capitalism. On stage
the spectacle presents the path to health and wealth as total and self-determined,
and the belief that meat equals health and sweatshop is a necessary condition of
economic development. This script is an addiction, entrenched in the attitudes of the
spectators to Global Theater. The consumer is in denial, but so is the Business
College.

Postmodern Theater and the Global Performance

Postmodern Theater is about restoring a poly-historical, multi-perspective, and

ideological critique of coherence (Currie, 1998; Geis, 1993; Simard, 1984). In
postmodern Organization Theater, the spectator becomes the center of spectacle,
instead of a detached, passive and distant spectator, estranged from the theater of
cruelty of late capitalism. The spectator is now the 'spect-actor' (in Augusto Boal's
terms) deciphering acts of consumption, tracing foods and apparel through the
house of spectacle mirrors to the hidden systems of their production. Nike, for
example, says it keeps the location of some 730 factories a secret to protect its
competitive advantage. Yet, many activists contend that the factories are hidden for
other reasons (Boje et al., 2000). Blurring the line between audience and actor
places spectator more directly into a self-reflective gaze at production and
consumption to observe the violence to self and others. Hiding the factories prevents
spectators from making emancipatory choices.

The sexual and racial politics of manufacturing, the movement of resources from the
women of Third World to the closets of the First World, is an Off-Off Broadway
production (Saner, 1999). It is Off-Broadway, Street Theater, that bound the diverse
activist groups in combined protest against the WTO. The problem I would like to
pose is as follows: there are fewer Global Theaters performing the kinds of theatrics
that include the absent referents, that place the backstage performers center stage,
so the spectators can see their reality and then pronounce the spectacle
performances to be fallacious and mythic. In the nation by nation and race by race
segregation of work tasks, spectators and workers, animals and consumers do not
meet face to face.

Dark Side of Postmodern Organization Theater - Critical theater can transform

the (uncritical theory of) Burkean act, agency, scene, agency, and purpose of
organization-as-theater into festive improvisations and carnivalesque satire that
disrupt the coherent theatrics of the spectacularity of modern organizations. The
slow food movement, a reaction to McDonaldization of fast food, is known an Italy as
the Convivia movement, a festive contrast to the spectacle of fast food. Convivia
celebrates the festival of life, where food means community. To remove McDonalds
from the center (spectacle) stage is to threaten the structure of predatory capitalism
and patriarchal culture. The meat and apparel industry is threatened by bringing
production onto the center stage, in carnivalesque (acts of the grotesque) and
horrified at removing the veil from eyes of the spectator. Acts of festive or
carnivalesque self-reflection, on the manner in which products are made, who makes
our consumables, the toxicity of ingredients, and the conditions ecology must remain
mysteries the spectator is unable to resolve in spectacle theater of mass advertising
and the science fakery of consulting (hired) science reporting.

NikeTown Theatrics (Spectacle and Carnival) - Nike has pre-Tayloristic

sweatshops where 720,000, mostly young women (16 to 23 in age) are paid pennies
per hour, while PR celebrities are rewarded with millions (for more on Post-Taylorism
see Besson &Haddadj, 2000; Boje et al, 2001 Athletic Apparel Research Project).
This disparity can be explained by the cost of actors enrolled in Nike's Postmodern
Organization Theater, who are being resisted by a global carnival of "free" street
performances.

Photo 4: NikeTown Melbourne

 The caption on the NikeTown-Melbourne image is "At the entrance, timing and
vision take center stage."

This spectacle of postmodern architecture, moving postmodern theatrics, and sports

hero worship and fetishism playing in NikeTown theater, is being opposed by more
carnival theatrics. For example, to give the carnivalesque protests against NikeTown
in Melbourne critical theatrical review space in mainstream media is a threat to
metascript messages of Nike spectacular theater with three quarters of a billion
invested each year in celebrity and sport teams to keep the public gaze on icons
instead of absent referents. For example, on June 10th, 2001 a Melbourne protest of
NikeTown took on all the theatrics of carnival (Elder, 2001). The carnival (writer calls
it a circus) is in its 10th week, showing no signs of ending.

Each Friday, the carnival players from "Fair Weather Campaign," perform anti-
sweatshop theater, erect human barricades in front of NikeTown in Melbourne.
Leaving gaps fro the customers to enter, none dare pass beyond the protest players
to the spectacle engagement of security guards and police dressed in riot costume,
complete with mounted horse infantry.

Photo 5 Exhibit: JUNE 9, 2001- Melbourne Protests and Police Violence

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MainLineNews/message/16147
The global theatrics of capitalism, as the carnival of street theatrics greets spectacle
theatrics of corporate/state power. This year, since May 1st was declared a
national protest in Australia to all NikeTown stores, Nike marketeers enacted an
aggressive strategy of theatrical billboard erection. Nike started a marketing
campaign in Australia, in April, featuring a fake campaigning organization, the
"F.F.F.F." (Fans For Fairer Football) who are supposedly campaigning for fairness
in football by seeking the abolition of "unfair" high tech Nike football (soccer)
boots. The billboards and posters impersonate activist posters, and the ffff.com.au
website [currently down] looks a lot like anti-Nike, anti-sweatshop movement
websites. The campaign included erecting billboards across Australia (Adbusters,
2001). The sub-text is clear - don't believe everything some fringe group puts on
the internet.

Photo 6: Billboards Erected in Urban Australia by F.F.F.F.

After, literally hundreds of exposé stories and reports of unethical labor and
environmental practices (See listing at Boje, 2001b), Nike is still able to exploit
sweatshop labor. Why? I think it is due to aggressive use of spectacle theatrics to
counter the media-appeal of the carnivalesque street theater of the anti-sweatshop
movement. To jam the culture jammer street theater at Melbourne NikeTown
protests, and to counter act media exposure by performances linking the icon
"Nike" to the symbol "sweatshop," Nike Marketing Department erected billboards
(See Photo above) signed "the saboteurs" (Lasn, Adbusters, 2001). But the only
"activists" were the members of the Nike Marketing Department.

Why would Nike Marketeering do such a thing? I believe it is to trigger

advantageous chaos-effects in the Nike Tamara-Land (See Figure 1 above).

Antenarrating - Ante means bet and pre (comes before), and an antenarrative, is a
bet of pre-narration, that a story can be narrated that will catch hold of the
imagination of the masses. There was an (antenarrative has more on this concept)
bet by Nike-marketing, that activists would be provoked into vociferous responses
to the billboards, and the F.F.F.F. (Nike) website (which quickly disappeared) [See
Boje, 2001i for antenarrative concept]. Nike was also making an (antenarrative)
bet on an increase in public cynicism. And believe me when I tell you, you do not
want to see how activists out-parodied the bogus Nike F.F.F.F. web site with one
more satiric and outrageous (Ban The Boot dot Com Real Player Video, The
Rogue Elements Star IN: FIST FUCKING FOOTBALL FUN).

There is a basic difference in strategy between academic researchers and Nike

Marketeers. While academics studying the alleged exploitation of transnational
corporations in the Athletic Apparel Industry (See Boje, 2001c for list of academic
researchers) use rational and logical social science inquiry methods, Nike bets on
shifts in the public mind of what is and is not cool. Nike makes an antenarrative
(bet) it can concoct a narrative, enact it in bill boards, web site spectacular
performances, in order to break the like between the words "Nike" and
"sweatshop" in the public mind (Lasn, Adbusters, 2001).

Finally, it becomes "cool" to dismiss the sweatshop accusation, even though the
accusation is true. And so - without significantly changing its practices - Nike gets
a chance to mock its critics, with the public laughing along (Lasn, Adbusters,
2001).

After years of enduring the culture jamming of activists who mess with the "Just
Do It" slogan, rendering it "Just-ice Do It" or "Just Don't Do It" and morphing the
Swoosh logo into "Swooshtika" or "blood droplets from the Swoosh" or "Cracks in
the Swoosh" Nike is using culture jamming as an offensive strategy of spectacle
theater to counter the carnival of the oppressed image work in this Photo Exhibit.

Photo Exhibit 7: Examples of Nike Logo "Culture Jamming"

www.bantheboot.com A few months ago, a large group of Aussie

Protesters set aside their political allegiances and banded together for a
single cause - to shut down the Nike stores in Melbourne and Sydney
every Friday Night... NIKE SUPER STORE - SWANSTON ST
MELBOURNE this weeks protest/blockade - July 6 - will be the 15th
week in a row
nike estimates over $10,000+ in sales losses each week

From New book on Spectacles of Organization - Chapter on Faciality

applying Deleuze and Guattari Faciality Theory to Nike narrating and
theatrics (use PASS=aggie359 CODE=adventure to enter the site).
From the Adbusters culture jamming art

From the Thai Labor Campaign protest

Example of animated culture jamming

SCORE Nike 4; Academics 100 - There 4 academic studies that defend
Nike (or Adidas, Reebok, and New Balance) as ethical enterprises, and
there are over 100 academic journal articles, chapters, and conference
proceedings and presentations that raise challenges to the claims of Nike,
Reebok, Adidas, and New Balance about their factory conditions.

In carnivalesque style, culture jamming sometimes appeals to urine and

nakedness.

Michael Jordan culture jamming, trying to seduce Michael to visit the

factories that make Air Jordans (perhaps he has listened to the women
 who make his sneakers).

1996 CBS News '48 hours' cartoon

Marx (1867: 203) wrote, “the vampire will not lose its hold on him ‘so
long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited’.”
Sucking the living blood of labor is not a kindly corporate image.

This culture jamming sign, was on display during the Tiger Woods
protest in Thailand, when workers tried to get his attention, at the hotel
he stayed in. I have seen this art for the past four years.
 http://www.v-2.org

With Blood Drop

SWOOSHTIKA, n. Derogatory reference to the distinctive logo of the

Nike Corporation. Alludes to the powerful hegemony of Nike in the
world of sportswear and marketing, the blind logo-worship of unthinking
masses of people, and Nike's treatment of its third world workers like
slave labor; implicit comparison with Nazi party and the its swastika.
[blend of swoosh + -tika, from 'swastika'] Context and source: "People
are already beginning to talk about the 'swooshtika'" (Conversation)
(Source: New Words In English).

 First "swooshtika" Reference is I think Adam Greenfield, website,

v-2 Organisation (http://www.v-2.org) in 1995

 Second reference is rumored to be Discordian Saint Jello Biafra

coins Swooshtika in Stockholm, Nov 1998.

For more images

There is the added advantage of an "offensive" spectacle theatrics: keeping Nike in

the media spotlight, but now on their own terms. Adbusters (2001) points out that
"if Nike turns culture jamming into a corporate mindfuck at the expense of
sweatshop laborers, then we, too, can shift tactics."

In the Nike Tamara (See Figure 1), there is a danger that dynamic chaos effects
will be set off, by such simple-seeming marketing strategies as faking billboards
and faking the signatures of "the saboteurs." The anti-sweatshop movement can be
provoked into escalating their "unswooshing" tactics from culture jamming "brand
damage" logo-graffiti, to acts of property damage, and the kinds of street theater
we witnesses in the Genoa Eight protests. Each actor in Nike Tamara-Land Global
Theater has its bag of tricks, pranks, and illusions.
If you debase our discourse, if you blur the line between authentic process and
corporate spin, if you openly fan the fires of cynicism, then you are going to get
stung (Lasn, Adbusters, 2001).

Figure 2- The Nested Frames of Spectacle, Festival, and Carnival

IS THIS SPECTACLE?
ALL STATEMENTS WITHIN THESE FRAMES ARE GRANDILOQUENT AND
ALLURING:

Media defines happiness by consumption and progress by global business.

IS THIS FESTIVAL?

ALL STATEMENTS WITHIN THESE

FRAMES ARE JOYFUL AND HAPPY:

Live for today, be in the now.

IS THIS CARNIVAL?

ALL STATEMENTS
WITHIN THESE FRAMES
PARODY AND RESIST
POWER:

This Fashion show presents

the brands made by women
in sweatshops

IS THIS A POSTMOD
GAME?

ALL STATEMENTS
WITHIN THESE
FRAMES ARE
UNTRUE:

There are no
sweatshops; our codes
 of conduct control
excess; these are great
jobs

IS THIS
TRUTH?

ALL
STATEMENTS
IN THIS
FRAME ARE
TRUE:

We are not
being who we
can be.

Figure 2 is adapted from MacAloon (1984: 258, 262). The difference is that for me
spectacle is in the Guy Debord (1967) and instead of ritual I prefer to look at the
carnivalesque that Bakhtin theorized (1973). I retained MacAloon's sense of the
nested framing within spectacle. We both are interested in developing a theory of
theatrical performances of society.

Life is theater, but it is not a neutral social construction of truth claims, some are
more critical than others, some cover-over the voices of the oppressed, and here
and there, we hear the voice of resistance. Carnival and sometimes Festivalism is
opposing the spectacle theatrics of corporatism.

Conclusions

Draw your own. Mine include the thesis that through the theatrical methodology of
spectacle illusion Nike and the Athletic Apparel industry are able to erect a
multiplicity of truth claims to muddy the waters we call social science research
into issues of code of conduct compliance, living wage, and whether factories are
sweatshops. Through carnivalesque street theater and culture jamming, activists
parody and satirize the methodologies of spectacle fetish and illusion.

Hyper-Theatrics - Nike Tamara-Land is a multiplicity of spectacle, carnival, and

here and there festive theatrics. It is a dynamic systems that formist analyses of
narrative structure or structural functional theater studies are not going to grasp.
Tamara Theatrics is about movement, action and reaction, strategy and counter-
strategy, but unlike the chess board, this Tamara sets off chaos effects. I have spent
years tracing the dynamic theatrical patterns of Nike theatrics, and more recently
Reebok, Adidas, and New Balance. These are organizations not only addicted to
subcontracting to sweatshops, but addicted the the production of spectacles, in
finely honed methodologies of illusion. Periodic monitoring studies, academic
reports, or activist challenges are not going to change something that is highly
systemic and mobile. We live in hyper-theatrics, where the traditional forms of
narrating are usurped by interactive medium.

The ground is always moving in global theater. Looking for linear plots and
story structures and programmable theatrical scripts will get you easily lost and
confused in the Nike Tamara-Land. The spinning of semantics, and exposé
restorying is constant, such that any semblance of a collective memory, some
warehouse of theater scripts and stories, is the ultimate illusion. The consumer is
not a stationary spectator, but, as Augusto Boal (1985) terms it, a spect-actor,
someone who jumps onto the stage, and engages in spectacle and carnival
performance. Staying stuck in traditional paradigms of Burkean scene act ratios of
nostalgic views of modern theater, and not up to the task of analyzing the totally
hyper-theater and its fragmented multiplicity of simultaneous global stages. Daily,
I track the theater reviews from Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, and twenty other
countries where the spectacle is being engaged by carnivalesque theater of the
oppressed. No sooner do you think you have pinned down a sweatshop location,
the monitors write their apologetic reports, reforms are promised or the subcontract
is canceled, and the subcontract let to some secret sweatshop that continues its
ideal-type ways until some nongovernmental organization or a group of young
women workers brings their performance to spectator attention.

I conclude that theater is dangerous. The phenomenal complexities of the

interactions of spectacle, carnival, and festival, do set off chaos effects. We witness
these in the Battle for Seattle, and the subsequent off-Broadway performances in
Canada, Switzerland, Italy, and in September, a month away, here in Washington
D.C. These are not festive theatrical performances, they are increasingly
dangerous, and the blood is flowing. Some say it is the police, the media focus is
on violent demonstrations. My experience is there is more pacifist protest, and
many impostors do the violence (some allege Police and Corporatists dress as
demonstrators). Opinions vary on this matter, and research is needed to sort out
the dynamics of theatrics, on the scene, as the that Tamara of stages intertwine and
interact. Each faction initiates is theatrical strategies, designed to spin forth an
antenarrative that is a bet and pre-story that their story will command the media
spotlight of the global stage. It is therefore reasonable to request of those who
study narrative and theater, that we move beyond a neutral dramaturgy, to one that
is a critical theoretical review of global theatrics. I call for a Tamara Manifesto
(Boje, 2001j).
Global theater has too few critical reviewers, and a corporate-dominated media
that keeps the spotlight on spectacle illusions, while marginalizing the messages
that the carnival of postmodern networks of resistance groups are staging.
Resistance coverage is reduced to reruns of the more violent protests, ignoring the
non-violent attempts to be critical of global corpatocracy. Until academic research
can look beyond spectacle PR image making we will not find much festival
theatrics.

Is there a festival alternative, some third passage point through Tamara-Land

that will take us beyond the struggle of spectacle spin and carnival theatrics?
Only if we assume that through acts of solidarity the separation of producer from
consumer (as Marx, 1867 spoke of this) can render the society of the spectacle
(Debord, 1967) obsolete.

References

Adams, C. J. (2000). The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical

Theory. 10th Anniversary Edition. NY: The Continuum Publishing Company.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. (1973). Rabelais and His World. Translated by Hé lè ne Iswolsky. 1st ed. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Besson, Dominique & Haddadj, Slimane (2000) Towards a post-Taylorian approach to Taylorism. Special guest issue of Journal of Organizational
Change Management. Vol. 13: (5).

Best, Steve & Douglas Kellner (1997). The Postmodern Turn. NY/London: Guilford Press.

Boal, Augusto (1995). Rainbow of Desire, The: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy. NY: Routledge.

Boje, D. M. (1995). Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as 'Tamara-land.' Academy of Management Journal.
38 (4), 997-1035.

Boje, D. M. (2000a). Theatrics of Control.

http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/pages/theatrics_of_control.htm

Boje, D. M. (2000b). Festivalism at Work: Toward Ahimsa in Production and

Consumption November 2, 1999; Updated September 7, 2000. Book
chapter prepared for Jerry Biberman and Mike Whitty (Eds.) The Spirit and
Work Reader University of Scranton Press, to be published 2000.
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/Festivalism_at_Work.html
Boje, D. M. (2001a). Antenarrating, Tamara, and Nike Storytelling. Paper prepared for presentation at “Storytelling Conference” at the School of
Management; Imperial College, 53 Prince’s Gate, Exhibition Road, London, July 9th, 2001.
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/ethnostorytelling.htm

Boje, D. M. 2001b. "Where are the Secret Factories Located? This is a compilation of (secret) factory locations and and related exposé stories on
continued Athletic Apparel Industry exploitation of labor and ecology. http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/nike/nikewithmap.html
Boje, D. M. (2001c). "Academics Studying Athletic Apparel Industry: Annotated Bibliography."
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/AA/academicsstudyingwriting.htm

Boje, D. M. (2001d). "Phenomenal Complexity Theory and Nike." http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/Phenomenal%20complexity%20theory%202000.html

Boje, D. M. (2001e). Festivalism Web Site. http://www.zianet.com/boje/1/

Boje, D. M. (2001f). Spectacles and Festivals of Organization: Managing Ahimsa Production and Consumption. To be published by Hampton
Press, 2001 (To access book, please use ID=aggie359 PASS=adventure). http://salsa.nmsu.edu/dboje1/000_BookTABLEofContents.html

Boje, D. M. (2001g). Carnivalesque Resistance to Global Spectacle: A critical postmodern theory of public administration. Administrative Theory
and Praxis, special issue on Radical Organization Theory. Vol. 23 (3): 431-458.
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/carnivalesque_resistance_to_glob.htm

Boje, D. M. (2001h). Athletic Apparel Industry is Tamara-land. Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science. Vol 1 (2), pp. 6-19.
http://www.zianet.com/boje/tamara/issues/volume_1/issue_1_2/2Boje_editorial_Tamara_Nike.htm

Boje, D. M. (2001i). Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research. London Sage. New
Book that contains several analyses on Nike and Athletic Apparel narratives, and the concept of "antenarrative."
http//business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/what_is_antenarrative.htm (on line book intro chapter).

Boje, D. M. (2001j). Tamara Manifesto. Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science. Vol. 1 (1): pp. 15-24.
http://www.zianet.com/boje/tamara/issues/volume_1/issue_1_1/tamara_manifesto2.htm

Boje, D. M., Grace Ann Rosile, & Simon Malbogat (2000). Theatrics of Organizational Development and Change. Theatrics workshop presented at
the 2000 Academy of Management Meetings in Toronto.. http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/conferences/Acad2000FestivalSpectacleCarnival.html

Boje, D. M., Grace Ann Rosile & J. Dámaso Miguel Alcantara Carrillo
(2001). The Kuk Dong Story: When the Fox Guards the Hen House.
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/AA/kuk_dong_story.htm
Boje, D. M. & 50 Academics from Around the World (2001). Global Manufacturing and Taylorism Practices of Athletic Apparel Corporations and
Their Subcontractors http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/AA/index.html ; Also a presentation at the 2001 EGOS conference and the 2001 Academy
of Management pre-conference. See EGOS - Global Manufacturing and Taylorism Practices of Nike Corporation and its Subcontractors: Ancient
(Modern) Times within (Post) Modern Times? http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/conferences/EGOS_2001_Nike_Action_Project.htm ; At Academy
of Management in Washington D.C. - Professional Development Workshop by Academics Studying Athletic and Campus Apparel, August 4,
(Saturday) 2001 in Washington D.C. http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/nike/pdw_academy_proposal.htm

Currie, M. 1998. Postmodern Narrative Theory. NY: St. Martin's Press.

Debord Guy 1967. Society of the Spectacle. La Société du Spectacle was first published in 1967 by Editions, Buchet-Chastel

(Paris); it was reprinted in 1971 by Champ Libre (Paris). The full text is available in English at
http://www.nothingness.org/SI/debord/index.html , Retrieved September 7, 2000
from the World Wide Web:

Firat, F. A. & Nikhilesh, D. 1998. Consuming People: from Political economy to Theaters of Consumption. London/NY: Routledge.

Geis, D. R. 1993. Postmodern Theatric(k)s: Monologue in Contemporary American Drama. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
Lasn, Kalle (2001) The Smell of Swoosh. Adbusters. http://www.adbusters.org/creativeresistance/36/1.html

MacAloon, John J. (1984). Olympic Games and The Theory of Spectacle in

Modern Societies. pp. 241-280. In John J. MacAloon (Ed.) Rite, Drama,
Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals toward a theory of cultural performance.
Philadelphia, PN: Institute for the Stufy of Human Issues.

Marx, Karl (1867). Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1. The

Process of Capitalist Production. Trans. S. Moore and E. Averling. F.
Engles (ed.). NY: International Publishers. First published 1867, English
1967.
Rosile, G.A., Steve Best, and D. M. Boje (2001) Corporate Theatrics and Carnivalesque Resistance. Paper presented at the EGOS meetings in
Lyon France. http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/conferences/EGOS_2001_Rosile_Best_Boje.htm

Saner, R. 1999. "Organizational consulting: What a Gestalt approach can learn from Off-Off-Broadway Theater." Gestalt Review 3 (1): 6-21.

Simard, R. 1984. Postmodern Drama: Contemporary Playwrights in America and Britain. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

TAMARA: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science http://www.zianet.com/boje/tamara See Vol 1

Issue 2 Corporate Predators Special Issue http://www.zianet.com/boje/tamara/issues/volume_1/issue_1_2/INDEXvol1NO2.htm

Turner, Victor (1967) Carnival, Ritual, and play in Rio de Janeiro. pp. 74- 92. In Alessandro Falassi (Ed.) Time Out of Time: Essays
on the Festival. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press.

Turner, Victor (1982) Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press.

APPENDIX: Experiential Exercises in Global Theatrics for the Business College Classroom

The Exercises that follow are based upon:

Boje, D. M., Grace Ann Rosile & J. Dámaso
Miguel Alcantara Carrillo (2001) The Kuk Dong Story: When the Fox Guards the
Hen House. http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/AA/kuk_dong_story.htm

Play 1. Factory Girl Interrupted - There are two people sitting on the stage to perform an example. Once
this is previewed, the audience can pair off to explore their own theater.

The first person begins a story: "Once upon a time, I worked in a sweatshop..." and proceeds to improvise
some imagined factory existential plane. The second person is an interrupter, someone who tosses out a
ford that the first person must now weave seamlessly into their storytelling. But, the second person, being
not overly cooperative, tosses out a word (or phrase) that is almost absurd, and one imagines somewhat
difficult for the first person to weave into their storyline. "Gold bricks." Every several sentences of the
story, the second person tosses out another word for the storyweaver to enjoin in their unfolding tale.

Play 2. Questioning Factory Owners and Parents of two daughters, just 15 -

Act I - The Interview - The omniscient narrator begins the telling. Once upon a time there was a starving
family, somewhere in Asia. They had many children, but the eldest were a pair of girls, sisters who had just
turned 15. They worked in the fields on the family plot of ground, but the weather had been harsh. Two
Korean factory owners have just built a factory. It is pretty far away, but there are dorms there, and food,
and some meager pay. The two factory owners have a contract to make Reebok and Nike sneakers. The
young sisters are eager to head to the city where the factory and dorms are located, and to have some relieve
from the gaze of the village elders, who keep them under constant surveillance. It is hard work, and only
young girls can endure the long hours with one day off every other month, and sometimes not even that.
Still the factory owners take pity on the parents and their impoverished family. They stop by the peasant
hut, and ask if they might take these two girls to work and live in their factory. The only glitch is that the
Nike code of conducts says that sneaker workers must be 18 years of age (Reebok says 14 years of age).
Still these are tall and well-built sisters, and they look 18 or even older. All that is needed is the parent's
signature, that they are 18, and have parental permission to live at the factory.

Question to the Parents: Will you sign the agreement and send your daughters to work?

Question to the Korean Factory Owners: Why do you want to hire these young girls, knowing they are just
15?

Select two to be parents and two to be factory owners. Have them sit before the spectators. Let them
interact a bit of time, and answer these questions. Now let the audience hive off into small groups and
discuss what additional questions they have to ask the parents and factory owners.

Act II - The Bad News - The girls are away form home for several months now. It is hundreds of miles.
They are paid 30 cents an hour for a ten hour day. 50 cents a day is deducted for dorm cost, and another 30
cents a day for food and 20 cents from medical. Out of three dollars a day, that leaves two. But, the girls
are somewhat sloppy workers, especially when they are tired at the end of a shift, or after 20 continuous
days of work, and they keep getting fined. One sister slept in and was fined $2.25, and the other broke a
sewing needle, that cost her $3.50. They write all this and more in a letter to their parents. The sisters also
hate the food, they allege that there are maggots in the drool, they get only one bathroom break per shift and
even if they wet themselves they can not get a second pass from their supervisor. Oh and those dorms,
there are ten women to a room with six beds and in the space of a hog's shed.

Question to the Parents: Do you advise the girls to come home, complain to the owners?

Question to the Sisters: Will you take your complaints to management, or meet with other workers and send
a representative?

Play out the scene.

Act III - Sick Sisters - Complaining to management got the sisters a worse work assignment. Now instead
of cutting and sewing, they are doing the gluing. The factory is hot and muggy, and there is only one small
fan for 2,000 workers in the room. The women try to wear the protective mask and the gloves, but it is so
hot, they can not keep them on all the time. They each have a rash. There was no training in the use of the
chemicals. When the sisters asked to be reassigned to their old jobs, they were refused. When they showed
them a rash on their arm, they were still turned down. "Back to work." They got sick to their stomachs and
could not keep down the wormy food. So they went to the supervisor and asked for time off. "If you do not
report to work, there are others to take your job. The choice is yours to make." One Korean supervisor took
pity on the daughters and said she could work in quality control, as his personal clerk. But to keep her job
there, and not be sent to the glue section, she decided to be extra friendly. The other sister caught them
between the shed and factory, going at it. "Dear Parents," writes the sister, "I fear I am pregnant, and will
soon be fired. I will try to keep anyone from knowing, but in six more months, I will show, and I will be
fired. Please forgive me."

Question to Parents: Do you take this daughter back home?

Question to Sisters: What will you do?

Question to Korean Factory Owners: Will you punish this supervisor?

In this scene there are six people on the stage, answering the questions. And then the spectators, begin to
ask their questions of whom ever they wish.

Act IV - Food Fight - The sisters have been arrested and fired by the factory owners. The police report says
the sisters incited a food riot in the factory cafeteria. They demanded no worms in their slop, or the return of
their 30 cents a day so they can buy their own food. They also want the money deducted for medical,
because the one nurse for 15,000 workers, does not know anything about medicine. And they even wanted
the dorm fees not to be deducted, since they can get better housing in town. The sisters got 13 other workers
to sign a petition to form an independent union. The State union is in bed with management, and does not
represent worker interests. They filed their petition in town at the government labor office. Now it is an
official matter. This would be the first independent workers union in the entire country. No transnational
corporation or their subcontractors has even had one before. The sisters met with students from the U.S.
and Australia, who are giving them advise, promising to bring media pressure on Nike, Reebok, and the
Korean-owned factory. The sisters are going to the factory today to see if management will allow them to
come back to work. Management has allowed other girls to return to their jobs, but not any of the leaders
of the workers union.

Question to Parents: Do you want your daughters to stay or come home?

Question to Sisters: What kind of support are the students offering?

Question to Students: What are you doing? What will happen to these workers once your Spring break is
over?

Question to Korean Factory Owners: Will you allow a secret ballot vote by all the workers to choose
between the Sisters' independent union and the State union?

Question to Nike and Reebok Executives: You have a code of conduct that allows for workers to
collectively bargain with factory owners and managers. Will you be honoring that agreement? Will you
insure these girls get their jobs back? Even, the pregnant one?

Act V - The Monitors Report - The State Union got tough with the new workers union, and started to give
special work assignments and high pay to all workers who promised to sign up right now, in front of
management and State Unionists, that they would join voluntarily with the State Union. This resulted in a
wave of campus and NikeTown and FootLocker protests. The sisters organized a take over of the factory
and tied to negotiate with the Korean owners and managers to recognize their Independent Union. After
three days, the factory owners, the State Union guys, and the Police force got together and kicked out the
workers from the factory. The workers held out for three days, but finally 200 Riot Police and some 20
State Union construction thugs broke through the factory doors, and chased some 300 women (500 were at
home in bed) through a gauntlet. 15 women were injured and had to be taken to the hospital. One of the
sisters suffered a miscarriage after being beat about the head and stomach with police batons and shields.

The web waves and the news wires light up like city lights on a dark night, all wanting to know why young
pregnant girls, and non-pregnant ones were being bullied and beaten and both sisters arrested. Nike issued
an immediate press release, saying they would look into the allegations. Reebok had nothing to say. Nike
and Reebok appealed to the Fair Labor Association (FLA), to which they belong, to dispatch an
independent monitor to the scene. Verité has a strong reputation in human rights monitoring, and was
selected by FLA to write an official report with recommendations. The United Students Against Sweatshops
(USAS) and the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) have sent a delegation of faculty and students from the
universities that have been selling these Nike and Reebok sneakers in their campus stores (and some
sweatshirts and pants and shorts and socks too, all with university logos stitched on).

Question to Parents: Do you want your daughters to stay or come home?

Question to Sisters: What kind of support are the USAS and WRC faculty and students offering?

Question to Students and Faculty: What are you doing? What will happen to these workers once your report
has been written and filed away?

Question to Korean Factory Owners: Will you allow a secret ballot vote by all the workers to choose
between the Sisters' independent union and the State union?

Question to Nike and Reebok Executives: You have a code of conduct that allows for workers to
collectively bargain with factory owners and managers. Will you be honoring that agreement? Will you
insure the sisters get their jobs back? Will you compensate the one sister who had a miscarriage?

Final Act - The Deal - The monitoring reports all pointed out incidents of yelling obscenities at workers,
forced overtime, and collected worm samples from the cafeteria. Nike and Reebok demanded that Korean
owners and managers attend human rights seminars conducted by the International Labor Organization
(ILO). The cost of the Verité monitoring report was quite high. But, no one is telling, what the fee was. It
was less than Tiger Woods annual endorsement fee (is that $60 million), and less than the Global Alliance
consulting firm charged for two reports on other factories ($7.6 million). We do not know the cost to Nike
or Reebok, but it was not cheap. Consultants, no matter how good willed, do not work for free. Nike has
sent some of its staff members to meet secretly with university administrators and student groups, to see
how they would react if Nike just canceled the contract.

Question to Parents: Do you want your daughters to stay or come home?

Question to Sisters: Will you continue to push for an independent union? What sense do you make of Nike's
(and Reebok's) offer?

Question to Students and Faculty: What are you doing? Will you order clothing and sneakers direct for the
Korean factory, if it does not have the Nike or Reebok logo?

Question to Korean Factory Owners: Will you allow a secret ballot vote by all the workers to choose
between the Sisters' independent union and the State union? Will you work with the universities to sell
direct if Nike and Reebok cancel your contract?

Question to Nike and Reebok Executives: You have a code of conduct that allows for workers to
collectively bargain with factory owners and managers. Will you be honoring that agreement? Will you
insure the sisters get their jobs back? Will you compensate the one sister who had a miscarriage?

There is no ending to this play.

The Usual Disclaimer; All characters, including persons and organizations, are of course, fictitious
constructions of the author's imagination and bear no resemblance whatsoever to reality.

Play 3. Sweatshop Fashion Show -

The following play is based upon
 Boje (2001) " Are New Mexico State garments made in sweatshops?" web
document.
Boje, D. M. 2001g. Carnivalesque Resistance to Global Spectacle: A critical postmodern theory of public administration.

In review at Administrative Theory and Praxis, special issue on Radical Organization Theory.
 http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/carnivalesque_resistance_to_glob.htm

Process: Spect-actors are instructed toward articles of Reebok, Adidas, Nike, or

New Balance (or others listed below or at New Mexico State garments made in
sweatshops). For background reading on each company, consult
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje. Please borrow clothing, do not purchase more
logo-garments (allegedly) made in sweatshops. Each spect-actor writes up an index
card about the working conditions of the country and factory where their clothing
or sneakers are made. They also write down their own name, the country, the
factory location (as they find it to be - consult
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/nike/nikewithmap.html for factory listings).

The master of ceremonies, using a microphone or megaphone, reads from each

card as the spect-actor crosses the stage.

INTRO:

Welcome to our Sweatshop Fashion Show, a combination of political theater and

educational comedy. Today, you’ll see our models displaying some of the latest
fashions made in Asia, Latin America, the United States, Australia, and Canada”
(from script I am writing). Instead of supermodels in barely clad silk dresses costing
thousands of dollars, these garments are made in sweatshops, sold at our campus
apparel store or local Wal-Mart. In such shows, staged on college campuses, on city
streets, and in at the mall, models enter and walk across the catwalk wearing the
latest Nike, Disney, Guess, Gap, Van Heusen, Tommy Hilfiger, and Wal-Mart brands
as announcers comment on poverty wages and abusive working conditions. Your
university has no doubt hosted similar Sweatshop Fashion shows highlighting
working conditions in the garment industry in not only Latin America and Asia, but in
metropolitan cities. Maquila Solidarity Network (2001a) even provides fashion show
script ideas.

This is Monica, she works in a Reebok factory in China. She earns 26 cents an
hour for 10 hours work. She works 20 days straight and then has a day off. She
lives in the factory dorms with 9 other women. She is 22 years old and wearing the
Reebok sneakers she can purchase after 30 days of work, assuming she had no
deductions for food, dues, etc. (original).

Our next model, Sheila, is wearing body-hugging Guess jeans that were made in
Mexico. Doesn’t Sheila look great? The Guess brand image is hot and sexy…
Actually, "hot and sexist" is probably a better description of working conditions for the
women sewing Guess products. Hot as in sweatshops, and sexist as in supervisors.
An investigation of four Guess contractors in Mexico in 1998 found evidence of
forced overtime, violations of child labor laws, unsafe working conditions,
discrimination against pregnant women, poverty, repression and fear. Thank you,
Sheila.” (MSN, 2001a) [See Boje, 2001g for references].

Keep the descriptions short and sweet so as not to bore the audience. After the
anti-sweatshop fashion show, conduct discussions between the fashion models and
the rest of the spectators.

Background: We are witness to postmodern culture jamming, anti-sweat fashion

shows, and more recently virtual acts of cyber-disobedience. Most adopt non-violent
action to promote a less violent capitalism to the current one, while creating
awareness and raising consciousness of our consumptive and work or instrumental
relationship to the animal, plant, and human, and micro biotic world. The street
theater of the WTO protest, the sit-ins in university administration offices, and
boycotts of Footlocker, NikeTown, Gap, Wal-Mart, and Disney merchandise stores
are examples of carnivalesque resistance to the spectacle of postindustrial
capitalism and its marriage to postmodern consumerism. These carnivals by
students, labor, environmentalists, union workers, and activists also parody truth
claims produced by corporate monitors and consultants such as Fair Labor
Association (FLA), PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), and Global Alliance (GA).

For more on ANTI- sweatshop Fashion Shows -- see Leadership Theater Events -
Sweatshops

Play 4 - Electronic Disturbance Theater

Process: contact brand name corporations about their factories in various countries.
Consult http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/nike/nikewithmap.html for factory
listings, phone and email addresses.

The Electronic Disturbance Theater initiated its first act of Electronic Civil
Disobedience in April 1998 to stop the War in Mexico, in support of the Zapatistas in
Chiapas, Mexico (See http://www.nyu.edu/projects/wray/ecd.html for details). The
U.K. group, “Electrohippies” enrolled 452,000 web users to bombard the WTO’s web
site during their virtual sit-in. There is a current Electrohippies online protest against
the Free Trade Area of the Americas conference in Quebec and a Zapatista Tribal
Port Scan demonstration tool by Electronic Disturbance Theater distributed at their
web site (Electrohippies, 2001).

On September 26, 2000, French cyber activists called the Federation of

Random Action (FRA) held a 12-hour, virtual “free speech” sit-in, encouraging web
users worldwide to downloadable and use a chat-room toy that flooded IMF and WB
servers with requests for information and rants about economic inequities in the
global economy.

While e-protesters typed, the program watched for key words such as poverty,
finance, investment, and financial power. Each time the words appeared, the
program hit the IMF and World Bank sites with requests for information. It also
embedded error messages like "Our life is not for sale," "Please crush us too!" and
"Do you sell sheep shavers?" (Ferguson, 2000) [See Boje, 2001g for references].

CAUTION: If you use the word "Nike" in any email message, there is a robotic
program (bot) that sends your name and email message to the FBI and other
government agencies, to be sure you are not some kind of terrorist. "Echelon" is a
government super computer that snoops on all of our communications (email,
phone, credit card, web-sites, etc.) in search of "suspicious" words like "Nike,"
"Exxon," or "Shell Oil" (For more words that will get you into trouble).

Play 5 - Wage Slave Auction

In London, activists have been staging live slave auctions in front of the
NikeTown. Slaves are recruited from the audiences. The MC asks the spectators
for bids to be taken by factory owners (also recruited from the audience). Spect-
actors act out various roles, as the auctioneer calls out for bids on each (wage)
slave. One variation is to let all women be cast as slaves, and all men to be the
bidders (just like real life, but this is parody and satire). Of course we are aware
that Nike (Reebok, New Balance and Adidas) do not really have slaves.

This play is based upon

Boje, D. M. 2001a. Antenarrating, Tamara, and Nike Storytelling. Paper prepared for presentation at “Storytelling Conference” at the School of
Management; Imperial College, 53 Prince’s Gate, Exhibition Road, London, July 9th, 2001.
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/ethnostorytelling.htm

Play 6 - Psychodynamic Solidarity Theater

You may want to have professional psychiatric personnel standing off stage.
Violence is a part of everyday life in the First World, just as it is in the Third
World, but the veneer of denial keeps sanity.

Process: Ask volunteers to pair off with listeners and draw parallels between
personal experiences of violence and abuse with the situations they have
researched about the quality of working life in Athletic Apparel industry (alleged)
sweatshops.

"Hi My name is David. When I was 16 I was slapped about by my mother. She was
on tranquilizers and was sort of out of sorts after my Dad left her for a young
secretary. All alone with no job skills, no divers license, and not knowing how to
drive, she got sort of depressed with her four children. She is otherwise a lovely
person. Except, she slaps and yells and attacks me and anyone really who
reminded her of him (who left her). I was reading about Lap Nguyen
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/nike/vietnam.html The parallel I see is how Ms.
Beck slapped her about the head and shoulders with the sole of a Nike sneaker, for
not being a better supervisor of her line of 50 sewing machines. I was responsible
for my younger sister and two brothers, and from 14 to 17 I was not much of a
substitute father (supervisor). I see parallels between Lap and I. I also wonder how
Lap felt as she was demoted from line supervisor for being interviewed by ESPN.
Nike says she resigned, but I read it as her being forced out. All those years since
1996 she stayed working under some very trying conditions. I can relate to that."

Switch roles, and let the listener tell their story of parallel experiences.

Discussion: What is solidarity between workers in the Third World and Middle
Class consumers in the First World?

Caution: Grace Ann Rosile and I have done such theater with Ph.D. students and
were amazed to found out every one of them had been abused or been closed to
someone entangled in violence, but just don't talk about it much. Be prepared, to
see some pretty serious stuff. Bring Kleenex.

For more on Augusto Boal - Theater of the Oppressed, see

http://web.nmsu.edu/~dboje/TDpostmodtheatrics.html

Play 7 - Leaders of the Absurd

This is a parody and tribute to Ionesco's Theater of the Absurd play "The Leader."
The setting is a small peasant village in Asia, Latin America, or Mexico.

Phil Knight of Nike or Paul Fireman of Reebok is the leader (or both). There are
various sightings of Phil and Paul by the towns people. There is a role for a
factory manager (and some owners) who are getting everything in shape for an
inspection by the monitoring (consulting firms) and their auditors
(PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and Verité; for background study
background at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/AA/monitors.htm). There are roles
There are roles for Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan (and any listing of sports
celebrities you can find). Don't forget the media. They are chasing all over the
village reporting sightings of Phil, Paul, Tiger and Michael. Finally there are roles
for the villagers, some shoppers at the local stores and restaurants, and some young
lovers (who do not see to recognize each other).

The point of the play is to reveal the absurdity of hero worship and CEO (hero)
worship, and to show that attributions made by those crying out for reform is a
fairly meaningless gesture.
For more on Ionesco and Theater of the Absurd, here is a brief study guide
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/pages/the_leader_Ionesco.htm

Play 8 - Merchant of Sweatshops

Antonio Knight owns several sweatshop contracts with factory agents in the new
world. He dispatches Bassanio to check out his factories, by sailing to the new
world. Antonio is a stay at home adventurer; he does not actually one to get on a
ship and head to a far away land. Bassanio, on the other hand, is an adventurer. He
owes Antonio big time for some failed ventures. Both worship the goddess
Fortuna. Portia seems to be this goddess in the flesh. And Bassanio sees a way to
pay off his debts by wooing Portia. Portia arranges some gambling and he must
choose between gold, silver or lead.

Shylock and Antonio are mortal enemies. Shylock competes with Antonio in the
financial market place. Shylock gives loans to factory owners and adventurers to
pay for ships and buildings and meet payroll and pay vendor accounts. You know
the play of course you do.

There are rumors of slave trading, but these are just allegations. And if true, what
does it matter: everybody is doing it.

The climatic scene is the courtroom drama. Antonio Knight is represented by

Portia (in male attorney disguise). Shylock demands his pound of flesh to pay up
on the loan to Bassanio signed by Antonio Knight. The loan is past due and no
shops with sweatshop goods or slaves have yet to be sighted.

In this play, there is a room full of spectators who are serving as the jury. Who
should win this trial? What is your evidence? Stay in character. There is plenty of
time to discuss any parallels between the Merchant of Venice and the Merchant of
Sweatshops.

This play is based upon: Boje, D. M. (2000a) "Merchant of Venice: The Clash of
Feudal and Commercial global Capitalism." Update of paper presented to 1999
Academy of Management meetings in symposium on "Reclaiming Indigenous
Knowledge." http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/pages/orderform.html

Play 9 - Just In Time Theater

This play is based upon the Just In Time Gameboard. The Nike "war room" staff
(Dusty Kidd, Medea Manager, Maria Eitel, and Amanda Tucker) are getting
intensive in-house training on how to spin any and all exposé (bad news turns into
good news or at least questionable news). There is various exposé material to be
researched to prepare for this play, or is it just a game? The game can be played
with real or electronic dice. Have the spect-actors post the questions and pick
people to play the role of the Nike War Room staff. Do some web searches and
you will find an abundance of press releases, interview comments and the like.
This is a good way to study the methodology of theatrical illusion and to see what
a media fire story is like.

See Just In Time Gameboard and begin the play (game).

http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/conferences/nikeJustInTimeGAMEBOARD.htm

For more background on claims of activists versus Nike spin meisters see

Comparison of the Urban Community Mission (UCM) Survey Report December

1999
to the Global Alliance, Center for Societal Development Studies (CSDS) 2000
study. By
David M. Boje, Ph.D

Play 10 - Nike Tamara Theater

On the black board, draw a floor plan of a Mansion with two upper floors,
basement for chauffer and maids quarters, and kitchen. Second story is for the
aristocrats bedrooms. First floor has an anteroom, library, and dining hall. Other
rooms can be added.

Split the audience into two or more groups. Let one group be in the Tamara-
Mansion room at a time. The group gets to pick which room to enter first. The
storyteller for that room takes the stage and tells stories on that topic for a few
minutes. Have a time keeper cut them off so it does not go on too long. Then the
audience selects the next room to enter. Give the group time to explore five rooms,
then kick them out and send in the next group.

Below is a depiction of a Tamara Mansion.

 1. Attic: What is Tamara?

2. Mystery Room
3. Bathroom 4. Master Bedroom 5. Guest Bedroom
Monitoring the
Nike War Room
Monitors
6. Library - books
and records of China,
7. Anteroom - What
Indonesia, Vietnam, 8. The Study Room
is Antenarrative?
Mexico, and
Thailand.
11. Servants Quarters
9. Kitchen 10. Storage
(Lap Nguyen)

It will take some time to research each of the rooms, but well worth the effort.
After one group of spect-actors has left the mansion, invite in the next group in.
They get to choose five rooms to explore in any sequence they choose (don't be
linear, start anywhere).

When two or more groups have done their room exploring, and heard the stories
told therein, assemble all the groups together to share notes on what happened.
Did they find the ghost of Tamara (she is in that mansion some place - you just
have to search to find her). As you are looking, ask the groups if the choice of
rooms made any difference to the gestalt they formed.

This play is based on: Boje, D. M. 1995. Stories of the storytelling organization: A postmodern analysis of Disney as 'Tamara-
land.' Academy of Management Journal. 38 (4), 997-1035.