Improvisational Theatre in Management Education: Exploring arts-based approaches to enhance student learning

For enabling a creative and interactive learning-experience, MBA students in the School of Management and Business, Aberystwyth University have been involved in a teaching project based on improvisational theatre. This is a response to calls for active student involvement in teaching situations in order to vary and enhance their learning experience. The use of arts-based approaches in particular has been adopted in management education because there are overlaps between artistic, theatrical skills and generic management skills which involve improvisation, spontaneous action, the creative use of available resources and the ability to listen to others. This paper describes how the improvisational theatre exercise contributes to these skills and evaluates how it helped students to better understand theoretical concepts by providing them with the opportunity to elaborate creatively on different aspects of theory. Details of the exercise are provided in the paper. Difficulties in preparing and conducting the action are outlined and general implications for professional practice are addressed.