Kirjahaku

Graham explores the attitudes of Japanese employees towards their work, their company and on related issues. Based on extensive original research inside a Japanese insurance company (C-Life), which subsequently went bankrupt, the book shows that attitudes towards lifetime employment, company loyalty and the other characteristics of Japanese working life, which are often portrayed in stereotype form in the West, are in fact more complicated than is at first apparent.

Japanese white-collar workers have been characterised by their intense loyalty and life-long commitment to their companies. This book is based on very extensive ethnographic research inside a Japanese insurance company during the period when the company was going through a major crisis which ended in the company's bankruptcy and collapse. It examines the attitudes of Japanese employees towards their work, their company and related issues at a time when the established order and established attitudes were under threat. The wide range and detail of the reporting of workers' attitudes, often in their own words, sustained over a considerable timescale, makes this study a particularly valuable resource.

The Portuguese visual artist Paula Rego has inspired this trilogy of plays. Her paintings CrivellI's Garden, The Prey and Breaking China became the catalyst for writing by theatre maker Fiona Graham. Commissioned by Theatre Centre and Komedia, these three new plays were developed for specific audiences through a series of artist/audience residencies and collaborations. These works have toured Britain and been re-staged in Portugal and Singapore. Crivellis's Garden was created for a 16+ audience and explores rites of passage as two young women decide whether they should stay or leave their fishing village to go to university in Portugal. Between Friends is for 7 -11 year olds and examines the politics of friendship between three young people when they are shipwrecked and abandoned in a lighthouse. Breaking China is for 4-8 year olds and shows the importance of creative play and storytelling when making sense of change and adversity.

Becoming Dramaturg: Possibilities for an Ethical and Expanded Practice examines how performance development can be enhanced by the work of a dramaturg, how practitioners can prepare for the role working across diverse cultures and different kinds of performance events, how the dramaturg can facilitate ethical collaborations, and how dramaturgical thinking can inspire new ways of learning and knowing. Fiona Graham draws upon her international experience as a dramaturg, her own pedagogical insights, practitioner interviews, teaching examples and performance case studies to examine the ‘what’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ of dramaturgical development. A key concept is that the work of a dramaturg is always in a state of becoming and never settled or defined by a single performance development process. Graham’s manifesto for dramaturgs aims to advance the role by presenting ethical and expanded provocations for constructive, transparent, reflexive and radically inclusive ways of working.