Monday 19 August 2019 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES 15WORK & CAREERS
Ralf Wetzel in
Edinburgh:
‘Each day here
teaches me
more about
competition,
guerrilla
marketing, mass
customisation’
Robert Ormerod/FTF
or the past eight years, the
greatest demand on Ralf
Wetzel’s performance skills
has been to engage the minds
of postgraduate students in
MBA classes at Belgium’s Vlerick Busi-
ness School. This month, however, the
associate professor of organisation and
applied arts has swapped the shirt and
trousers he wears when lecturing on
Vlerick’s Ghent campus for a pink wig
and a goofy-toothed mask. He is per-
forming for a more challenging audi-
ence at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in
his one-man “solo mask show”,Abso-
lutely Reliable!.
His masked character, George, is a
version of a prototypical western man
based on Prof Wetzel’s perceptions of
the traumas that alpha males face in a
business world now shaped by the need
to diversify workforces and for manag-
erstobemoreempathetic.
He also includes his personal experi-
ences of the repression he experienced
growing up in communist East
Germany, then trying and failing to
build a career as a business executive in
Switzerland before retraining as a
businessprofessor.
But he says his desire to stage a pro-
duction has also been driven by his aca-
demic career, and seeking to make MBA
teaching more engaging. “I want to get
businesseducationoutofthesterileand
polished business school classroom,”
Prof Wetzel says. “We need to make our
handsdirty.”
The Edinburgh show is a first step
towards exploring how he might intro-
duce elements of improvisation and
theatre to the lecture hall. “It is impor-
tantthatwefindnewwaysofexpressing
ourselves,”hesays.
He has had an interest in improvised
theatre for several years, and met the
director ofAbsolutely Reliable!, Lee
Delong, through a clowning workshophe attends near Vlerick’s campus.
“There are not many business schools
that would tolerate this,” Prof Wetzel
adds. He might not have embarked on
the production without the enthusiastic
support of his employer — and students.
“Vlerick’s view was that as long as their
clients did not have a problem with me
doing something like this then I could
giveitago.”
Prof Wetzel’s hope is that he can use
the show to develop a style of leadership
training he calls “sensual learning”,
using techniques and exercises tradi-
tionally associated with applied arts,
such as improv and mask work, to train
studentstofollowtheimpulsesfromthe
bodyratherthanthebrain.
“There are strong links between the
applied arts world and becoming a greatleader,” Prof Wetzel says. “Improv thea-
tre, social dance, clowning and many
other fields are all focused around hav-
ing to act competently in the moment,
using your emotional and social intelli-
gence and a strong connection, being
comfortable in uncomfortable situa-
tions,notbeingafraidoffailure.”
The Fringe offers a choice of more
than 3,500 shows, ranging from touring
West End shows to those just starting
out in the industry, and is itself a lesson
in developing your entrepreneurial
skills in order to get bums on seats each
evening.
“Each day here teaches me more
aboutcompetition,guerrillamarketing,
mass customisation than [I get] at
home,”ProfWetzelsays.
Absolutely Reliable!is about as faraway from the MBA case study method
of teaching management as it is possible
to be. In the show (tagline: “Visiting the
abyssofmodernmen:dark,sinister,rol-
licking!”), Prof Wetzel takes on the
character of George, a white, middle-
aged, middle-class, middle manager
desperate for both promotion in his
company and for a relationship in his
personallife.
As he gets closer to achieving these
goals, George’s inner demons of insecu-
rity, anger and denial get the better of
him,totragiceffect.
“I feel a mixture between being
excited and terrified,” Prof Wetzel
admits as he gets ready for his first per-
formance, a process that involves lock-
ing himself in a room for an hour to get
intothecharacterofGeorge.There are 11 people in line to see the
inaugural 10 o’clock show, enough to fill
about a third of the seats in the tiny the-
atre space above a café on Edinburgh’s
RoyalMile.
The turnout is also better than the
previous act, “Britain’s funniest blind
theoretical physicist” Richard Wheat-
ley, who had just one person in his audi-
ence, a Fringe official who had come to
assess his stand-up performance for the
Edinburgh Festival’s annual comedy
prize.
Those who have paid £11.50 to see
Prof Wetzel’s show include a couple on
holiday from Leipzig, who explain that
they were sold on the show by a man
handing out flyers in the street by the
factthatthestarisGerman.
Isabel, an Australian on a month-long
tour of Europe, is the one person in the
line apparently excited by Prof Wetzel’s
academic credentials. “That’s great,”
she enthuses. “Could he teach me some
economics?”
As the lights dim and Prof Wetzel
enters the room in his odd stage cos-
tume, someone here is clearly con-
cerned about what they have agreed to
watch.“He’shideous!”theyshout.
It is not certain that anyone else in the
audience knows what to make of the
production from the silence that fol-
lows. About 20 minutes in people seem
to warm up. “That’s weird,” someone
cries out from the back of the room.
Later there is laughter and towards the
end the audience has relaxed enough to
join George as he leads them in a chorus
of“HappyBirthday”tohim.
As we file out of the room into the
Royal Mile, mingling with tourists exit-
ingthemilitarytattooatEdinburghCas-
tle, everyone I ask says they enjoyed the
performance.
Prof Wetzel bounds out of his chang-
ing room after the show. “That was
incredible,” he says. “What I am trying
to do is to explore the struggles of mod-
ern masculinity created by things like
the #MeToo movement and men being
unabletoexplainthemselves.
“I think what we have created here is
ontosomething.”‘Absolutely Reliable!’ plays until August 25,
http://www.clownforlife.comClowning around for business education
An MBA tutor is using his
Edinburgh show to helpteach students emotional
and social intelligence,writesJonathan Moules
‘There are
strong links
between
the applied
arts world
and
becoming
a great
leader’
Video
Prof Wetzel tells
Jonathan Moules
about business
schools and his
performances
ft.com/work-
careersAUGUST 19 2019 Section:Features Time: 18/8/2019 - 16: 33 User: nicola.davison Page Name: CAREERS2, Part,Page,Edition: EUR, 15 , 1
РЕЛИЗ
ПОДГОТОВИЛАГРУППА"What's News"VK.COM/WSNWS