Participation on Public Lectures or Cyber Forums
SUMMARY: At the beginning of the interview, David Boje mentions how his approach to stories was fundamentally changed when he met Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees, an artist, scholar and coach who espouses the concept of people as ‘living stories’ connected to nature. You can find out more about her work and philosophy here: https://ktwotrees.com/ David then talks about the 1981 play Tamara by John Krizanc, which is based on an actual meeting between the 1920s painters Tamara de Lempicka and Gabriele d’Annunzio at his villa near Lake Garda in Italy. The play allows the audience to follow the actors into rooms of their choice, so every audience member witnesses a different storyline. He uses the set-up of the play as an analogy for multinational companies that have different ‘living stories’ in multiple locations. David’s previous work on the Disney corporation is of particular interest here: 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. We then move on to David’s more recent work, specifically his book on stories around the climate emergency: Boje, D. M. (2019). Storytelling in the Global Age: there is no Planet B. London: World Scientific.