MBAs Acting Out

Theater classes are a growing trend in business schools, as students learn "soft skills" by taking to the stage

By Alison Damast

MIT Sloan first-year student Taariq Lewis grasps his long-handled sword as he strides across the stage of the business school's auditorium, draped in regal robes and with a crown on his head. "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead…" proclaims Lewis, reciting the lines from Shakespeare's Henry V.

Is this really business school? Increasingly, yes, as a small but growing number of programs launch acting classes to teach a variety of "soft skills" to students.

Lewis, who performed in the condensed version of Henry V this fall, said the heightened drama, sword fights, and costumes of the week-long acting class were an interesting departure from the usual routine of business school. "When I got into the class, I didn't know what to expect, but then I got this awesome surprise," said Lewis, 34, who plans to pursue a career as an entrepreneur in high-performance technologies and finance after school. "I actually had permission to be really expressive."

A New Kind of Learning

While acting is not a class that typically appears on a business student's schedule of finance-oriented coursework, a few business schools are integrating acting and improvisation work into the MBA curriculum as a way to boost students' communication and presentation skills.

Among the schools offering classes are the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, which offers an acting elective where students are asked to write and perform their own plays; Babson College, which has a class titled Acting Skills for Success in Business; and Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business. Sloan gives its class each fall during its innovation period, a week each semester in which MBAs are encouraged to hone their soft skills through experiential classes.

"This type of training is still very new. There's an edgy quality to it because it's a little risky in nature," said Lau Lapides, a speech coach with Boston's Speech Improvement Co. who teaches Babson's six-week acting class. "It's not like sitting in a lecture class. It really takes students out of their comfort zone."

Honing Interviewing Skills

At Carnegie Mellon, where acting classes were first given about 50 years ago, the classes are extremely popular. Tepper is offering nine sections of its Business Acting elective this year and—in response to student demand—recently added a more advanced-level acting class.

Proponents say acting lessons can be a valuable tool in teaching students how to master the non-academic qualities that recruiters and employers seek in potential managers—namely teamwork, leadership, and strong interpersonal skills. According to a 2007 Graduate Management Admission Council corporate survey, companies that recruit and hire MBA students said they primarily focus on the candidate's interpersonal skills during the interview process, with 63% rating interpersonal skills as "very important."

Indeed, the aim of these classes is not to prepare students for acting careers, but rather to transform them into insightful leaders sensitive to the needs of those around them, said Christine Kelly, a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan who teaches management communication and offers a Shakespeare acting class each fall. For example, in Henry V—the play she stages each year—the English king assumes a number of vastly different leadership roles, from a wily negotiator to a general inspiring his army to go into battle. In this context, acting becomes the "perfect metaphor" for leadership, she said.