The Lion is undoubtedly the king of the jungle and has been portrayed as such in literature throughout the ages. The Lion is seen as a strong, good looking and dangerous cat with a regal nature and a haughty demeanor. (Small wonder that a lion family is called a "pride"!)

Theatre, and by this I mean the theatre of the West End, Broadway, Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway is as glamorous as the lion and the stars of the big shows command enormous salaries. The really successful shows run for years, drawing audiences from all over the world, and providing the tabloids with many a juicy tit-bit regarding the performers and their lives and loves.

The glamour surrounding the big hit-shows is a very necessary part of show business and the fans have come to expect outrageous behaviour and larger than life characters to be associated with theatre. Unfortunately, many people believe that Industrial Theatre needs to be as glamorous as it's West End siblings. This is fortunately not true.

Big budget launches of new products (Motor manufacturers are notorious for this!) making use of the full gamut of theatrical resources can and do cost a vast amount of money, but those gala events make up a very small part of the whole Industrial Theatre world.

Most Industrial Theatre productions make use of only two or three actors traveling light, with a whole show's props and costumes fitting into one medium sized suitcase. They perform in factories, offices, canteens, sports fields, from the backs of trucks, in trains, on aeroplanes and just about anywhere else. The glamour is non-existent and the work is hard and uncompromising. The actors who do these productions are often away from home for lengthy periods of time. They are the unsung heroes who never appear in newspaper gossip columns and who never see their faces in the glossy magazines. Their rewards lie in the results they achieve and the lives they touch. Because the difference between the glamorous West End and Industrial Theatre is that the one is aimed at entertaining and the other at facilitating learning.

At the Learning Theatre we have come to appreciate the enormous teaching potential of theatre, especially where mind-set changes are needed. Theatre is aimed at touching feelings and emotions and when it is aimed at the work lives and personal attitudes of the audience, it creates reaction in that audience and if it is then followed up by facilitation, theatre will create learning, mobilisation and change in the audience and in the organisation. And results like that have a glamour all of their own.