University of Oregon
College of Education
Educational Leadership
5267 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403-5267
tel (541) 346-5171 fax (541) 346-5174
________________________________________________
May 15, 2001
To Whom It May Concern:
You can talk about resignation; you can even intellectually grasp ‘possibility.’
If you want to empower bone-level breakthroughs in understanding and a communal
shift in the personal operating state of your organization, I highly recommend
TransFormance Theatre.
TransFormance Theatre has been an integral part of the University of Oregon’s
ContinUO Executive Institute since its inception in 1999. As the director, I
have worked closely with the group over the last three years and am continually
impressed with their creativity, spontaneity, and professionalism.
ContinUO steps out of the traditional University educational role and challenges
its participants to take the risk of thinking and acting differently.
TransFormance Theatre is more than just a theatre troupe using the performance
arts to accelerate learning. Through TransFormance Theatre’s improvised
enactments of the program participants’ stories and perspectives, everyone
gets to observe themselves as they face the critical challenges of their jobs.
This helps them experience aspects of their behavioral styles that they are
often unaware of, in a way that is simultaneously honoring and truthful.
With humor and compassion, TransFormance Theatre shows us that our limitations
are self-inflicted, and when we see that it is our own hand holding us back,
when we experience it as a group with sighs all around and nods of recognition,
we move out of that grasp and everything becomes possible. Since the experience
is communal, what we’ve seen in the last three years is that participants
hold each other accountable to possibility once they achieve this awareness.
ContinUO is a leadership institute that in one week trains leaders to break
out of their typical modes of operation (read: limitation), and mobilize their
organizations and community to achieve breakthrough results for children.
In a group of over 100 people, our objectives are to create the urgency, accountability,
and sense of possibility required to achieve breakthrough results. This means
our program participants must generate an unshakeable commitment in themselves
and then be capable of taking it back and instilling it in the organizations
they lead. To do this requires much more than the garden variety of team building
activities.
TransFormance Theatre inspires an energy level that motivates and sustains the
group throughout the week (even after the troupe has left the institute on Wednesday!)
The group participates in music and improvisational theatre exercises which
make the energy of the whole group coherent, vital and engaged. Coupled with
the subtle energy techniques employed by Jonathan Rosen, urgency and common
purpose continue to rise through the week and carry over into the participants’
lives once they leave the institute.
ContinUO graduates achieve breakthrough results. The level of performance that
the institute inspires in its participants would not be possible without TransFormance
Theatre.
TransFormance Theatre brings out the best in people and empowers them to operate
from possibility. If you are trying to change the culture of your organization
at its very core, TransFormance Theatre will help you make it happen.
Sincerely,
JON LABROUSSE - Director, ContinUO
NANCY GOLDEN - Founder, ContinUO