The Forgotten Kingdom Reframing Risk

BabsonARTS, Babson College, Wellesley, MA

Residency Details

Participants:

This residency aims to increase the relevance of the performing arts for Babson's business students, whose performing arts participation has been low.

Residency Purpose:

  • To explore the roles of failure/risk in complex and often challenging environments.

  • To cultivate curiosity about questions raised by The Forgotten Kingdom in terms of story and the relationships between iterative processes for designing, testing, revising and launching a multimedia production and entrepreneurialism.

Gatherings to Achieve Purpose:

  • Semester-long project for Babson juniors/seniors in Strategic Marketing, Babson’s marketing concentration capstone course. The student assignment is to market a campus preview of The Forgotten Kingdom, including a 'sharktank' concept competition. To succeed, students grapple with questions like: “Why should the arts matter to entrepreneurs?” and “in what ways can the arts inform business leadership and innovation?” Throughout the semester, Artistic Director Guy Mendilow will be in close contact with the students, leading up to the Spring residency.

  • Experiential workshops as part of Babson’s Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship (FME), a year-long required course in which first-year students launch their own business. Much of the students’ deeper learning happens through unanticipated challenges. Reframing Risk: From Courthouse to Greenhouse Models was designed to increase specificity of questions and storytelling around risks, failures and mistakes so that students may process what may have at first blush appeared to be challenges/frustrations/failures in FME towards learning and growth.

  • Special campus preview of The Forgotten Kingdom, marketed by students in Babson’s Strategic Marketing

  • Post-preview "office hours" to develop personal relationships between artists and students through one-on-one conversations around students’ curiosities and needs.

  • To Those Who Shaped Us — A Ten Toasts Dinner: Hosted by the Inquiry Arts team, this dinner provided an opportunity for members of the community-at-large to listen to one another and be heard in an atmosphere of trust, warmth, humor and candor. Through toasts, guests explored the ways a question from the production . The Forgotten Kingdom is an homage to the people and choices that shape the life of a young woman. The theme of the dinner was therefore the people who shape us. There were just two rules: At some point in the dinner each guest dinged their glass, shared a brief story about someone who shaped them and the way the storyteller was changed. The guest then offered a toast to an element in the theme (e.g. “to those who make us more resilient!”). The only other rule was that the last person had to sing their toast. Because The Forgotten Kingdom takes place in the former Ottoman Empire, the dinner was curated by a chef whose family has operated restaurants in Anatolia since the 1800s.

  • Arts & Business community conversation exploring intersections of entrepreneurship and the performing arts, including touching on risks in developing a multimedia production like The Forgotten Kingdom and approaches for turning difficulties into crucible moments.

  • World premiere of the complete, multimedia production The Forgotten Kingdom

  • “One of the things that stood out for me with my collaboration with ASC so far is that It's so engaged, with Guy Mendilow specifically. They are so thoughtful, and has really catered the residency to what we think our students will benefit from, but also in a way that's going to expand their perspectives. My biggest takeaway is hearing what other people thought who were at the [Forgotten Kingdom] preview. I heard words like luscious, mesmerizing. I was just really taken aback by how much people were moved by it, even though I expected that because I was very moved by it.”

    — Leslie Chiu, Director BabsonARTS, Babson College, Wellesley, MA

  • “I’m actually already speaking with Guy about having them join one of my finance courses next year as a guest, because I want to bring [their approach] into the course, which is a very different way to look at finance. You wouldn’t ordinarily think of a theatrical professional being someone you'd bring into a finance class, but I think it would be spot on. …Guy is an extraordinary person on a personal level. Their sensitivity, their ability to listen and ask incisive questions was tremendous on a teaching perspective. Theirrespect and thoughtfulness with our students was just extraordinary.”

    — Kevin Sweeney, Lecturer in Entrepreneurship, Babson College, Wellesley, MA

  • “Guy is a true partner…They led a masterful session, a custom designed and using experience, and improvisation to get my students to think about entrepreneurship and risk taking in novel ways that they didn't expect. [The students] are actually launching businesses and exploring how these questions are helpful as they launch their careers and businesses in real life.”

    — Jack McCarthy, Associate Professor of Practice, Management Division, Babson College, Wellesley, MA