Why and how I’ve integrated Shakespeare into All the World’s a Workplace
In this extract from her introduction to “All the World’s a Workplace”, Pilar explains why she turned to Bill for inspiration, and how she integrated his language into the text.
As Peter Brook, pioneer of actor-focused theatre said in his book Tip of the Tongue, “Shakespeare had the absolute need to make us feel once again that we’re all part of the human race, all part of humanity.” I’ve tried to bring this centre-stage in my writing by amplifying our struggles through characters such as Hamlet, Helena, Juliet or Macbeth, who find themselves in extraordinary situations. By introducing these characters into our technology-enabled collaboration space, I hope they will act as a playful reminder that the protagonists of remote work are very human.
To do this, I’ve combined classic literature with new technology: I fed certain scenes and monologues into ChatGPT and worked with the bot to create suitable adaptations reflecting different aspects of remote work. I edited these into something that made sense to me, and then returned to Shakespeare’s originals to find phrasing I could weave back into the adapted texts. Now I can no longer distinguish my own edit’s from the chatbot’s, an example of tech-human collaboration that may hint at how creative work is likely to evolve. (And yes, we will examine the dangers of this in the book.)
By turning to Shakespeare’s scenes and monologues, I’ve also been able to approach remote work through the dilemmas and struggles of fictional characters. It’s given me a complementary angle to add to the many anecdotes, conversations and research I’ve come across over the years. It’s also given me some distance from my long-held assumptions, opening up a broader perspective.
All to say, I hope this ‘Fakespeare’ will provide you with a different lens through which to see the experience of individuals as they embrace, struggle or simply navigate the online collaboration space. (And if you’re unfamiliar with reading Shakespearean text do not fret; there’s a short bootcamp you can work through after this introduction.)
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Remote, hybrid, distributed or flexible: Pilar Orti invites us to look beyond the labels and rethink what collaboration, autonomy, trust and being together really mean. All the World’s a Workplace is a thoughtful and refreshingly different reminder that work has changed much more than the people who do it.”
