ABSTRACT
In recent years, roleplaying has become increasingly used in business to train staff to deal effectively with a variety of situations that they might encounter in their workplace. Actors are especially suited to this type of work as they are not only trained and used to creating characters and working from scripts, but also often have the skill of improvisation, enabling them to react immediately to whatever is said or done by the staff member being trained. Roleplay is most often used by two major industry sectors – corporate, legal and financial companies, and medical – and this training is given either as a faceto-face meeting or on the telephone, with the roleplayer and the person who is being trained or assessed in separate rooms, speaking on an internal phone line.
