The Corporation v The Dragon

The Corporation v The Dragon is a darkly comic, true-ish tale of workplace bureaucracy, institutional power and what happens when a seemingly harmless act of creativity collides with a Corporation determined to control the narrative.

It begins with something wonderfully simple. Storyteller has a story about a dragon called Dandy. Mark listens, helps turn that idea into a published book, and together they create something intended to be accessible, imaginative and enjoyable. For a brief moment, it appears to be exactly what it should be: a creative achievement worth celebrating.

Then The Corporation notices.

What follows is an increasingly absurd descent into HR processes, emails, meetings, threats, questionable logic and corporate self-importance. A payment of royalties becomes suspicious. Creativity becomes a problem to be managed. People who should perhaps know better become increasingly determined to stop a book, silence its creators and protect The Corporation from a threat that, to almost everyone outside its walls, appears not to be a threat at all.

At the centre of the story are Mark, an ordinary team leader who never expected to find himself fighting an organisation far larger than himself, and Storyteller, whose love of dragons and storytelling inadvertently helps ignite the whole affair. Around them emerges a cast of exaggerated corporate characters, processes and personalities whose attempts to regain control become increasingly ridiculous as the consequences of their own actions begin to catch up with them.

Blending satire, fantasy, workplace comedy and elements drawn from real events, The Corporation v The Dragon explores what can happen when bureaucracy loses sight of people, authority goes unchallenged and organisational processes become more important than common sense.

Beneath the dragons, absurdity and deliberately outrageous humour sits a more serious story about creativity, dignity, power and the right of ordinary people to question decisions made by organisations that expect not to be challenged.

Because sometimes the most dangerous thing you can do to a Corporation is not breathe fire.

It is simply to say, “No.”