a multiplicity of theatres (formal, informal, off and on stage) simultaneous in a TAMARA of sites; with starring and supporting cast of characters who (1) affect the quality of products and services, (2) enhance or lower productivity, and (3) constitute the concentrated and diffuse spectacles of theatrical performances experienced by employees, investors, customers and vendors. Metatheatre is defined here as the multiple and contending theatres that constitute organizations. The Metatheatre can be defined as a network of simultaneous, TAMARA-esque stage performances. In your organization you can never see all the theatre performed; it is occurring simultaneously on different stages; some you see and perform, but other acts you hear about from colleagues, vendors, and customers.

Literally, "beyond theatre"; plays or theatrical acts that are self-consciously theatrical, that refer back to the art of the theatre and call attention to their own theatricality. Developed by many authors, including Shakespeare (in plays-within-plays in Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream) and particularly the twentieth-century Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello ( Six Characters in Search of an Author, Tonight We Improvise), thus leading to the term "Pirandellian" (meaning "metatheatrical"). See also play-within-the-play.

The word ‘metatheatre’ was coined by Lionel Abel in 1963 and, although the term has entered into common critical usage, there is still much uncertainty over its proper definition, and what dramatic techniques might be included under its banner. Given its etymology (from the Greek prefix ‘meta’, which implies ‘a level beyond’ the subject that it qualifies), metatheatricality is generally agreed to be a device whereby a play comments on itself, drawing attention to the literal circumstances of its own production, such as the presence of the audience or the fact that the actors are actors, and/or the making explicit of the literary artifice behind the production. Some critics use the term to refer to any play which involves explicit ‘performative’ aspects, such as dancing, singing, or role-playing by onstage characters, even if these do not arise ‘from specifically metadramatic awareness’ ; whereas others condemn its use except in very specific circumstances, feeling that it is too often used to describe phenomena which are simply ‘theatrical’ rather than in any sense ‘meta’.