Dramaturgical Perspective Views Our Daily Interaction Like We Are On A Stage Performance All The Time

In “Presentations of Self in Everyday Life,” Goffman is constantly explaining how everyday life is a dramaturgy. A dramaturgy is the art of dramatic composition and essentially the production of a theatrical play. A social situation is much like a play. Every play has a stage, actors, a script, a set, rehearsals, and practices. In a social situation, the stage is where the encounter takes place, the actors are the people involved in the encounter, the script is the social norms of the social encounter, and the set is the environment where the encounter takes place. It takes practices and

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” William Shakespeare may have written these words in As You Like It in 1600, but Erving Goffman truly defined the phrase with his dramaturgical theory. Dramaturgical analysis is the study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance. Unlike actors though, who use a script telling them how to behave in every scene, real life human interactions change depending upon the social situation they are in. We may have an idea of how we want to be perceived, and may have the foundation to make that happen. But we cannot be sure of every interaction we will have throughout the day, having to ebb and flow with the conversations and situations as they happen.

Functionalist Erving Goffman studies the sociological approach of Dramaturgy in his book ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’ (Goffman, 1959), he built his theory based on earlier work completed by Kenneth Burke. However there are distinct differences in features of the theory between Burke and Goffman as Burke believed that life was in fact a literal

Pretend you are playing the role of a character named Jordan, while discussing Erving Goffman’s theory of dramaturgy. Jordan finally made it. Jordan finally graduated university and has been lucky enough to receive an offer for an interview at the institution that he had been working towards his entire university career, an interview at the top law firm in all of Toronto. Now it is time to prepare. It is time for Jordan to show the firm that he is meant to be there. To show the firm that this position was meant for him, he must be the best version of himself. Jordan is competing against hundreds of other university graduates, but he must show them that he is the one. Jordan’s first impression matters, he must show them the qualities that they want to see to ensure that he receives the position at the law firm.

Erving Goffman was a sociologist known for developing the symbolic interaction and dramaturgical theory perspective. The dramaturgical theory is a social psychological perspective that studies human behavior and social interaction in terms of the analogy of the theater. This perspective is also related to symbolic interactionism. Symbolic interactionism is a theory based on interaction and communication, facilitated by many different words, gestures, and other symbols that have acquired various meanings. Dramaturgical theorist focus on how people manipulate various aspects of themselves and their settings to influence how others define and respond to them. In this perspective, “the self” is constructed of the various roles that one acquires, in order to present their various selves in ways that sustain particular impressions to their audiences. “The self” is a private possession established in and reflective of an individual’s personality, which includes ones values, beliefs, motives, traits, and dispositions. In addition, a person’s “self” is acquired through social relationships and is a structurally fundamental process that may change due to various situations. As humans interact with one another they are placed in social categories based on their attributes and actions. These assessments are primarily based on ones knowledge of roles.

2. I have a retail job, which requires me to put on a performance for the audience also known as the customers. Goffman states that life is like a theater, which has different regions in which we must act in order for our performance to be deemed as successful by the audience (Goffman, 1959). A performance is defined as the act that one puts on for the audience, which has some influence on the actor (Goffman, 1959). Regarding my retail job I must put on an act of helpfulness and caring in the product that I am selling, I must change my approach according to each person. If I approach a customer and ask if they need assistance and they state they do not, then I must respect their decision. On the other hand if I have a person that need my assistance I must make myself available to this customer; therefor my attentiveness changes depending on costumers and their needs. For my performance to be successful my colleges and I must work together as a team (Goffman, 1959). Team is situation that we define as a group through a social situation (Goffman, 1959). At my retail job we must work together as a team to help one another. As a team we must all act as helpful and caring sale associates if we do not the performance is seen as insincere (Goffman, 1959). We must help one other to keep the performance (Goffman, 1959). Since in our store there are different sections, sales floor, fitting rooms, and cash, no one person can do all three especially

Drama is a heavy genre to talk about. There are many puzzling situations that affect dramatic

Dramatic Truth Ballet Theatre is a ballet company and ballet school that is located in Kansas City, Missouri. Dramatic Truth School of the Arts was founded in Nashville, Tennessee in 1986. It is a Christ-centered professional performing arts school. Dramatic Truth School of the Arts develops in each of its dancers the unique fusion of excellent classical and modern technique with a heart of worship.

Jashuko Kwong-Roshi states that “original mindfulness is the actualization of humanity’s inherent basic goodness, it is creatively joined with the new therapies and offers a stream of helping and compassionate services for something very old (Rappaport, 2013, p.1). The North American Drama Therapy Association defines drama as the “intentional use of drama, and or theater process to achieve therapeutic goals (North American Drama Association, 2016). Drama therapy is both experiential and active, this particular approach to therapy can provide the context for the participants to tell their stories, set goals, solve problems, express feelings or achieve catharsis “unlike talk therapy, drama therapy gets there at a rapid pace. Role playing, which allows one to act out issues and problems is reportedly more effective than talking (Landy, 2016). Mindfulness Meditation serves as a compliment to drama therapy, and many of the skills sets and approaches that are developed through the form of art can actually be utilized in everyday life. Skills such as concentration, acceptance, openness, and loving-kindness are each contributors to the body of drama therapy work as well as the overall effectiveness of the therapy (Rappaport, 2013, p. 27).

With the development of modern technologies, millions of individuals are constantly connected with the digital world, where some individuals may correlate social media platforms as real life. However, it is reasonable to state that due to the vulnerability of teenagers and their difficult transformations, both mentally and physically, social media could have various influences on teenagers, that including low self-esteem. Erving Goffman's dramaturgical theory can help explain how one’s identity development is framed while on these social sites as well as while offline. Using collected data, qualitative methods have shown that such things like surveys that are randomly sampled can help approach this link between social media and an individual's sense of self. Although there were no significant relations identified, results indicate that social media platforms can possibly have a negative effect on individuals sense of self.

Goffman was the first to introduce the topic of dramaturgy in his work. Dramaturgy is his idea that life is a play. The people are actors and the every day world around us is our stage. (1959, p.13) He uses the image of a theatre performance to express the behaviour of people in everyday social interactions. Although not always aware of it, every individual in a social situation is assigned a role in the performance. Every individual obtains a role in social interaction and the audience observes and reacts to the performance. Goffman discussed the three different regions of performance as the front stage, the back stage and off stage. Each region has a particular impact on one’s performance.

ostmodernism was a movement that began in the 1960s that affected all forms of art and literature of that time period. Postmodernism followed modernism and it sought to challenge the ideas and values of modernistic theatre, modernism was formed to shake up theatre, introducing new theories of science and technology to explain the world, whereas postmodern theatre raises more questions than supplying the answers for the audience. Modernism created a ‘grand-narrative’ whereby there was only one meaning which would be told to the audience. Postmodernism broke down the ‘grand-narrative’ when Jean-François Lyotard wrote La Condition postmoderne: Rapport sur le savoir (The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge) (1979), he came up with

Despite the claim that Drama in Education ( DIE) as a pedagogy dimmed its popularity in the Western world since 1990 until 2016 (Gallagher, et al. , 2017), in the year of 2011, Morrow, et al. included it as one of the best practices in literacy instruction. Some of the teachers who had the experience of trying process drama in their classrooms found that the pedagogy improved students’ participations, pushed students to use their imaginations, performed deeper understanding of the topics being learned and made the students learn to have empathy ( Long, 1998). Do the voices from the classroom resemble to what researchers and theories have to say on process drama?

Ever since I took drama classes in high school I felt that we always put on an act. A show almost, that we put out for the people we interact with daily. Erving Goffman, “Canadian-American Sociologist” (Encyclopedia In., 2017) also believed this, he compared social interactions to the theater, where individuals take a particular role. According to Goffman this “theatrical metaphor consists of a stage, actors, and an audience” (Crossman, 2014). It also consists of the onstage, backstage and offstage. These three stages show different behavior on a person.

     There have been many dramatic plays over the centuries. Many of these plays have died in their time, while others have lived on. What makes these plays endure time and continue to be influential over time? Perhaps it is the storyline or the interesting nature of the play is what makes these dramas last. I think that it is the focus on human nature and its essential truths that keep these plays alive. Most of the plays, still enacted in theaters today, deal with social issues that people can learn from and relate to.