Schechner Research Paper

To portray these characters and make them real to the audience, as a group we had to use various theatrical techniques, including the Stanislavskian realistic acting methods and we explored and used a variety of different Brechtian techniques. Our chosen form of "Tragedy" was “War Stories", and

In his book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman (1959) focuses on the self as a staged production in which people actively present themselves to different audiences one encounters. To bolster his conceptualization, Goffman used an interesting metaphor of “all the world’s a stage” (1959, 254). This, he terms as a “dramaturgical approach” (Goffman 1959, 240) in which an actor puts on a show for others; drawing analogies between human behaviors and the theater. Goffman (1959) likens the individual to an actor on stage performing for and with other individuals involved in the situation. Three types of space exist for the actor to perform on, to enact the self, and to interact with others: the front stage, the backstage, the outer region. Goffman (1959) utilizes specific dramaturgical terms such as performance, teams, front and back regions, sign-vehicles, and highlights the process of dramatic realization. These terms will be discussed in the following sections.

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

Theatre is a collaboration of various forms of fine art which utilizes live performances presenting before the audience on a stage at a specific place within a scheduled time (Dugdale 10). The message is communicated through a combination of various channels like songs, speech gestures or dances. Stagecraft skills are combined with elements of art to make the performance more physical and near to real life experience. Theatre is categorized broadly into drama, musical theatre, comedy, tragedy and improvisation. Any form of these accepts integration of various production modes and collective reception to influence the artwork being presented. As a result of this cooperation of items in the theatre

“Audiences today want a real experience in their live performance, because they can get great script based entertainment at home, through various new media sources. Traditional theatre, which appeals on a mental, and hopefully also emotional level, has not been enough to compete with other media, and audiences have been declining. Physical theatre, by contrast appeals to the audience on a physical and emotional level, providing a much more immediate experience than traditional theatre” ~ (Artmedia Publishing in Zen Zen Zo’s “The Tempest” Teacher’s Notes)

After examining Goffman and Schechner's theories of reception and performance a performance is unique and interactive. The uniqueness of a performance is on the interactivity of the creation or production from the audience. Goffman defines performance by the influence it has on participants. If it doesn't influence the participants or audience it’s not a performance. While Schencher defines a performance by what is placed into the performance. Performances are bits of restored behavior that include living behaviors recombined, rearranged, and reconstructed. In other words performances exist as actions, interactions, and relationships. There are many kinds of performance in the arts, in sports , and in ritual. For example, War Horse Film was a

Alfred Hitchcock commented, “ what is drama but life with the dull bits cut out.” This quotes is typically true of drama, however verbatim theatre is contrary to this as it forces it audiences to confront serious issues and offers conventions that shy away from “fantasy” world. Verbatim theatre is from of documentary theatre in which plays are constructed from the exact words and testimonies from interviewed people. These testimonies are based of people opinions

Stanislavski was very sure of the role of his actors within the theatre. The actors are there to create a real, emotional and truthful imitation of the character they are playing, and to be so life-like that they seem to become their character. He said that the

“Theatre makes us think about power and the way our society works and it does this with a clear purpose, to make a change.”

Stella Adler, famous actress and acting teacher once stated that “the theatre was created to tell people the truth about life and the social situation.” Woyzeck by Georg Büchner is a play that perfectly represents Adler’s view on theatre. The plot of the play revolves around a troubled lower class man named Woyzeck, who ultimately murders his lover, Marie. But it is not merely the plot that makes this play align with Adler’s view, rather, it is the naturalistic style of the Woyzeck. Naturalistic theatre examines the human psyche and how one is influenced by nature and nurture. Through Büchner’s use of plot structure and thought, Woyzeck will be directed in a manner that makes the audience realize that human behavior is not simply a byproduct of nature versus nurture, that there is indeed a third option: self-will.

The purpose of this assignment is to record your life for one day and critically discuss how you are an actor in society; how you affect your social surroundings; and, how your daily life is shaped and constrained by society. This will allow you engage with many of the sociological concepts reviewed to-date including newer concepts such as impression management, stage theory and emotional labor.

The above example illustrates not only how the theatrical performance affects the audience, but also how the audience influences its dynamics, development and the characters within it. The actors feel a certain level of acceptance from the viewer, who demands a certain way of depicting the character. Theatre is not just entertainment, itís something much more than that ñ itís education. Theatre should always represent things, rather than

This view gives us a deeper understanding of behaviours as performances. A personal example of looking at a performativity culture and analyzing it, is the roles people play in everyday life. The role of a

Stanislavsky wrote three novels that discuss his acting method; An Actor Prepares, Building a Character, and Creating a Role. These books are from the perspective of a

Academic and artistic interest in something is usually a sure sign that matters are unclear, conceptual boundaries are blurred and that old certainties are anything but that. There is also little doubt that the major challenges we face: the media revolution, globalization and migration, climate change, the erosion of public finances and services (to name just a few) – have all in some way a bearing on the public sphere, the realm where issues are debated and where citizens are free to enter and engage in discourse. As the public sphere is primarily a discursive arena located outside and between state bureaucracies on the one hand and economics and business on the other, it occupies a crucial role in the functioning of so-called free societies. The question to be explored here is what role theatre and performance in practice play in this realm and how performance and theatre theory can contribute to the debates.” (Balme