Dramaturgy

‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts’

(William Shakespeare, 1599) In his book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1971), Erving Goffman describes everyday interactions as a ‘performance’, involving actors, or people, in which they put on an act. He describes two extremes, sincere and cynical. A sincere act occurs when a performer is fully convinced into believing his or her own act- ‘the reality staged is the real reality’ (Goffman, 1971). A cynical act occurs when the performer has ‘no belief in his own act and no ultimate concerns with the beliefs of his audience’ (Goffman, 1971), this cynicism may be spiteful, for example, pretending to be nice to someone you dislike, or in the best interest of the other actors in the ‘scene’, for example, pretending to like that hideous jumper your great aunt knitted for you so you don’t hurt her feelings! In a face to face interaction, it is a lot easier to judge if someone is being sincere or cynical, by looking at body language or other cues. Goffman discusses front and back stage performances. Front stage means the area where the actor ‘formally performs and adheres to conventions that have meaning to the audience’ (1971). Back stage is where performers are present but audience is not, and the performers can step out of character without disrupting the performance (Leporc, 2011). An interesting journal article I found discussed undercover detectives in a dramaturgical framework. I found it funny, because the author, Bruce Jacobs, states his interest in the topic came about from a few ‘minor brushes with the law over drug use’ (1992). Busted! He describes four areas of deception related to dramaturgy- rehearsal (of the deal), which took place in the back stage; manipulating appearance, which was a back stage preparation for a front stage performance; verbal diversion, where the agent would distract the dealer from the centrality of the drug deal by talking about a non-related topic, also a front stage performance; and finally, physical diversion, which is also front stage, and involves body language manipulation, for example, the detective pretending to look around anxiously as a drug buyer might do. This would of course be a cynical performance, but Jacobs talked of ‘light’ and ‘deep’ cover detectives- those in deep cover were so immersed in the job that they sometimes changed their whole life to go deep undercover, and I have to wonder if they would start to believe their own performance? References Goffman, E 1971, ‘Performances’, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Harmondsworth, Penguin, pp28-82 Jacobs, B 1992, ‘Undercover Deception: Reconsidering Presentations of Self’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, vol. 21, pp 200-225. Leporc, A 2011, ‘Interpretation of Erving Goffman’s Dramaturgical Theory in Relation to the ‘Online Stage’ and Facebook’, accessed 28/9/12, http://antoineleporc.com/interpretation-erving-goffman’s-dramaturgical-theory-relation-“online-stage”-facebook/