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Chapter 6 Lecture: Theories about Performance

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Mary J. Blige - No More Drama http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em328ua_Lo8

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Interpersonal Performance

All of us create and project images that suit our purposes in various moments.

Turner defined humans as homo performans to emphasize that humans are defined by their participation in rituals, social drama, and improvisational, creative performances in daily life.

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Dramaturgy is performances in everyday life.

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Performance ethnography explores how social communities are sustained and their values expressed and sometimes changed through performative practices such as rituals, ceremonies, rites of cultural practice, and oral history.

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DRAMATURGICAL THEORY (PERFORMANCE IN EVERYDAY LIFE) 

Goffman:  "It is social situations that provide the natural theatre in which all bodily displays are enacted and in which all bodily displays are read."

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Goffman:  "It is social situations that provide the natural theatre in which all bodily displays are enacted and in which all bodily displays are read."

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FRAMES

FRAMES are models we rely on to make sense of experience.

Frames typically reflect cultural knowledge; they vary from culture to culture.

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“IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT

is the process of managing setting, words, nonverbal communication, and dress in an effort to create a particular image of individuals and situations. 

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Debate! 

Impression management is

manipulative and deceitful in interpersonal communication contexts.

OR Impression management is highly

constructive because it allows us and others to behave in socially appropriate and beneficial ways.

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According to Goffman (1959), our efforts to create and project certain impressions may be either highly calculated or unintentional” (Wood, 2004, p. 119-120).  

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What do you do to manage impressions?

In this class, you are in-training to be a communication or business professional, so you need to pay attention to how you are managing your image and impression, particularly when making a presentation to the class.

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Describe a first date using Goffman's dramaturgical model.

What impression do you want to project to your date?

What definition of the situation do you want your date to accept?

How do you manage your dress, gestures, and words to project that impression of yourself?

How do you control the setting to support the image of yourself and the situation that you want to project to your date?

What can you not do if you want to sustain the desired impression of yourself? (Wood, 2004, p. 119)

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Front stage

Front stage is what is visible to an audience, whereas the back stage includes all that is not visible to an audience.  The back stage is where people behave in ways that might undermine their front stage performances.

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To fully appreciate how social interaction works as drama, we must recognize both the front stage and the back stage of the theater.

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Backstage

Communicators know how to keep backstage behaviors out of view of the audience so they don't invalidate the front stage performance.

Knowing there is a backstage where we can let our hair down and relax helps us tolerate the sometimes stressful front stage work we do.

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Talk about it.

Predict what would happen in your interpersonal communication if your backstage behaviors were observed by your audience.

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Talk about it.

Perception is highly individualized. See if you can put yourself in another person's place. Find a totally new way to think about or describe this idea.  Can you create a different perception? 

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Performance Ethnography (Conquergood)

Cultural performances are an intimate, universal aspect of human experiences; thus, studying them gives us insight into cultural life.

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Ethnography

  Ethnography is a method of

interpreting actions in a manner that generates understanding in the terms of those performing the actions.

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Personal Narrative

Some performance studies scholars are interested in understanding and performing personal and oral histories, including ones told by regular people in everyday contexts about ordinary events.

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Tell a Story

Tell a story from your experience, or relay a story you've heard or read.  Use the story as a case study to make sense of the course content as it relates to interpersonal communication. 

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Personal narratives

entail testimony which consists of statements based on personal experience about what someone, some activity, or something is, did, believes, feels like, or means.

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Listening—What do you think?

Arthur Frank (1995) said that "listening is hard, but it is also a fundamental moral act."

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Agree or Not?

"Frank (1995) notes that the core morality of personal narratives is a dual responsibility to self and others. . . when the teller of a story and the listener accept this responsibility, each has the potential to enter the other's life and to be changed by the entry" (p. 129).

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Agree or Disagree?

 "If you say a word enough, it becomes you" (p. 136).