THEORIES ABOUT

PERFORMANCE
 PERFORMANCE
The action or process of
carrying out or accomplishing
an action, task, or function.
 Performance Theories
Performance theorists seek to
understand how human beings
make culture through the view of
communication as performance.
Theories about Performance
•Dramaturgical Theory
•Performance Ethnography
•Performance as Political
Action
DRAMATURGICAL

THEORY
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

“All the world’s a

stage. And all the
men and women are
merely players”
Dramaturgical Theory
Erving Goffman
• A Canadian- American sociologist,
social psychologist, and writer,
considered by some "the most
influential American sociologist of
the twentieth century"
 Humans:
• Guide and control how others see them
• Are different in social settings than
alone
• Are social con- artist
Impression Management
 Is a conscious or subconscious process in which
people attempt to influence the perceptions of other
people about a person, object or event. They do so
by regulating and controlling information in social
interaction.
• Impression management as a tool to make
ourselves look more appealing to other people.
Impression
Management
Impression Management
Goffman argued that all of us manage the impressions we
create.
EXAMPLES:
• Some women remove hair from legs, underarms, and other
parts of their bodies
• People dress differently when at work, on dates, and relaxing
with friends.
• In a class that you find boring, you periodically look up at the
professor and write in your notebook to give the impression
you are taking notes
The theory views life as a theater, but
does not claim that people/actors are
conscious of being on stage or of
creating performances
(Messinger,Sampson,&towne,1962)
FRONT STAGE BACKSTAGE
FRONT STAGE
• We are like actors in our lives.
• We use the tool of impression
management.
• We are trying to put our best
character for other people = to
make people like us and to be
accepted into society.
 BACK STAGE
• When you are no longer required to be
in a social environment, you’re on the
backstage.
• This is the place that is closed and
hidden from other people.
• It is the place we practice on how to be
social.
• We behave in a manner that we’re
comfortable with.
“COMFORT
ZONE”
DRAMATURGICAL THEORY

IT INVITES US TO UNDERSTAND
THE CONTEXTS OF OUR LIVES AS A
STAGE AND OUR ACTIONS AS
PERFORMANCES.
PERFORMANCE
ETHNOGRAPHY
Dwight Conquergood(1985)
- one of the prominent performance ethnographer.

“ethnographers study the diversity and

unity of cultural performance as a
universal human resource for deepening
and clarifying the meaningfulness of life”
CULTURAL PERFORMANCES:

• Intimate
• Universal aspect of human
experiences
Performance Ethnography
• Attempts to understand how
symbolic behaviors actually perform
cultural values and personal
identities.
-Example:
GRAFFITI
ETHNOGRAPHY
• systematic study of people and
cultures
• A method of interpreting actions in a
manner that generates understanding
in the terms of those performing the
actions.
Clifford Geertz
• American anthropologist who is
remembered mostly for his strong
support for and influence on the
practice of symbolic anthropology.
One of the most influential
ethnographers.
• Form of ethnography he prefers:
THICK DESCRIPTION
Perspective of
Conquergood and other
Ethnographers:

Human action is not simply

“raw data” to be viewed
objectively
• Henry Glassie (1982)
“ethnography is interaction, collaboration”

• Conquergood (1985)
“instead of speaking about them, one
speaks to and them”
 How does an ethnographer
manage to get outside of his/her
own cultural interpretations and
into those of other groups in
order to provide rich description?
According to Conquergood (1991)

Participant-Observation

An ethnographer must learn to

speak, listen and act with members
of the culture.
Hermeneutic Circle
• Consist of near-experience and distance-
experience concepts and meanings (Geertz
1973,1983)
• Near-experience- meanings are those that
have significance to members of a particular
culture or society.
• Distance-experience- meanings are ones that
have meaning to people outside of that particular
culture or society.
Hermeneutic Circle

Near-experience meaning, in which the

ethnographer progressively gains
appreciation of behaviors from the POV of
those behaving

Distance-experience meaning, in which

Translation of near-experience meaning into
ethnographer tries to understand behavior
distance-experience meanings for outsiders,
using concepts, assumptions & so forth that
while preserving the near-experience
are removed from the context study.
meanings

Behavior observed by people who

are outside of the ethnographer’s
culture or social community.
Performance Ethnography

The purpose of ethnography was to

understand groups to which we
don’t belong, not to change the
group or the contexts in which they
exist.
PERFORMANCE AS
POLITICAL ACTION
Performance as Political Action
• Appreciating how performances interact with
audiences, communities, and cultures to
name, contest and sometimes alter social
processes.
• Mary Susan Strine, Beverly Whitaker Long and
Mary Frances HopKins (1990) ; “sites of
political action that dramatize real-life
situations so as to move audiences to action”
Performativity
• Key concept for performance studies scholars.
• Performativity is the power of language to effect
change in the world: language does not simply
describe the world but may instead (or also)
function as a form of social action.
• Della Pollock(1998) “the process by which
meanings, selves and other effects are
produced… the embodied process of making
meaning”
Example:
Judith Butler’s Theory of
Gender Performativity
• Butler (1990,1993) performativity is a
“reiteration of a norm or set of norms”
• It is real only to the extent that it is
performed.
• “Your behavior creates your gender”
Bertolt Bretch (1961,1964)
• Performance can and should motivate
political change.
• Performance has the responsibility to
help people to see how society should
progress and how they can help it to
do so.
Performance as Political Action

• Scholars seek to create

performances that serve political
goals.
• The power of performance to resist
sedimented traditions