Dramaturgy (sociology) - Performance

Performance

There are seven important elements Goffman identifies with respect to the performance:

1. Belief in the part one is playing is important, even if it cannot be judged by others. The audience can only try to guess whether the performer is sincere or cynical.
2. The front or 'the mask' is a standardized, generalizable and transferable technique for the performer to control the manner in which the audience perceives him or her.
3. Dramatic realization is a portrayal of aspects of the performer that s/he wants the audience to know. When the performer wants to stress something, s/he will carry on the dramatic realization.
4. Idealization. A performance often presents an idealized view of the situation to avoid confusion (misrepresentation) and strengthen other elements (fronts, dramatic realization). Audiences often have an 'idea' of what a given situation (performance) should look like and performers will try to carry out the performance according to that idea.
5. Maintenance of expressive control refers to the need to stay 'in character'. The performer has to make sure that s/he sends out the correct signals and quiets the occasional compulsion to convey misleading ones that might detract from the performance.
6. Misrepresentation refers to the danger of conveying the wrong message. The audience tends to think of a performance as genuine or false, and performers generally wish to avoid having an audience disbelieve them (whether they are being truly genuine or not).
7. Deception refers to the concealment of certain information from the audience, whether to increase the audience's interest in the user or to avoid divulging information which could be damaging to the performer.