ABSTRACT
The major assumption of a depoliticized dramaturgical analysis is that elements from the theatre may be used as metaphor to understand the folk methods whereby social reality is constructed in everyday life. The radical approach rejects the notion of dramaturgy as metaphor and views it as ideology used, in its repressive modes, to construct a fraudulent social-life world. The utility of the elements of theatre as analytic categories with which to do a qualitative analysis is not in dispute as between conservative and radical practitioners of the art. The transcripts of the White House tapes of the Watergate and allied affairs provide a rich source of materials for dramaturgical analysis. In authentic, demystified construction of social reality, there is considerable dramatic license to invent and experiment. Each audience responded differently to the staging of the meaning of Watergate and in that difference is a point of intellectual leverage for understanding the dramaturgical construction of social reality.
