ABSTRACT

The dramaturgical nature of social interaction can be remarkably obvious. As Goffman (1959, 1961) might have put it, backstage can sometimes readily show through the frontstage. I refer to those settings in which performer and audience are consciously aware of their own role-playing. On these occasions, feigned emotions and the thoroughly “artificial” character of what is going on are apparent to everyone. Movies, plays and concerts fall into this category, but these venues are often professionally polished and so institutionalized that audiences are comfortable with the knowledge that what they see is “not real.”