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Borreca 1993 - Political Dramaturgy
Borreca 1993 - Political Dramaturgy
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Political
Dramaturgy
A Dramaturg's(Re)View
Art Borreca
Theatretakesplace all the time whereverone is, and art simplyfacilitatespersuadingone this is the case.
-John Cage (in Gilman 1969:231)
Context
Philosophical
In his Lives, Plutarch tells us that the Greek poet and politician Solon
went to see Thespis following one of his performances. Solon "asked
[Thespis] if he was not ashamed to tell so many lies before such a number
of people":
and Thespis replying that it was no harm to say or do so in a play,
Solon vehemently struck his staff against the ground: "Ah," said he,
"If we honor and commend such play as this, we shall find it some
day in our business." (n.d.: I 5)
Whatever the historical truth of this anecdote, it dramatizes a truism about
the relationship between theatre and politics throughout Western history.
Ever since theatre emerged as an aesthetic mode, both theatre practitioners
and politicians, from Thespis and Solon to Harold Pinter and Ronald
Reagan, have had to deal with the affinities between politics and theatre.
As Erving Goffinan wrote, "All the world is not, of course, a stage, but
the crucial ways in which it isn't are not easy to specify" (Goffman
1959:72). Substituting "politics" for the "world," the same might be said
about political life.
In what sense is politics dramatic and theatrical? Or, to follow Goffman
more closely, in what crucial ways is politics not theatrical?Since the I96os
a cross-disciplinary field of research and discourse in the social sciences,
known as "dramaturgy" or "dramaturgism," has burgeoned under the application of such questions to social interaction.' The field has historical
The Drama Review 37, no. 2 (TI38),
Summer 1993
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Dramaturgy 57
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Dramaturgy 59
ping back from the theatricalparadigmhe had been using and explaining
that it was "a rhetoricand a maneuver":
This reportis not concernedwith aspectsof theaterthat creep into
everydaylife. It is concernedwith the structureof social encounters.
[.. .] A characterstagedin a theateris not in some ways real,nor
does it have the same kind of real consequencesas does the thoroughly contrivedcharacterperformedby a confidenceman; but the
successful
stagingof eitherof these types of falsefiguresinvolves the use
of realtechniques-the same techniquesby which everydaypersons
sustainrealsocial situations.(1959:254-55)
For political dramaturgy,phenomena like media politics and the Reagan
presidency have forced again the question of whether reality inherently
possesses theatricalqualities,or whether it is in some sense nontheatrical
but being encroachedupon by forms of theatre,becoming "theatricalized."
The question, In what sense is politics theatrical?,is a variationon the
philosophical question that besieges all dramaturgy.One approachto adhave
dressingthe question is to examine the ways in which dramaturgists
used theatricalterms. Inevitablysuch an examinationis a meta-critique,an
interpretationof how dramaturgistsuse not only such terms as "role"and
"performer"but also "drama"and "theatre"themselves.This is as it should
be: the foundationsof dramaturgical
theory (Burke,Goffnan, et al.) are really critiques of terminology, of how to talk about the relations between
theatreand social life. Both Burke and Goffmanshow us that the theatrical
qualitiesof social life are intimatelyrelatedto a consciousnessof what we
mean precisely when we say that it is dramaticor theatrical.3If political
dramaturgismproceeds from the premise that political realityis eminently
describablein theatricalterms, then those terms must be used as precisely
as possible.
Moreover, a meta-critiqueof political dramaturgyacknowledgesthat the
relationbetween theatreand politics is first and last a philosophicalmatter.
Because it dealswith our perceptionof politics as theatre,with the fact that
politics appearsto possess theatricalqualities, it raises phenomenological
questions.Because it dealswith the natureof politicalreality,it raisesontological ones. To employ dramaturgical
terminologyat all is to have to deal
with its ontological status. This point is raised repeatedly in reviews of
literature.Dennis Brissettand CharlesEdgley arguethat "dradramaturgical
maturgy, and perhapsthe rest of social science, might be better off dropping all claims to ontology";after all, they argue, "being cognizant of the
dramaturgicalprincipleis only one way of being aware of one's awareness
[. . .]" (1990:34, 33; emphasis mine). But the fact that dramaturgyis a
mode of meta-awarenessat all suggeststhat its ontologicalpropertiesought
to be scrutinized.James Combs and Michael Mansfield,whose work figures prominentlyin the field of political dramaturgy,see this clearlywhen
they say:
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Dramaturgy 6I
between supposedly different realities-is the province of political dramaturgy. Politicaldramaturgywonders, Why does politics appearto us in the
garbof acting and performance,spectatorshipand response,and all the elements of dramalearned in high school: protagonistsand antagonists,confrontation,conflict, suspense, crisis, climax, and catharsis?
Why do politics
and theatreseem to sharecertainessentialattributesas human activities?
Traditionsof Analysis
Political dramaturgistshave failed to build coherent systems of thought
that addressthese sorts of questions.Many settle insteadfor a Solon-esque
view, assumingeither that to observe the theatricalaspectsof politics is to
see the ways in which politics has become corruptedby the evil forces of
performance,pretense, "dramatic"appealsto emotion, etc.; or that politics
and theatreare distinctlyseparate,with the theatrebeing set apartfrom reality. This division of the world into the "real"world of (business,political) affairs and the "unreal"world of the theatre underlay much early
political dramaturgy,spawninga traditionof analysisthat began and ended
with the identificationand categorizationof the dramaticelements of political life. No one in this tradition complained about the encroachment of
the theatre upon politics; in fact, they were acknowledging that the time
had come to take the dramaticqualitiesof politics seriously.They're there,
they said, they haveto be analyzed.But they didn't go much furtherthan
this.
For example, Orrin Klapp (I964) identified seven "outcomes"of "dramatic confrontation among public men" [sic] (e.g., hero-making,villainmaking, and fool-making)without pursuingthe natureof the confrontation
itself and why it can be called "dramatic"at all. His approachsuggested
that politics is "dramatic"because it manifestselements of drama.But this
is to suggest that a house is a temple becausethey both have windows and
doors, without examining the structureof either the house or the temple.
If Kennedy was made into a "hero" by the Cuban Missile Crisis, and
Nixon into a "villain"by Watergate,by what process did that occur?Similarly,Iran-Contrawasn't "dramatic"becauseit made Oliver North a "hero"
nor because the hearings naturallycontained suspense and climax. Symbolic interactionsuggeststhat perceptionsof North's characterarose from a
dynamic among players,media audience,and his own performancebefore
the cameras,in which he cast himself as a loyal servantof America. "Suspense" and "climax,"along with "character,"are attributesof a particular
arrangementamong those elements.
It's intriguingthat earlydramaturgists
didn'tseek out those arrangements,
but ratherthe elements themselves. Following Klapp, RichardMerelman
(1969) identifieddramaticdevices (personification,identification,suspense,
climax, catharsis,and others) and the kinds of political issues, settings,
group situations,and encounters that seemed to encourage their use, but
never stopped to ask, If dramaticdevices are "salient"(Merelman'sword)
at particularpoints in politicalprocesses,does this have to do with the natures of the processes themselves?More recently,James Rosenau (1980)
identifiedthe dramaticcharacteristics
of politicalsystems, "performancecriteria"for analyzingthem and, more important,"systemdramas"and "process dramas" that recur around the world (he provides a long list of
"socializationdramas,""decision-policy dramas,""bureaucraticdramas,"
and "mobilizationdramas").But althoughRosenau'sthinkingis highly systematic-characteristics,criteria, and dramasdepend on one another for
their existence;and these interlockingconcepts derive from the insight that
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media stagingsmystifythe massesinto believing that they are in fact participatingin a democraticsociety, when they actuallyare not.
Through this paradigm,anticapitalistdramaturgistsbegin to probe the
theatricalmanifestationsof politics. Although they see media stagings(and
accompanyingimage-projections)as instrumentalitiesof a "falsepolitics"
(Welsh I985:5)-untruthful or inauthentic if not necessarily unreal in the
assumptionthat politicalrealityis necessarilya form of impressionmanagement enactedon a societalscale. Theatrelikestagingsand images, as instrumentalities of capitalistpower-maintenance,create an illusion that is the
capitalistrealityitself These can be broken down into a series of "mystifying" elements, such as television debates that maintain "the spectatornature of American political life," personality cults, and "the symbolic
generationof patriotism,"and, above all, democraticideology itself (Welsh
1985:4, et passim). Such stagings and images do not result from conscious
Anticapitalistdramaturgs
viewedthe ClarenceThomas hearingsas a perfect
exampleof howfar capitalist societyis willing to go
to dramatizeitsfalse
democratic
ideology.In this
analysis,politicsis a
processthatgenerates
appearances(in this image
Anita Hill is testifying
beforethe Senate) that can
becomerealityin the course
of beinggenerated.(Videotape courtesyofJerri
Hurlbutt)
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world but sought to give the impression-worldwide-of democraticcarefulness, of judicious deliberationof a citizen'saccusations.Media criticismsof
the process were part and parcel of this false realityof judicious deliberation, suggestingthat criticismis "open"and centralto a largerdeliberative
process. False democraticideology was dramatized-andthe statusquo sustained-through the spectacle of media-createdpersonalitiesclashing with
one another.
The achievement of anticapitalistdramaturgism
begins with the perception of politics as a process that generatesappearances(stagings,images)
that canbecomerealityin the course of being generated.(The public personalitiesof ClarenceThomas and Anita Hill were constructedby a false process, but who is to say that who they appearedto be isn't who they really
assertvirtuallyexistentialconare?)And more important,the anticapitalists
ditions that persistin a self-perpetuating,
mediatedpoliticalworld: e.g., the
cultivation of political paralysis,inequality, and fundamentalunfreedom
through mass dependence upon media (see Young and Massey 1977:80,
Hall I979:298-99). Low voter turout, especiallyamong minorities,is the
cleareststatisticalevidence of these conditions.
But the work of these dramaturgists
is seriouslylimited by their emphasis on enforcement.They build upon Burke, Goffnan, and broadconcepts
of symbolic and "dramaturgical"
interactionwithout establishingthe theoretical status of the theatre in their analyses. They speak of "dramatizations," "stagings,"and "images,"without addressingtheir theatricalorigins,
and without elaboratinga dramaturgical
vocabularythat correlatestheatrical
aesthetics with political reality. Although their assumption that capitalist
leads them to examine the compoundingof theatre
politics is dramaturgical
and reality,they don't establishthose largerterms, "theatre"and "politics,"
themselves.
Above all, they overenforcethe dramaturgical
paradigmby takingimagecultureitself as evidence of capitalisttyranny.They argue that a process of
will help to create an "authenticpoliticalreality"(Welsh
"demystification"
1985:22), but they don't address the problem of authenticity and
inauthenticity. In a world in which the projection of images enforces a
existence, how will such demystificationtake place?Through
dramaturgical
new uses of the media?(How can the media be separatedfrom image-projection and staging?What would an "authentic"use of the media be like?)
Through a divorce between the media and politicallife? (How will thisbe
accomplished?)Anticapitalistdramaturgismfailsto probe the natureof theatreto get at how the media theatricalizesrealityin the firstplace, to gain a
perspectiveon the relationshipamong the dramaturgical
society, the media,
and the theatre.5
Although no dramaturgicalparadigmcan addressall cases (politicalsystems, processes, events) or answer unassailablythe question of simile vs.
homology (Is dramaturgymetaphorical?), to make a convincing claim
about that question it needs to establishthe following: (I) a theoreticalbase
that clarifies politics as a form of symbolic interaction with unavoidable
dramaticor theatricalqualities;(2) an interpretationof modem image-culture and its relationsto politics as symbolic interaction;(3) an interpretation of both drama (the Burke emphasis) and theatre (the Goffman
emphasis)as models for the kind of image-generationfundamentalto that
interaction;(4) some inquiryinto the natureof theatreas an art, and about
how aspects that distinguishit genericallymanifestthemselvesin mediated
politicalprocesses.
The most theoreticallyrefinedpoliticaldramaturgism
has addressedthese
concerns by bridging political philosophy and media or rhetoric studies,
Dramaturgy 65
and by settling on two extreme points of focus. First,the broadlytheoretical, in which a coherent dramaturgicalsystem works from a refined sense
of the theatreitself. Second, the case study, in which single (and singular)
events, systems, or processes are shown to pose essential dramaturgical
questions.6
The great danger of the case study has always been that any
case can be easily stretchedbeyond the theoreticallimits that
it can endure. But there is one extended study that overcomes the danger, providing a possible bridge between the
case study and "universalizing"theory.
What Craganand Fields leave out of their study is an idea of what they
mean by "dramatistic."
They imply that messagesabout the cold war and
power politics are more "dramatistic"
presumablybecause those dramasinvolve greaterconflict, and that Peoriansprocessmedia messagesin termsof
Burke'sfive key terms of dramatism.Yet they seem to be suggestingsomething more fundamentalabout audiencehungerand its relationto the making of "politicaldramas."They seem to suggestthat dramatisticreceptionis
a need cultivated and sustained by dramaticmediation: that we receive
election campaigns,for instance, in dramaticterms because they are programmedand portrayedthat way, and that they are programmedthat way
to close a vicious circle that either begins or ends with our dramatistic
need. But in contrastto the anticapitalists,they also imply that this circle
separates"politicaldramas"from the usualrun of politicallife.
To this day the quantitativedramaturgical
case study remainsan exciting
possibility,which might synthesize dramaturgywith scientific research.In
the meantime a fuller articulationof political dramaturgycan be found in
qualitativecase studies, such as James M. Mayo's (1978) examination of
"environmentaldramaturgyin the political rally";Joanna B. Gillespie's
(1980) study of first ladies as symbolic charactersin the "moralityplay" of
presidentialleadership;Michael T. Hayes' (1987) investigation of policymakingwith regardto the nuclearfreeze;William F. S. Miles (1989) study
of the 1983 election campaign in Nigerian Hausaland; and Joseph W.
EsherickandJeffreyN. Wassterstrom's(199O) study of the Chinese "political theatre,"as played out in the 1989 democracy movement focused in
TiananmenSquare.
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Dramaturgy 67
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resentativeswho are intended at most to actfor the people and who at least
act beforethem, are observed by them (are objects of spectatorship).
Wagner-PacificislightlyrearrangesBrown's claim by demonstratingthat, in
mass-mediatedEuro-Americansocieties, a theatricalpolity comes into being when society organizesitself theatrically,by developing "stages"(mass
communicationssystems)that compel a theatricalorganizationof the world
(places where politicians, activists, etc., can be observed by mass audiences); and moreover, that compel a theatricalconsciousnessof politicalreality, a sense that some degree of performance skill is essential to the
attainmentof political goals. With its impulse of representationas defined
by Brown, politics containsthe seeds of theatrewithin it; but it only "becomes" theatre when it manifestsitself as such, when representativesare
providedwith stageswhere they become observedby audiences,and when
spectatorship-ademandfor stage performance-becomesthe norm in political interaction.
Such was the case with the Moro kidnapping,and has been the case increasinglyin Euro-Americanpolitical events in the past two decades. The
centralityof media to politicalculture,and the developmentof ways to manipulateit, has heightenedthe dramaticconfigurationlatent in politics;discrete politicaland social dramascome more regularlyinto being in a context
that was alreadyinherentlytheatricalbut which did not alwaysgive way to
so many individual"performances."
Thus the VietnamWar and the protests
and endemic of an evolving "societyof the
againstit were media-saturated,
spectacle";but the Gulf War was plotted and performedwith an awareness
of the media stage. It was perhapshistory's most fully staged Theatre of
War. What Wagner-Pacificishows us is that the dramaticconfigurationhas
alwaysbeen presentbut that explorationsof the "mediastage"have made its
presence-andour awarenessof its presence-moreobvious.
The "inclusive" theoreticians who resemble Wagner-Pacificiinclude
James E. Combs, Michael W. Mansfield, Dan Nimmo, and Murray
Edelman.With the exception of Edelman,all of them get lost in categories
but arrive(like Edelman)at broad perspectivesfor applyingdramaturgyto
politics. For Combs and Mansfieldworking together,these include areasin
which dramacan be perceivedmost clearly:e.g., leadership,ritualand ceremony, mass media, the use of symbols, the notion of history and culture
in toto as drama (I976:xxiii-xxviii).
For Combs
(I980),
sions" of political drama:ritual,institutions,leadership,mass media, campaigns, and political movements (I980:I6-17, et passim).For Nimmo and
Combs, dramaturgical
analysisrevealsthe forms of "pseudo-myths"dramatized by politicalflacks(e.g., pseudo-qualities,pseudo-issues,pseudo-events,
etc. [I980:12-116]), as well as dramaticelements encouragedby the media: e.g., melodramaticnews coverage; campaignsas "seasonalritual dramas";the "nationalsoap opera"of politicalcelebrity(I983). Categorization
of this kind springs from a laudableeffort to systematizepolitical dramaturgy and to mark off the realmsof experience in which social or political
dramamanifests itself. (Admittedly, the current meta-analysispartakesof
this penchantfor categorization.)But it can be taken to an extreme point
at which categorizationcordons off political dramasfrom reality,and loses
sight of how those dramascome into being in the firstplace.
On this crucial matter, Combs, Combs and Mansfield, Nimmo, and
Nimmo and Combs all develop versions of Wagner-Pacifici'sperspective,
although with an importantdifference.Their perspectivesallow for greater
flexibilityin the making and manifestationof political dramas,and-in the
course of their categorization-they elaborate more fully than WagnerPacificidoes the dynamicof the actor-stage-spectator
triad.Where Wagner-
Dramaturgy 69
Pacifici concerns herself primarilywith phenomenology, with the boundaries of the configurationthat can be called "socialdrama,"the others extend their work to the dynamicsof dramaticand theatricalbeing that take
place once politicaldramaappearsor makes itself known.
At the heart of their work is the idea that "social drama"or "political
drama"and its "dimensions"or mythologies are produced and sustained
triad,with the
through the active reinforcementof the actor-stage-audience
more or less equal input of all three elements. In this regard,the work of
these politicalscientistsis more purelysymbolic interactionistthan WagnerPacifici's or the anticapitalists.For Combs, Mansfield, and Nimmo, the
presence and manipulationof mass communication stages as such doesn't
bring political dramainto being. Rather,political dramais producedwhen
essentialcomponents of ongoing symbolic interactionbecome "reified,"to
use Combs' (1980) term: when a place in which political action takes
place, for example, or self-imagespresentedby personsinvolved in that action, or the action itself, is treated as an object of either self-conscious
performanceor passive spectatorship,thereby transformingthem into "settings," "roles"or "dramatic"actions. Once symbolic interactionbecomes
reified, "dimensions"of politicaldrama(again to use Combs' term) come
into being: political campaignsenact a repeated reificationof particularly
persuasiveactions, symbols, and images. This perspectiveimplies that political drama involves a compulsion to repeat what has worked in the
past. This is why, in the 1992 presidentialcampaignwe hearda great deal
[T]he Willie Horton ad exemplified the reificationof television as a political stage, but television is not inherently dramatic (from the perspective of politics) until it is reified in
this way.
of dramaticrhetoricabout "familyvalues." The Republicanpartycompulsively repeatedthat which seemed to work for Ronald Reagan,becoming
rigid and stagnantin its rhetoric.
Like Wagner-Pacifici,Combs, Nimmo, and Mansfield all suggest that
the mass-mediabecome "stages"when they are treatedas such (reifiedinto
foci of passivespectatorship);however-and this is a crucialdifference-they
see the mass-mediaas a dynamic element within the performance-stagespectatortriad,ratherthan as a precipitatingforce. Their perspectiveis altogether more dynamicallyflexible than Wagner-Pacifici's.They see political
dramaturgyas a specific form of symbolic interactionistanalysis,which engages with forever emerging, receding, and re-emergingpolitical dramas.
These articulate(and re-articulate)themselveswhen politicalindividualsact
with an expectationof being seen and scrutinized.The final implicationof
Wagner-Pacifici'sanalysisis that the mass media in and of themselvesdramatize politics by offering "stages"where performanceand spectatorship
are bound to take place. For Combs, Nimmo, and Mansfield,the massmedia are only that-media-with their own properties(which include their capacities for mass communication).They don't demanddrama,but they are
easily reifiedinto stagesthroughthe alteratingly free and bound actionsof
human beings who, in the course of symbolic interaction, invest their
selves, the symbols they wield, the actions they take, and the places in
which these occur, with the statusof things either to be performedor ob-
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Dramaturgy 71
2.
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ences might have been relevantonly minimallyto the "drama"he generated. It seems possible that the staging of political dramamight take
place first in the realm of sheer consciousness,second in some form of
scripting (mental plan or written document), and third in physical and
gestural embodiment; from there it might become a repeated, reified
dramathrough mediation and "fantasychaining."To speak of "political
theatre"might be to speak only of the first moment of its occurrencein
the physicalworld, the moment of its initialmanifestation.
The assumptionthat political dramaturgyought to attend mainly to
political performance-speeches,media manipulation,etc.-encourages a
limited notion both of political theatreand of theatreart. If it becomes
reified, a performativetriadmight certainlybe the focus of analysis,but
it is more crucialto see dramaand performanceas thought structures,as
anticipatedprojectionsof images and thoughtsupon the world, as peculiarparadigmsof consciousness.
The least penetrating use of political dramaturgyis the simple (and
simplistic) demystificationof media manipulation,of "stagings."Politicians don't have control over every performancetriad that comes into
being in the course of a campaignor a term of office. For example,television as a politicalstage has become to a greatextent a givenreality.To
employ the resourcesof the realitymight not be to falsifyit but to be
true to it. The precisepoint at which this use becomes manipulationis a
differentmatterfrom the fact of staging, and one of the most complex
issues facingpoliticaldramaturgists.
3. Aproposthe questionof staging:the modesin whichpoliticaldramacan be
The modes need not necessarilybe theatrical-theydon't have
"staged."
to involve performanceand observation.The broadcastmedia of course
demand performanceor, at least, enactment,
but even in print one might
"stage"a dramawithout actually,physicallyperformingit. For if political
dramainvolves a performer-stage-spectator
configuration,it doesn't have
to be performedto exist, although of course it might in some sense be
fulfilled(or definitelyinitiated)when it is.
The idea that politicians, like actors in the theatre, act to gain some
type of responsefrom their public emphasizesonly one-halfof an essential dialecticaltransaction.As in certainforms of theatre,the responsein
political life has the potential to be an action itself; the performance
might be joined, setting in motion an ever-shiftingsymbolicinteraction,
in which performersand audiencemembersmove swiftlybetween these
"parts,"and the drama,as it comes into being, gains potentialfor perpetual regenerationthrough a triadthat reformulatesitself over and over
again.
Dramaturgy 73
namics of actor and action analysis and the forms these can take. We
need to see how the politicalactor engages in the constructionof political symbolic action, the natureof her or his involvementin its dramatic
reification.This must involve a revision of Burke and Goffinan, of the
very idea of manipulation;it must not treat settings,symbols, etc., as if
they were divorced from the persons "performing"with or through
them. The concept of "politicalactor" or "player"is inseparablefrom
how she dressesor speaks,what she holds in her hands,the overallimpressionshe makes in the "reification"of performancetriads.
Why PoliticalDramaturgy?
To have reviewed politicaldramaturgismin this way is to suggest that it
is essentialto the politicalage in which we live now. Politicallife is getting
far ahead of where we are in our theory and consciousnessof dramaturgical reality.It's strikingthat politicaldramaturgyhas peteredout somewhat;
it makes one wonder about the relationshipbetween the worlds inside and
outside academia.There is an urgent need for an inclusivetheory of political dramaturgythat has something not only to say but to do in affecting
our consciousness of how our media-saturatedworld works, and of how
politics operateswithin it. This is not a Solon-esque warning, but a (distressingly)detachedobservationof what's going on.
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Notes
i. In the social science literaturethe terms "dramaturgy"and "dramaturgism"are used
interchangeably. In this essay I use the term "dramaturgy"because it is stylistically
less turgid, although it might cause confusion with the term "dramaturgy"as used
by theatre critics and dramaturgs.
2. See Bruce E. Gronbeck, "Dramaturgical Theory and Criticism: The State of the
Art (or Science)," (I980:3I5-330) for an excellent review of the dramaturgicalliterature as of 1980. For a more recent general review of the literature, see Dennis
Brissett and Charles Edgley, "The DramaturgicalPerspective" (1990:1-46).
3. For Burke, dramatism entails the philosophical interrogation of reality and being,
our perception of these, and our meta-perception in the form of our discourse
about them. In "Dramatism"Burke wrote: "Dramatismis a method of analysis and
a corresponding critique of terminology designed to show that the most direct
route to the study of human relations and human motives is via a methodical inquiry into cycles or clusters of terms and their functions" (1968:445). See also
Dramatism and Development (1972).
Dramaturgy 75
Schechter staged self-conscious political theatre in order to provoke an awareness of
false (and more hidden) theatrical manipulations at work in the New Haven power
structure (see Schechter 1989).
A SelectedBibliography
of PoliticalDramaturgy
(Although this bibliography focuses on dramaturgy in political science, it
also includes works consulted in sociology, media theory, rhetoric studies,
and performance studies.)
Atkinson, Max
Our Masters' Voices:The Languageand Body Languageof Politics. London
I984
and New York: Methuen.
Boorstin, Daniel
The Image:A Guide to Pseudo-Eventsin America.New York: Atheneum.
1987
Bormann, Ernest G.
1972
"Fantasyand Rhetorical Vision: The Rhetorical Criticism of Social Reality." QuarterlyJournal
of Speech58 (no. 4):396-407.
Brissett, Dennis, and Charles Edgley
"The Dramaturgical Perspective" and "Political Dramas." In Life as The1990
ater:A Dramaturgical
Sourcebook,edited by Brissett and Edgley, I-46, 34752. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter (revised edition).
Brown, Norman 0.
Love'sBody. New York: Random House.
1966
Brustein, Robert
"News Theatre." The New York Times Magazine, i6 June: 7, 36, 38-39,
1974
44-45, 48.
Burke, Kenneth
1966
Languageand SymbolicAction: Essays on Life, Literature,and Method. Berkeley: University of California Press.
"Dramatism."In The InternationalEncyclopedia
1968
of the SocialSciences,Vol. 7,
edited by David L. Sills, 445-51. London: Macmillan. (Also in Combs
and Mansfield 1976:7-17.)
A Grammarof Motives.Berkeley: University of California Press.
1969
A Rhetoricof Motives.Berkeley: University of California Press.
1969
Dramatismand Development.Barre, MA: Clark University Press.
1972
Burns, Elizabeth
1972
Theatricality:A Study of Conventionin the Theatreand in Social Life. New
York: Harper and Row.
Cohen, Abner
The Politics of Elite Culture: Explorationsin the Dramaturgyof Power in a
I98I
ModemAfricanSociety.Berkeley: University of California Press.
Combs, James E.
Dimensions of Political Drama. Santa Monica, CA: Goodyear Publishing
1980
Co.
Combs, James E., and Michael W. Mansfield
Drama in Life: The Uses of Communicationin Society.New York: Hastings
1976
House.
Cragan,John F., and Donald C. Shields
1977
"Foreign Policy Comm. Dramas: How Mediated Rhetoric Played in Peoria in Campaign '76." QuarterlyJournal
of Speech63 (no. 3):274-89.
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Dasgupta, Gautam
ArtsJournal I (no.
"The Theatricks of Politics." Performing
1988
2):
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Art Borreca is Assistant Professorof theatrehistory, dramaticliterature,and dramaturgy at the University of Iowa. He is also the dramaturgfor the Iowa Playwrights Workshop.He has recentlypublished "The Making of the British History
Play, I956-1968" in Theater 3, and is workingon a book on British historical
drama,The Past's Presence.