I choose ‘dramactional’ rather than ‘dramaturgical’ because I’m thinking outside of professional drama (let alone the mechanics of theatrical production, which is what ‘dramaturgy’ usually means). Social theorists (e.g., Jürgen Habermas) who adopt notions of “dramaturgical action” are setting up readers to think too close to professional theater, thus possibly concealing the immanence of authentic acting in genuine interpersonal life.

life of the actor

Trivially, every action is enacted by an actor in a situation which is ostensible, scenic. Even mental fabulation is scenic. An extended continuum of actions (one due to a previous one) are narratable, possibly storial. And that can be relevant to most scenes of most days, the stuff of diaries, journals, journalism, autobiography, biography, fiction, and plsywrighting.

Finding dramactionality in the days is merely a matter of interest and appreciability. That would be especially relevant to a literary sensibility.

But, being a theatrical actor outside of dramaturgical work isn’t authentically a matter of regarding all interaction theatrically (unless one designs to do so). The theatrical actor truly loves, too; and enjoys all life that is heartfully worthwhile.

So, it’s honest for others to not know how so one is an “actor”; or that a dramactional sense of an event is kept private, being there genuinely without any evident sense of pretense.

There are occasions in film/video where the formal presumption of character role allows its actor to invisibly drop the role. Most recently, I’ve seen this in Terrence Malick’s “Knight of Cups,” where documentation among celebrity friends is postured as scripted acting. This also occurs when directors invite improvisational freedom by the actor. Indeed, any professional actor may confide (if not avow, for the sake of privacy) that
the permeable membrane between named role and oneself is what it’s all about—ecstatic, “erotic.”

Being a psychoanalyst isn’t authentically a matter of regarding all interaction as occasion to secretly diagnose; so, an analyst in a conversation at a leisure gathering, where the latter finds out the former’s profession and becomes guarded, is just part of the analyst’s day. The analyst truly lives, too, which includes enjoying others’ views, in their own terms, without implicit framing or judgment.

A master teacher isn’t turning every interaction into a teachable moment.

Thus, the analog of an ordinary person as actor (s/p-differentiated Sself) becoming a character to oneself extends readily to the entirety of interpersonal life, just as con-
versely a public/private difference matters immanently when privacy prevails: The genuineness of interpersonal life (s/p differentiated) may not extend into one’s manifold Sselfidentity (S/s differentiated without regard for interpersonal life), e.g., in creative
Work or Sselfidentity backgrounding teaching, counseling, or psychoanalysis.

A trans-personalness, so to speak, of interpersonal relations expresses an engaged “self” limitedly: each person living her/his singular lifelong paths. (And she may commonly feel masculine, he commonly feeling feminine, which is in each case part of common desire to be wholly flourishing). The happiest marriage is flexibly manifold, thus durable by flexible presence of oneSself in daily scenes of mutual engagement.

So, performing oneself (a notion with which some philosophers dwell—and I will more later) is simply about authentically being in time genuinely—being one’s manifold times of a life, eras of a life, regions of a life—and elusively being time itself: primarily futural, flourishive, in which one’s past is always, potentially, in revision, there to be recolored, rewritten, relative to inestimable presents that give (and are given) importance.

next: authoriality, part 5 of 8 |