peg of a self. Depending on the scene in which we have a part to play, we use the
available tools to shape our body, bring ourselves into a suitable state of mind,
and adjust our comportment. There are expectations, such as social norms and
codes of conduct, we are or are not able to meet, and there are capabilities and
preferences that make us enact a part more or less credibly, perhaps with a
silicone implant in our lips or buttocks.
In situations such as job interviews, customer service, preaching and lecturing,
and other professional encounters the performance character of our behaviour is
very apparent, but we have ideas and scripts about our self in the private sphere,
too. That we can ‘let loose and be ourselves’ is an illusion in that we cannot shed
off our socialization and do not cease to exist as social beings once we close the
door behind us and retreat into solitude. The cues in the private sphere will not
be the same as in the public sphere, but act we must. In being aware of the
theatrical character of our performance, we may call it ‘second nature’, not
realizing that there is no ‘first’; for as nature beings, humans are not viable. They
are never human beings only, unconstrained by family relations, gender typing,
age grading, class stratification, and ethnic pecking order.
The everyday-life drama follows different plots and directions on stage and
backstage, but in both settings the actors are involved in social interaction. The
stage is inhabited by other actors who perform in front of an audience whose
interpretation of the scene is indispensable for the presented selves to emerge. In
this way, the individual actors forge their self-identities within the framework of
traditions and institutional requirements, which by acting they help to reinforce
or transform. Backstage they are no longer Romeo and Juliet, Peer Gynt or
Mother Courage; instead, they are professional actors who as such have a
standing in society, living in a certain world, interacting with others of their kind
and of other walks of life. Their social reality differs from that of office clerks
and factory workers as much as from that of medieval ladies in waiting and
knights.
Everybody always acts; which means that personal identity, rather than being
given, is created in the interaction of self with others. Everyone cannot
participate in every scene or enact every role that requires specific talents and
acquired competencies. And, to stay with the metaphor, as an actor you may
represent a respectable traditional art in one society, the demimonde in another,
and the creative class in a third.