Outline and assess the dramaturgical approach of Erving Goffman. In your answer you should consider how Goffman’s ideas could be applied to an everyday situation of your choice. We are all social actors according to Erving Goffman. In everyday life, in every situation, we are continuously portraying ourselves in a certain way. We want to be perceived in a certain way, so we have different ‘masks’ for each social interaction we have. Like Shakespeare, Goffman used the theory of life being like the theatre whereby we are ourselves are the actors and we play roles. There is also various settings, props, and audiences. This essay will outline how Goffman’s theory can be applied to the nightclub setting, and how the various elements all add up to create this ‘show’. Dramaturgical Approach Life is a show. We are the actors in our own lives’, and we are constantly in the spotlight putting on our best performance. Erving Goffman published the ‘Presentation of Self in 1959 (Crossman, 2015). In this book, it is here he describes his theory about how we as people operate in our everyday lives and how we work to achieve a certain perception of ourselves. Goffman used the metaphor of the theatre to illustrate how we as social actors change our behaviour according to the audience that is present (Vogt Isaksen, 2015). Elements of the theatre can be used to demonstrate how we play our roles and how we change character in certain social situations. Also how we use various ‘props’ to