Staging the Social Drama of Work: Ethnography of a Theater Company as a Means of Analyzing Theater Activity

Celia Bense Ferreira Alves

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.3.3.06

Authors

Celia Bense Ferreira Alves University of Paris 8, France

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.3.3.06

Keywords:

Theater ethnography, Collective activity, Division of labor, Tasks, Social roles, Service relationship, Commitment

Abstract

This paper shows how conducting the ethnographic study of a theater hall and company can help define theater activity. Once the aesthetic of the social organization is set apart from the proper division of labor, theater appears as a collective activity which requires the cooperation of eight groups playing different social roles. The cooperation modes rest on a meshing of direct or indirect services for the actors who carry out the core task of performing. This specific organization of work around a central group is what makes the activity artistic. Simultaneously, the service relation offers the possibility for some categories to bring their relationship with actors closer to a state of symmetry and sometimes reverse asymmetry. As a status enhancing opportunity, service relationship for actors also directly or indirectly provide the grounds for participant commitment and thus guarantee long-lasting operation for the theatrical organization.

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Author Biography

Celia Bense Ferreira Alves, University of Paris 8, France

Celia Bense Ferreira Alves (PhD) is associate professor in the English Department at Paris 8 University where she teaches classes on the US Industrial and Service Relations, Methodology, Translation and, US sociologists. She is also a researcher of the GETI (a research group specialized in School, Work and Institutions) and her interests include the study of work relations in theater activity and service occupations. She has launched a collective study on the perspectives of the non-acting theater personnel in institutions of higher education to be started in fall 2008 and is currently working on translating Elliot Liebow’s Tally’s Corner.

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