Theater and Performance

Roles: performer, audience, stage, backstage, script, role, mask, entrance

Staged presentation before an audience, with the structural split between what is shown (onstage) and what is hidden (backstage). As a source domain, theater foregrounds the distinction between appearance and reality, the deliberate construction of a presented self, and the audience’s role in completing the meaning. Structurally productive because it encodes the idea that what is visible is curated, that every presentation conceals a preparation process, and that roles can be inhabited without being identical to the person performing them.

As Source Frame (4)

• Applause Line → political-discourse, argumentation
• Presenting Problem → psychotherapy
• Staging Environment → software-engineering
• We Are Puppets on Strings → psychology