Sports as Dramaturgy Incubators
Stupid idea: While reading the essay “Sports Chatter” in Travels in Hyperreality, I thought about how sports can be seen as incubators for effective dramaturgies, as systems for evolving dramaturgies by random and chaotic means.
Sports events are sometimes boring, but there’s a limit to how boring they can be, as the spectators always are engaged and hoping for their team or favorite athlete to win. But occasionally, these ecosystems breed classics, with near-perfect dramaturgies.
The fact that there always are competing forces helps ensure good quality dramaturgy. Football teams play against each other, and athletes compete with other athletes, sometimes sequentially, and sometimes in unison.
Expectations are important, and the major expectation is the hope to win, but there are also expectations about what makes a good game, etc.
(This reminded me of the “Rocky dramaturgy:” Rocky gets tossed around the ring by some foreign übermensch, his eyes swell shut and have to be slit open with a scalpel, his coach and his wife almost give up hope, and—well, you know what happens. It doesn’t work that well on film, though.)