Merely Players: Theatrical Acting as a Metaphor for Identity

Adler introduces the concept of ‘identity play’, proposing that individuals and researchers alike should think of identity both as something to be played with and metaphorically similar to a theatrical work of art. This means thinking of identity as malleable, changeable, and as a type of play that can be performed in different ways in different situations. In this commentary, I focus in on the psychology of theatre and how findings from empirical studies on acting can inform identity play. Using a theatrical metaphor can be constructive, such as when thinking about how acting is learned developmentally through preparation of the self, generation of new material, interpretation of scripts, and reflection on self-presentation. But using the theatrical metaphor might also be difficult, as when dealing with negative public connotations of acting and actors, and as researchers begin thinking through the complexity of acting as performed human behavior. The intricacies of studying psychology as a whole are reflected in the difficulties of using theatre as a research base, but the metaphor holds in its metacognitive thinking of the self as something that can be multiplicative, played with, and built within community.