The Guy Writing This Stuff

Wisconsin ex-pat, current Chicagoan, BGSU postgrad, & a thoroughly Midwestern kid, I tend to go by “-J.” If things like whisk(e)y, games, pop culture theory, media & the arts interest you, then we should sit down for a drink & bullshit for a couple hours. If supernatural horror (à la Lovecraft, Bierce, or Chambers — or Gaiman, Hill, or Campbell), tabletop games, and theatre are your thing, we may need more than a few hours.

Absent that, have a drink, read some of the words on this site, and add your own in the comments.

Everyday Dramaturgy

I like big words, and I cannot lie…

Once upon a time, this site had a blog entitled “Coliary Dramaturgy” — a placeholder for writing about random stuff (everyday life, pop culture, and yes, performing arts) from a dramaturgical perspective. The title came from two very different and uncommon words in the English lexicon: “dramaturgy” is primarily used to describe the process of providing researched context for a stage production, or working as a kind of script consultant for show; “coliary” is a made-up word courtesy of the Bloggess, a term for a placeholder concept that you’ll go back and flesh out later.

Moving to “Everyday Dramaturgy” is an attempt to flesh it out later now. I approach “dramaturgy” in a very broad sense, much in the way Erving Goffman did: that its ideas & concepts can be applied to everyday life. And if I were going to turn this into a manifesto, I’d probably bring in some of the ideas on performance & culture from Philip Auslander and Augusto Boal… but let’s not have a manifesto. Have a whiskey, a few words, and some weirdness & absurdity as I write about the everyday world of pop culture.