The Actor
Goffman compares a person engaged in social interaction to an actor. The individual is delivering a performance for an audience. The irony of this role is two-fold. First, the individual is not allowed to acknowledge the performative nature of their representation. Second, at any given moment the individual is both actor and audience. In any manifestation, the actor's goal is to avoid or mitigate embarrassment while learning private information about the people around them. It's an exchange similar to a literal actor on stage, except that the intent of the actor is to know the audience.
The Audience
Once again, the audience is potentially composed of every individual within a social setting. They are all simultaneously actors and audience members in Goffman's analogy. While the audience is aware of their role in observing, they are also subject to observation. More often than not, the audience desires to help the actors maintain the performance, which can lead to a series of absurd or artificial interactions which ignore the obvious truth that all parties are indeed acting.
The Team
In the pair of pursuits -- avoid embarrassment and learn about people -- which comprise Goffman's theory of social interaction, people often unite in teams. Whether to achieve a common goal or through mutual appreciation of the type of performance of each individual within the group, people will band together in teams in order to borrow off of one another's performances collaboratively. These teams generally form organically and non-contractually.
