Strategic Games on Stage

This book illustrates how strategic thinking and game theory can be applied to study and enjoy theater plays. By offering various case studies on plays such as Antigone, Medea, Hamlet, Schiller’s Wallenstein, Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, and Elfriede Jelinek’s Rechnitz, the authors analyze the dynamics of player choices, including their misperceptions, deceptions, and various power games. Plays are examined according to their strategic contexts and, if appropriate, analyzed by means of game theory. This book is written for anyone interested in theater and who wants to learn about strategic behavior on stage but also for readers who are looking for an exciting field for applying game theoretical reasoning.

Manfred J. Holler is an Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Hamburg (Germany). He is the founding editor of, and managed the respected European Journal of Political Economy (1985-1993), and Homo Oeconomicus (1983-2015). He currently serves as an assessing editor or board member for several journals, such as The Journal of Mind and Behavior, Control and Cybernetics, the European Journal of Law and Economics, and Games. He is one of the Editors-in-Chief of Homo Oeconomicus. Barbara Klose-Ullmann holds a PhD. in Economics and worked for more than 25 years as a manager at a major German bank, where she participated in the bargaining for licenses in Eastern Europe. She has published a series of articles applying game theory to the analysis of strategic interaction in history, myths, and theatre plays, and authored books on health, in economic history of economics,and on game theory (co-authored with Manfred J. Holler).