Barbara Klose-Ullmann

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.

This book introduces readers to basic game theory as a tool to deal with strategic decision problems, helping them to understand the complexity of such problems – to extract a solution, if possible – and to manage the complexity by revising the game if appropriate. The authors discuss basic decision situations modeled as Prisoners’ Dilemma, Chicken Game, and Stag Hunt Game, as well as concepts like the Nash equilibrium, Trembling Hand Perfectness, Rationalizable Strategies and the Theory of Moves to introduce game theoretic thinking. Further, the book presents pioneers of strategic thinking, e.g., Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Adam Smith, and Goethe, and includes cases of conflict and cooperation to illustrate practical applications. Readers learn to apply game theory in business and in daily life – to manage their decision problems and to better understand the decision problems of others.