From comments reported in the New York Times describing deposed Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak's trial as "just another element of political theatre", to the FT's account of the "political theatre" of Rupert and James Murdoch's recent appearance before the culture, media and sport select committee, it seems that "theatre" is the word which tells us that someone is trying to pull the wool over our eyes, and that what we are watching is rhetorical, empty and all for show. Is this fair?

The Queen charmed the Irish earlier this year with her emerald green and shamrock embroidered outfits, "symbols" of the reconciliation which the audience were to read into the visit. No one mentioned costume design. The all-night rehearsals for the royal wedding back in April were greeted as entirely appropriate preparations for a major public event. No one condemned this as fakery, or a phoney attempt to fool the people with hollow display. When Jon Favreau became the youngest ever White House chief speechwriter in 2008, he was lauded for capturing the vocal style and cadences of President Obama – an excellent skill, one might think, for a playwright creating convincing words to reveal the motives and convictions of a central character. (Not surprisingly, Favreau has indicated that when he finishes his current post, he may well consider writing screenplays.) No one complained that Obama was speaking someone else's lines.

It does seem that when commentators approve of gestures designed to communicate without words, to emphasise elements of character, or to move the spectator emotionally through performance – all facets which many of us would claim precisely as "good theatre" – they choose instead other words. Ground-breaking, significant and potentially game-changing events are "dramatic". Staged public gestures of remembrance or grief are "symbolic". But "theatre" is reserved for the manipulative and the pointless.

So much of our public life draws on theatre techniques: the voice classes supposedly taken by George Osborne and Margaret Thatcher; the meticulous staging of Tony-Blair-as-ordinary-bloke, with his shirtsleeves, and mugs with the kids on; even the post-riot scene-setting last week, as party leaders arranged themselves picturesquely in front of graffiti and burnt-out buildings. Politicians talk often of "sending messages", which of course implies a theatrical language of gestures and actions staged to invoke broader meanings. Courts, hearings, tribunals and parliamentary proceedings all share many elements of theatrical behaviour and display.

So why is "theatre" so consistently used as a byword for "fakery" by a political industry that relies so heavily on its techniques? When so many of its fundamental characteristics – drama, symbolism, stage-setting, voice, image, text, audience impact – are praised for their effectiveness, how can the theatre reclaim its proper territory, and stop being used as a term of abuse?

As Andrew Haydon noted last week, many theatre makers and thinkers have been apologising for the seeming triviality of "writing about theatre" in the wake of last week's widespread riots. But given the prevalence of theatricality in everyday life, are these not exactly the people who should be commentating on public events? The Guardian recently asked playwright Lucy Prebble to write about the dramatic tension in the Murdoch hearing. But there is room for much more: what would Lyn Gardner or Michael Billington have had to say about Rupert Murdoch's lengthy pauses – convincing? Pinteresque? Was he nodding off? How about Michael Grandage or Katie Mitchell on the staging of the royal wedding? Kevin Spacey or Andrew Scott on the effective performance of power, and its loss? As sociologist Erving Goffman commented in his influential 1959 study, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, "all the world is not a stage, but the ways in which it is not are hard to specify". Who better to help us understand the "theatre" of public life than those who make, study and interpret the real thing?