Performance: An Alphabet of Performative Writing

Performance uses the alphabet as an organizational device to present a series of short pieces that approach performance from multiple perspectives and various compositional strategies. Pelias’s essays, poetry, dialogue, personal narratives, quick speculations, and other literary genres explore the key themes in this field, encapsulating the essence of performance studies for the novice and providing food for thought for the expert. Its brief, evocative, and reflexive pieces introduce performative writing as a method of research for those in performance and many other fields.

"By means of a deceptively simple alphabetic structure, Pelias invites his readers to contemplate performance from a variety of positions: as performer, critic, student, teacher, and through his own. With the deft hand of a gentle and gracious poet, he captures performance in its myriad forms with acuity and concision in sentences that continually arrest the reader for their insight and profundity."
Lesa Lockford, Bowling Green State University

"Ron Pelias’ Performance: An Alphabet of Performative Writing literally takes us A through Z into the deep experience and wisdom of one of the great performance and autoethnography methodologists of our time. Ron has created an accessible and lyrical text allowing the reader to go from A to Z or to dip in and out of this rich offering, each chapter a contained letter of praxis based wisdom. Pedagogically and interdisciplinarily invaluable for classroom and scholarly reference alike, Ron’s book adds to our methodological vocabulary with, dare I say, the philosophical and affective power of hisMethodology of the Heart. [This] will be the well-worn book sitting on our desk ready at hand as we write and perform ourselves into being."
Tami Spry, St. Cloud State University