Performance

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 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 The approach is brave. I connect with many of the entries, as a teacher and scholar of performance, but also as a human. --Tracy Stephenson Shaffer, Text and Performance Quarterly Ron Pelias' new book is at once light and profound, gentle and sharp, languid and pacy. Beautifully written, as always with Pelias, Performance: An Alphabet of Performative Writing provokes and delights in equal measure. I read it quickly, his crafted words drawing me in, prompting, nudging, affecting. This book's greatest gift? I am left wanting to write - and to write differently. -- Jonathan Wyatt, University of Edinburgh