Documenting performance knowledge: Two narrative techniques in grace Paley's fiction

Abstract

Performers of literature maintain that performance is a literary critical method, but the critical insights derived from a specific performance rarely get translated into critical discourse. This essay describes two narrative techniques revealed in a chamber theatre production of Grace Paley fiction in order to argue that chamber theatre, by forcing us to attend to particular types of narrative issues, functions as a critical methodology. By articulating insights explicated through performance, we substantiate our claim that performance functions as criticism and add to the body of performance theory.