Writing for Performance (Teaching Writing) - Softcover

"What a welcome, insightful and much-needed book ... Authors Anne Harris and Stacy Holman Jones bring us to an integrated notion of writing that is embodied, felt, breathed and flung from stage to page and back again. This important book is thrilling in both its theorizing and its usefulness as it sets out potential roadmaps of how we can conjure writing daring to explore the heat and sparks of race, class, sex and gender. Writing for Performance will become a crucial text for the creation of the performance and theater that the 21st Century will need."--Tim Miller, artist and author of Body Blows: Six Performances and 1001 Beds: Performances, Essays and Travels
"No prescriptions here. Instead, a thoughtful and pedagogical rumination on the ideas of writing and performance, ideas which often materialize into pleasing products, to be sure, but whose wondrous processes can remain clandestine. In the hands of this creative duo, however, we find a deep and abiding respect for the many creative processes that might fuel writing and performance that matters. From the deep wells of their own experiences, Harris and Holman Jones offer exercises that are not meant to mold the would-be writer, but spur them on to recognize their latent writing/ performative selves." --Kathleen Gallagher, Distinguished Professor of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning, University of Toronto
"Embodies the practicality of craft and possibilities for transcendence necessary in any writing and performance pedagogy. Replete with clear description and example, Harris and Holman Jones invite the reader/practitioner/performer/scholar into their own abilities to engage word and body for the purpose of meaning making and personal/political transformation." --Tami Spry, Professor of Performance Studies, St. Cloud State University
"A much-needed text that synthetically weaves the dynamics of words, bodies, spaces and things in the integrative process of writing in/as performance and performance in/as writing. The authors engage systematically inflected and reflected forms of experience as the source materials (or equipment) in building grammatical aesthetic expressions in theatre and performance studies. It is the textbook that I wanted when I was struggling to find my own writerly voice in the shifting modes of the personal and professional, and in the presumed tensions between the performative and academic zones of my intersectional identities." --Bryant Keith Alexander, Professor of Communication, Performance, Cultural and Pedagogical Studies and Dean of the College of Communication and Fine Arts, Loyola Marymount University
"A personalized blueprint for writing ... What's exciting about this book: the bridges it builds between imagining, devising, writing, performing--many bridges for many different purposes. In Writing for Performance, Anne Harris and Stacy Holman Jones, as experienced theatre-makers, practitioners and scholars, provide a personalized blueprint for writing--no easy, one-size-fits-all answers--but instead a rich array of models of practice in which the voice of the writer, in the process of creating the theatre event, can be heard clearly, honestly and provocatively. And, the most important message coming through the exemplars, the theoretical considerations and the exercises for writing: put the words on the page." --Christine Sinclair, Melbourne Graduate School of Education and Head of Drama Education, The University of Melbourne
"Perceptive and nurturing guidance ... Anne Harris and Stacy Holman Jones bring their rich and varied theatrical experiences into this intriguing, behind-the-scenes look at how performance is not just written but revised and devised for formal presentation. The co-authors include evocative texts and scripts that demonstrate the multiple styles of dramatic narrative, along with a series of practical exercises to extend the writer's creative capacities. Harris and Holman Jones offer perceptive and nurturing guidance for the development of performative work by artists, poets, researchers, and community-based fieldworkers." --Johnny Saldaña, Evelyn Smith Professor of Theatre, Arizona State University
"A helpful overview of ways writers--as individuals or members of a company--generate performances. The authors place these methods and approaches in historical perspective, highlighting strategies beyond the "well-made play," but without underestimating its influence. They also provide a diverse set of concrete exemplars and exercises that readers can work through alone or as part of a classroom or other creative community. I particularly appreciated their overall perspective, which situates such writing as a fundamentally aesthetic, ethical, and pedagogical act that goes beyond the construction of literary artifacts to consider how discussion, devising, and eventual performance and documentation play a crucial role in the construction, sharing, and critique of social knowledge. That Harris and Holman Jones accomplish all of this in such a warm, accessible, and ultimately encouraging way helps to demystify the writing process, providing support for both the novice coming to performance for the first time and the experienced writer who may want to branch out and try new ways of working in academic, professional, and community performance situations." --Craig Gingrich-Philbrook, Professor of Performance Studies, Southern Illinois University
"This clear, insightful and occasionally provocative work will be indispensable for those who hope to create compelling writing and performance ... The mystique of the writer in the writing process often discourages engagement. What and Anne Harris and Stacy Holman Jones have achieved here demystifies the sometimes clouded and makes clear the often hidden in writing and performance (and the relationship between them). That they manage to do this in an artful and poetic way is a testament to their agility as thinkers, performers and writers." --Michael Anderson, Professor of Education, The University of Sydney

Anne Harris, PhD, is a senior lecturer at Monash University (Melbourne), and researches in the areas of arts, creativity, performance, and diversity.
Stacy Holman Jones, PhD, is Professor in the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash University (Melbourne) specializing in performance studies, gender and critical theory and critical qualitative methods.