ABSTRACT
What is in a name – or perhaps I should say, in a signature? I want to draw your attention, in what follows, to a number of curiosities which seem to me to be specific to our attempts, within the disciplines of performance studies or performing arts or theatre studies in the university, to ‘write performance’. Most of us, as far as I have been able to discern, attempt this ‘performance writing’ – at least where our engagement is with professional performance practices or practitioners – from the perspective of expert spectating.
