ABSTRACT
Performance as an approach to the study of folk and fairy tales investigates what happens when someone tells a story orally to an immediately present audience. Performance theory encourages attention to storytelling as communication; to the teller’s creative process, rhetorical goals, and means for achieving them; to the social and cultural context in which the story is told; to the effects of the story on the audience; to the audience’s manifest and internal responses; and to the reciprocal efforts of the teller to anticipate, satisfy, and possibly transform the audience’s expectations. A performance approach emphasizes that a story is more than words or text because a storytelling experience derives significance from the teller’s vocal and bodily expression, from the interaction of tale elements with a particular context, and from the impact on an audience of a story well told. Two strands of folklore performance theory intertwine: one in which scholars study performers rooted in specific cultures’ tale telling traditions and one in which artists/scholars tell traditional tales themselves and discover the power of performance through their own practice and audience reactions.
