This episode of the Folklore & Fiction podcast was first published as a newsletter in November 2020. I'm recording it as a supplemental podcast now so that new listeners and subscribers have an opportunity to engage with the material. In it, I'm writing about performance with help from scholars Dan Ben-Amos, Roger D. Abrahams, Richard Bauman, and others, author and playwright William Shakespeare, and the McGahan Lees Irish Dance Academy. I'm also exploring possible uses of performance in storytelling. (Companion Dispatch: https://csmaccath.com/blog/what-performance)