Performers work with sounds, bodies and movement, while the writer’s only tool is language. So writing about the performing arts is something of a challenge: how can one art form get across the essence of another? How can we use language to capture performance accurately, when performance speaks a language of its own?
It’s a challenge to which writers have always been drawn, in part, I imagine, because performers – who willingly expose themselves to risk and scrutiny – make such fascinating characters.
