Description:Richard Schechner - one of contemporary theatre's foremeost practitioners- explores in these essays the origins of performance, drama, and theatre and delineates the subtle differences between them. He emphasizes the complex interrelationships that form the basis of ethnological studies of ritual, performance in everyday life, environmental theatre, modern European and American theatre, Eurasian and African theatre, body-oriented dialogue and psychotherapies, play, crisis behaviour, rites of passage and mysticism (especially shamanism).