List of figures; Notes of contributors; Introduction; 1. Are there universals of performance in myth, ritual, and drama?; 2. Magnitudes of performance; 3. Liminality: a synthesis of subjective and objective experience; 4. The Yaqui deer dance at Pascua Pueblo, Arizona; 5. The Yaqui point of view: on Yaqui ceremonies and anthropologies; 6. Performance of precepts/precepts of performance: Hasidic celebrations of Purim in Brooklyn; 7. The significance of performance for its audience: an analysis of three Sri Lankan rituals; 8. What does it mean to 'become the character': power, presence, and transcendence in Asian in-body disciplines of practice; 9. Korean shamans: role playing through trance possession; 10. The practice of noh theatre; 11. The profanation of the sacred in circus clown performances; 12. Ethnographic notes on sacred and profane performance; 13. The spatial sense of the sacred in Spanish America and the American South and its tie with performance; 14. Space and context; 15. The transformation of consciousness in ritual performances: some thoughts and questions; 16. Universals of performance; or amortising play; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.