Welcome to Performed Words, where you will be able to hear and to understand recorded, living performances. You will hear the performer's voices speaking and singing with their own tone, rhythm and nuance. And you will be able to contemplate the significance of their performed words as deeply as you choose to.

Between letters on a page and a living performance, the key that unlocks the door is not only a good tale, and not only a good tale well told, but also the entertainment that emerges when an audience responds to a performer. Entertainment occurs when we can engage in dialogue, responding with words or only with our hearts, and when we can collaborate in our abduction to the worlds created by the teller's art.

Some lands in performance are far away, and travel in them is more easily engaged with ready maps and knowing guides. These have been assembled for you in the form of texts, translations, illustrations, and commentaries, all of which are offered at just the right time you may need them. And with these travel guides - in the world created by a performer - your imagination will surely quicken at the foretold meeting of a mighty warrior with the knowing woman of his dreams, race with mighty armies across fertile steppes to redress royal insults and carry off the spoils of war, warm to a humorous beer-hall dispute, and grow still in awe of spirits' supernatural worldly powers.

So enter here the worlds these performers conjure. Accept, if you need them, the maps that show the way to points of interest we have spotted once upon a time. And note, if you wish, your own observations with the "my annotations" button provided so you can guide others to experience the magic in the layered, not lost, worlds of Performed Words.