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Using the work of Kenneth Burke to develop an original critical perspective on the dual identity of drama, this engaging new book offers a way to read plays 'between poetry and performance', exploring and contesting the threshold between text and performance. The author offers both a critical account of literary criticism and performance studies, and suggests a means for seizing dramatic writing as an instrument for performance. Drama: Between Poetry and Performance discusses major plays, drawing on examples from playwrights including Shakespeare, Ibsen, Beckett, and Parks, and asks how they offer a critical perspective on the drama's relation to books, to the process of embodiment, and to the mapping of space in the theatre. Exploring the critical terms and controversies that animate the performance and study of drama, such as the status of language, the function of character and plot, and uses of writing, this is an ideal text which not only teaches students how to read drama, but also explores the key questions that have occupied the earliest playwrights through to today's most distinguished literary and cultural critics. This book will appeal both to the professional and academic audience in drama and performance studies, as well as to a wider audience of theatregoers interested in the relationship between writing and performance.