This performance guide is the result of work conducted at the University of Virginia's National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, 1989, on "Spanish Literature in Performance," in which 25 secondary school Spanish teachers studied Spanish texts from the perspective of classroom performance to deepen knowledge of the texts and discover ways to stimulate teaching and appreciation of literature in the high school classroom. The guide distills and synthesizes issues raised during the institute into background material, topics for conversation, and performance activities for classroom use based on the texts "Ficciones" by Jorge Luis Borges. It is not a literary analysis of the text. Contents include: substantial background material on the author and the cultural context of the literary work; a variety of activities based on this cultural information; a summary of themes, stories, and symbolism; activities based on this and other works of the author; notes on staging the text; and a brief bibliography of materials by the same author and instructional resources, both print and audiovisual. (MSE)