Double Life, Professional Life

I recently decided to join LinkedIn for professional networking reasons. But as soon as I did I was up against one of the realities of my life. I have two different professions, two different networks, with two different job histories. I spend a lot of my effort on Living History ventures and I do make a little of my money that way, but most of the past 10 years I have also held down other jobs that pay the bills and spark my interests in different ways. They seem incredibly separate sometimes, but I am really a whole person, I have a lot of skills that I use in all aspects of my life, a lot of my interests in history overlap with my interests in working in the non-profit field. Right now my interests seem to be as close to overlapping as they have been in quite a while since I currently work at an educational institution (in fundraising) and a big driver of my involvement in Living History is education. So I've come up with a vague sort of statement that talks about education in the broadest sense, and hopefully covers as many of my bases as possible.

LinkedIn is also a place to put up your resume, so I've been updating that document (which always seems to me like a chore similar to doing one's taxes.) I don't want my resume to look too cluttered, but I've done a lot of very different things in the past ten years, especially if you count all the different LH things I've been paid for (or at least held responsibility for.) Lucky for me a lot of them were work done under the umbrella of Autumn Tree Productions and I always include that on a resume, I guess the other stuff will have to get lumped in under general LH pursuits.

The other big part of LinkedIn (like all social media) is connecting to to other people. I've been trying to locate past co-workers, former bosses, and professional connections, but it seems like most of my connections are with people in the RenFaire and LH world. Another mixing of my two sides. At first I was worried about mixing the two, but from the different types of people that have accepted my "connection request" I guess the practice is not all that uncommon.

Are many of you on LinkedIn? Do you include your LH stuff? How separate is the LH stuff from the rest of your life? Read this entry on entry page

My Interest in Historical Encampments

Or, why I started Cooking
Being an Incredibly Biased Rendition of the Birth of the Guild of Saint Morritz

I originally wrote this as background to a post about cooking, but that turned into a multi-part post about cooking, and this intro turned into its own entry.

When Stephen decided he wanted to start a historical encampment, I told him I wanted to cook at it. Actually, that is not how all this started. The first summer I met Stephen we were both working Renaissance Faires. In fact, the first time we got to spend any time together was when he invited me to help out with a tiny little faire where his armored combat troupe had been invited to participate. I borrowed a friend’s renfaire garb and went to help “squire” for the knights in armour. The knights were required to perform two shows for the day, which meant there was a lot of hanging out time when they were not bashing each other about with swords. They spent a lot of that time sitting in front of a historical tent, teasing me just to get me to blush.

After that single day at a small event I was determined to hang out with the Armored combat troupe a lot more often, and not because of the teasing. I wanted to squire for the guys, I wanted to sit in front of historical tents, I wanted to bring more history to events that did not have a lot of real history. I convinced Stephen that squires could be a nice addition to their armored combat demonstration, and it turned out there were plenty of women in bodices willing to “squire” even there were not a lot of 6 to 12 year old boys. I convinced them that the tent might be more than a convenient changing room, it could also represent the home of a traveling knight. Two years later I was able to suggest that an encampment be included in the storyline of the Connecticut Renaissance Faire (though with Vikings instead of knights) and the year after that the knights took the encampment over. We still just had the single tent, now a sad rag of its former self, but we had a canvas fly set up in front to keep the rain off, a table and some historical chairs, and a copper fire dish where we warmed apple cider.  Pretty good for an endeavor that was really just a side project. Lest you think I was doing the entire thing on my own, I certainly was not. The other folks involved in the armored combat troupe thought an encampment was a pretty good idea and spent much more time on the faire days making the camp a lively and engaging place. By the end of the run that fall we were ambitious enough to try cooking a stew over our little fire, we all brought ingredients to the final Saturday, but before everyone arrived on site a dam broke upstream of the faire. It washed good portions of the faire away. We did not open that final weekend.

Things changed after that, the faire moved, our energies were directed elsewhere, some folks joined us, some folks left. Though we tried to make up a knight’s encampment over the next few years, it was never as successful at the one we did in 2005. But Stephen and I kept doing more historical endeavors, finding other ways to bring history to life, and when working with the cast of CTRF was no longer the focus for either of us, we got to think about starting a new history adventure. THAT was when Stephen said he wanted to start a historical encampment and I said I wanted to cook.

This is the intro to a series of posts about cooking. Part 2 is here, and part three is coming soon!

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First-Person Networking Conference

Stephen, Tom, Amanda and I attended an interesting conference this weekend. The Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums has, as part of its membership, a lot of networking groups on various specific topics. There is a group that talks about first-person interpretation, also known as costumed characters, or historical role-players. This group held their own mini-conference this past weekend at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, CT. It was well attended by the folks at Plimoth Plantation, and the Mystic folks, and there were a number of small museums that sent one or two delegates. There were some independent folks there, and us representing Autumn Tree Productions, the Guild of Saint Morritz, and the Living History Podcast. We’ll be doing a podcast episode on the conference, and I don’t want to duplicate all of that, but there were some points I thought I’d mention here that may not make it into the podcast.

This entry will mostly be patting myself on the back; this is my blog after all. But if you’d rather not hear glowing reviews of myself and Stephen (from a definitely biased source) I will be putting up another entry soon on the best keynote speaker I think I’ve ever witnessed (and I have never met the guy before, so no pre-judgment on my part.)

For my own part, I felt like we made a really strong showing. As an “independent” and one for whom this sort of thing is not my main source of income I was worried about being surrounded by all of these professionals. But all of our training and hard work paid off; we were able to keep up in all the conversations about the industry, about living history topics, and about training tips and techniques. In one session the presenter asked for volunteers to do a bit in character. I volunteered was paired with another volunteer who got pretend to be a clueless member of the public. My partner had a chip on her shoulder. She got right in my face and asked me all of the stupid questions we all get bombarded with, why was I dressed like that, wasn’t I hot in that, who was I supposed to be. I answered every single one of her questions, and got across who I was and as many facts about where I was coming from as I possibly could. I did not let her phase me, I was totally cheerful and worked to keep the interaction moving in a positive direction. The other person who volunteered to show us their character got an easy partner, who was totally willing to be lead along, and he did not give her any information until he had been much prodded to do so. So kudos for me and ATP.

Stephen did even better when we got to show off our stuff at dinner that night. To set the scene, we’d been hearing talks all day on playing to the real, not being afraid of the darker emotions, or playing characters that are not likeable. After all the seminars on Saturday everyone gathered for a dinner, where we were encouraged to come in costume and in-character. There were some 14th century folks, and a scattering of various revolutionary war era people. The two largest groups were the pilgrims in 1627 and the Mystic folks in 1870s Victorian splendor. Stephen took a look at these two groups representing fairly repressive protestants and in his big German way announced that he was a baron (the highest ranking official there, though George Washington was close) and that we were Catholic. He said it as a challenge to the entire room, the effect was positively electric. In fact, no one dared sit with us at our table! We dealt with that problem by moving to join another table and we ended up having a lot of really good conversations, both in first-person, and then out. After all that talk about being real and not being over-the-top, it felt good to show that sometimes over-the-top is being real, and that not every age is repressive. I was worried that we might have gone a bit too far, but Stephen told me that as he was leaving the conference one of the organizers came up to him and told him to please continue to be big and German. Stephen answered that he didn’t think he could be any other way.

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Creating An Identity Out Of Culture

On my commute to work I am listening to A Feast Of Words a biography of Edith Wharton written by Cynthia Griffin Wolff in the 1970s. I am enjoying it for the most part, much more than I do reading actual Edith Wharton fiction, and it is long enough that it fills up quite a bit of my commute. There is a bit too much psychoanalysis in it for my taste, the biography feels very 70s in that way, but I am learning a lot about Edith Wharton, and a little about myself too. The author spends a lot of time talking about Edith Wharton’s fiction as a protest against the stuffy late Victorian society that Edith Wharton grew up in, and frames her life as a rebellion against the repressions of her mother and the society that created her mother (see what I mean about rampant psychoanalysis?)

But this morning on my way in to work Griffin talked about Wharton’s time in France during World War I, when she witnessed first-hand the German destruction of the French countryside. She was struck by the detritus of every-day life that was left behind after the Germans had blasted away whole portions of towns, she was moved by the lives that the blasting had revealed. According to Griffin,

“[Germany] had aimed to destroy those things that support life—the countless, habitual, humdrum associations and pursuits that give meaning to existence. Plodding grimly through the mud, her quick novelistic eye missing no detail, Wharton began to formulate a new notion of tradition: it is the matrix within which individual personality is defined—a delicate framework of familiarities and understandings by which man’s sense of self is confirmed and reconfirmed in his main daily encounters. Civilization is not something external to each of us, nor is its primary function one of suppressing freedom and growth. Rather, the civilization of any given time and place becomes an integral element in the personality of all its members: it sustains them, informs their existence with meaning, and changes—even as their lives change—with a slow, measured continuity.”

- Cynthia Griffin Wolff, A Feast of Words, The Triumph of Edith Wharton

I heard the above and thought, this is so true! This is what I have been trying to get across in every historical reenactment I’ve done for a public audience. This is why I think there is a place for first person interpretation as a form of education. While I may play only one person out of an entire civilization, I believe it is possible to shed some light on that civilization in this manner. Personalities, and living history character personalities especially, are not created in a vacuum.

I think this is especially important for new reenactors to understand. It is incredibly daunting when your new persona is a blank slate, when the possibilities are almost limitless, but at the same time the facts about a given historical person are so few. I think, to many people the initial steps in character development can be the hardest to overcome when getting into reenacting.

When I start in on a new character for a new period, or maybe just a different show or event, I often go in trying to think about the larger culture that I am portraying. What has attracted me to this particular culture? What seems totally outside of my experience? What about the culture at large is important for me to get across to my audience? Often the characteristics of a person can come out of the answers to those questions. This has been especially true in the two personas that I created in the past year.

Hanne is the wife of a military leader from the Holy Roman Empire in the year 1529. That much I knew when I set out to create a character. Now I’m not crazy about the military stuff, but really wanted the chance to do cooking demonstrations and participate in a new historic encampment. So I took a look at the cooking I wanted to do and decided that Hanne should be pragmatic; though the captain’s wife, she knows how to cook, wash dishes, and doesn’t mind teaching others. One of the amazing things to me about the Landsknecht (Holy Roman Empire Military troups) or any military unit is their pride. Pride seems to be a big part of being involved in military matters, so I translated that into Hanne as a pride of family, and protectiveness of the unit of which her husband is the leader. This also allowed me to play a noble woman who is proud of the work she is doing, so she does not mind getting her hands dirty. I got to show off the fact that Hanne is lower nobility, she expects to wait on those higher up than herself, and that not all noble ladies are prissy princesses. I was too busy cooking and keeping house during most of the encampment weekends to delve much more deeply into who Hanne is, but I felt perfectly comfortable talking to audience members, and knowing that I could answer all questions as Hanne saw the world, and in a way that might get at some larger cultural traits.

Sarah is very different. We were asked to present some topics at a “Pioneer Day” school show. Stephen has a solid Wild Bill Hickock presentation, and we had a good foundation on a “Talk Like a Cowboy” presentation by our Friend Tom. Amanda was willing to tackle a campfire cooking demonstration (though that one did not fly at the last minute, hopefully next year we’ll overcome a school system’s fears about fire.) I had tons of nineteenth century research under my belt, and even a couple of characters, but the Irish Maid in the governor’s mansion did not feel right for this setting, and I did not want to do some poor downtrodden farmer’s wife. One of the topics that I found intriguing from my studies about Nineteenth Century America was the spirit of innovation; this plays out in the industrial revolution as well as the western expansion movement. Innovation did not stop there: politics, religion and family life were receiving widespread attention and undergoing a lot of upheaval in the Nineteenth Century. This applied to both the eastern United States, where most of my research had been done, and further west, especially since the railroad meant that people and ideas could travel, and printing innovations meant that opinions and ideals were traveling faster than they ever had before. Sarah turned out to be an itinerant lecturer, spreading the benefits of new educational philosophies to one and all. She is upbeat and positive that social change can be enacted. She takes for granted the availability of newspapers and magazines (I make sure to mention them often) and finds the hardships of travel to be an adventure. She is still awkward when out of her comfort zone, she is an urban dweller who is uncomfortable facing the realities of a farm life. She believes that the ideas and opinions she is presenting are cutting edge, and must therefore be the right ideas. There is not a lot of room for real life in her rigid ideals. This is also the way I think of nineteenth century reform movements, whether it was the abolition movement or the temperance movement. I only had 20 minutes to talk to these kids and get across a fuller picture of people living the pioneer life and how they saw their place in the world. I used the facts I had on hand mixed in with physical mannerisms, modes of speech, opinions, and cultural assumptions to create a living breathing person.

If you’re new to reenacting, and scared to take the plunge, the best advice I can give you is keep researching, keep reading. Find out as much as you can about a time-period, about a place and time. Keep hold on the facts that fascinate, some day they will suggest a personality to you that will let you live within the culture because, “the civilization of any given time and place becomes an integral element in the personality of all its members.”

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Who are we educating?

We’ve started a new endeavor this year, an entire historical encampment at the Connecticut Renaissance Faire. While some faires have multitudes of well established encampments (places where groups of volunteers set up in the most historical way possible and cook food, often do military drills, show crafts, and generally try to be a bit more educational than the faire) CTRF has not had any historical encampments so this year we’re trying to inject a little more history into the faire. So while we will be having fun being historical our goal is also to educate patrons at the faire.

But also important for this year is educating ourselves. As a crew we’ve done school shows, home days, parades, commercial events, renfaire cast and indie acts, but we’ve never done a total history encampment. We’ve had it in mind for years, so we’ve done some of the research, gathered some of the props, but we’re still scrambling to cram enough historical knowledge into our brains and historical objects into our cars and trucks for the trip south this fall. While all this research and craft making is fun, even more rewarding is the chance to involve new folks.

When Autumn Tree Productions ran the cast of the Connecticut Faire, one of the parts that I looked forward to the most at the beginning of the season was seeing the new faces that would be joining the group, especially the teenagers. While we’d be teaching them history and acting skills throughout the summer and fall, what we were really giving them was a creative outlet, a community composed of different age groups and abilities, and a chance to learn some social skills in a relatively safe and contained setting.

There are some pretty big geeks and nerds who like history enough to do this sort of thing, and those types of folks (myself included) do not have the highest levels of social interaction skills. But as teachers of the cast it was our job to make sure that all cast members felt comfortable enough to get in funny clothes with funny accents and go out to interact will all the different sorts of folks that came through the gates on the faire day. We had to teach people to read their audiences, to have safe sorts of interactions, and make sure everyone had fun. One of the best compliments I think we got was a cast member coming back to us when the year was over and telling us he was better at his normal job, because he had put his new skills to work in the workplace (though without the clothes and the funny accent.)

This year is a bit different, we’ve left some of the acting lessons behind. But we’ve still got new folks involved, new folks who now have a safe community where they will learn history, getting along in a group setting, public speaking, even how to sew! So if we do not reach a single audience member at the faire (which I doubt) I think the endeavor will still have been worth while as an educational pursuit.

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Raining Cats and Dogs

Four years ago I was starting a new educational program, bringing all the knowledge of Medieval and Renaissance Europe that I had gained while working at Renaissance faires into interactive workshops for schools. The transition was not exactly smooth, Though I had been diligent in my research of the European Middle ages, not everyone I hired had been quite as diligent. For a good number of the workshops it did not matter so much, since they were highly scripted, with definite goals.

The workshop that was hardest to research and script was the Middle-Ages Talk Show. I wanted to give the kids a chance to ask anything they wanted to know about daily life, so I assembled a panel of three performers portraying different classes: a noble lady, a wine merchant, and a peasant girl. The presenters prepared by reading books and I sent out a few questions I thought the kids might ask, but we really did not know until we got there the sorts of things to expect. I did not put myself on the panel, I wanted to observe, but in retrospect that was probably not the smartest decision. The school was great, the teachers had worked with all the kids to come up with questions, and they raised their hands and were incredibly polite, but the presenters were still incredibly nervous. The presenter who was playing the noble lady had a lot of knowledge, but she was shy, and clammed right up when she got in front of the kids, the presenter doing peasant life was normally very outgoing, but she was not confident in her historical knowledge so she had a hard time making anything she might say interesting. The final presenter, the wine merchant had gotten his BA in history, and was full of knowledge, but he did not know much about wine production, and he was working hard to fill the silences of the other two. At one point he was going on about the sort of house he lived in, talking about the thatched roof when an amazing story came out of his mouth. I remember it fairly distinctly, though I might not remember it exactly:

“My house has a thatched roof, that is bundles of straw laid across the beams. Thatch is wonderful except sometimes the cats and dogs in the house crawl up into the thatch, then when it rains very hard they fall down and that is how we get the expression raining cats and dogs.”

I had never heard that one before, in fact, I had never heard the origin of the phrase, but knew that one could certainly not be true! I made sure after the panel was done that the presenter did not repeat that story to any of the other groups, and at the end, well, I had learned a lot even if the kids had not. The school gave us another chance the next year, and each year it got better. I did not have those same panelists back, but found people with more knowledge, who would not clam up under 45 staring eyes.

This year, when planning out the talk show, one of the regular panelists who portrayed a monk, could not make the date. I scrambled around for a while, and eventually asked the panelist who had played the wine merchant. He’d done a lot for us in the past 4 years, and had kept increasing his knowledge. He asked to play the monk, and since that was the role we had lost I agreed. He promised not to tell the cats and dogs story, and the presentations went really well. The teachers even let me know that this year’s talk show was the best they’ve ever seen. The kids learned a lot, we kept the pace up, and had fun while still being accurate and informative. I apologized to our new monk for teasing him about “cats and dogs” all those years, and thanked him for saving our presentation.

Yesterday a friend told me he had been watching a show on Stratford-upon-Avon on the travel channel. The show included a guided tour of Anne Hathaway’s cottage lead by a guide in an exquisite costume. The guide actually told the raining cats and dogs story on television, and went on to explain that that is why folks had canopies on their beds, to keep stuff falling through the roof from hitting people while they slept. It turns out this is quite a well known hoax, but still a hoax nonetheless.

I’m sorry again Tom, your story was not as unreasonable as I first thought, even if it is still false. I’m glad you could help make our 6th graders better educated than English tour guides. Read this entry on entry page

Tricks of the Trade, Endowments

A lady, medieval nobility by her dress, approaches a family in modern clothes who are looking around them with some enjoyment and not a little trepidation. She walks swiftly towards them, and almost past when she pauses, approaches the older man in the group and exclaims:

“Henry? It is you! Why Henry it has been quite a while. How long has it been since we last saw each other?”

Now the woman has the entire family’s attention, but no one, not even “Henry” responds to the question. She hurries on to explain:

“Henry and I knew each other many years ago. My father was arranging for us to be wed when Henry’s father found him a richer bride. And is this your family?”

This elicits a few laughs from the crowd, especially since the lady appears to be in her twenties and “Henry” is in his fifties.

The lady goes on to explain to those in the party who may not have met her before that she is the eldest daughter of a duke, now married to a count with three children of her own and she is looking for husbands for them. She solicits recommendations of what she should look for in a husband for her daughter, then bids adieu to Henry and his family, and continues on her way

The man in this story is not really named Henry, and the lady is not really a noble lady. She is an actor, and he is a visitor to the Connecticut Renaissance Faire, or any other number of immersive history events all over the US. But why in the world would a noble lady wander up and introduce herself to a large group of people when those people are centuries away from what she is depicting? By drawing the audience in and giving them a place in her world, she was able to enter a dialogue with this group of people, that hopefully did not feel too out of place or awkward.

The above endowment is fairly straightforward, a single person is given a name, a role, and a relation to the performer, but that is not the only type of endowment.

The tall, lean, mustachioed man approached the seated audience. He hooks his hands into his suspenders and asks for a show of hands:

“Now how many of you have brought your own horse today?” When no one raises their hands he asks how many have brought their shotguns. When this elicits a laughing response he asks how many have ever before participated in a posse before. While a few brave souls who have caught on might raise their hands Wild Bill still gets to say,

“Well we’re up against some pretty fierce cattle rustlers this time so you better pay attention if you’re going to survive as a member of this posse.”

In this case the performer playing Wild Bill has an captive audience, seated, waiting to hear what he has to say, but why in the world would Wild Bill Hickok tell his life story to these modern folks sitting in a modern classroom? Even though the life of Wild Bill is thrilling, the audience now has a stake in the story, much more than they did before they learned that they are a posse, newly deputized to take down the local cattle rustlers. This endowment has also established Wild Bill as a lawman. He is leading a posse to take down a gang of cattle stealers. He has done this in a way that seems much more natural than a more explanatory approach.

There are as many, if not more types of endowments as there are historical roles to play in this world. Some endowments only go so far as to establish the audience’s place in the performer’s world without getting into specifics of a name, or even a place in a posse. In fact, most interactions between performers of historical roles and a modern audience assume that the audience has a place in the character’s world. Sometimes this is gotten around by assuming the visitors are only visitors from another geography and not another time, that way they might still need the goings on explained, but they have not broken any rules of physics.

If you were living in 1627 Plimoth and a group of modern school children barged in, you’d probably react very differently than a historical interpreter does. Endowments get around this problem. Maybe they are a fresh boatload from the old country, neighborhood children that need to be taught, or settlers from other settlements in the new world. Sometimes we need to do some translating to accommodate modern sensibilities. A German tourist in a world war two museum would be incredibly uncomfortable if the first person characters treated them the way that many German Americans were treated during World War II. The German tourists at Strawbery Banke Museum’s WWII general store are greeted as refugees escaping the fighting or as allies, so they can have a meaningful conversation. There are very few situations when reenacting the prejudices of the past on to a modern audience will get your point across. Now I’m not talking about more theatrical reenactments, where all of the people involved are actors, then it can be very informative, like Colonial Williamsburg reenacting a tarring and feathering. The aggressors and the victim are actors, they have worked together towards a goal of greater understanding and are prepared to take the abuse. A modern audience needs a little more careful handling than that.

So the next time a funny dressed person rushes up to you and asks if you have seen their falcon fly by, play along. I bet you’ll learn more, and you just may have some fun too.

Photos taken at Reenactorfest in Gettysburg Dec. 2007, by Rob Mohns Read this entry on entry page

Portraying a Historical Character: 1st person vs 3rd person

All of the people who portray historical characters: museum and school personnel, military enthusiasts, actors, costume lovers, and more, have an important decision to make when interacting with the public, and that is how to address their audience.

I don’t mean whether to be rude or welcoming, I should hope that we’re all encouraging new folks to get into history so we are always kind and open. I mean whether we will address our audience from the first person or the third person. For those of you who do not remember this particular English lesson, first person is when the story is told from a personal perspective “I went to the store”, third person is when the story is told from an outside perspective “She went to the store.” As a costumed interpreter of history we have a choice of speaking to our audience in the first person “I cook food like this” or third person “back then they cooked food like this.”

There is a raging, and probably never-ending debate on the efficacy of both types of interpretation, and they both have their pros and cons. I have seen both done well, both done very poorly, and I’ve even seen some very effective methods in between. I have been asked more than once, by friends and family on the outside, to explain exactly what the debate is, and why it is such a big deal. This is no small task, but there are some main points that I’d like to capture. I would also like to dispel the myth that I favor one type over another, the truth is that I think all sorts of portrayals have their place, and can be effective teaching tools.

First Person: the Immersive Experience
What could be better than going back in time and having a conversation with Mark Twain? Or stepping inside a colonial stockade and really being there?

Portraying in the first person is undoubtedly a challenge. You’ve got to know a lot in order to be able to speak with authority in the voice of someone else. It takes research, rehearsal, and a lot of energy. There are many folks out there who will not attempt it because it does take a degree of acting, but on the other hand there are actors out there who will not attempt it because there is often a lot of deviation from a script, into the realm of improvisation, but still within historical fact. Yet a first person interactive experience can be thrilling and very engaging, and help us connect to a time and place when it is brought to life.

Plimoth Plantation is one of the museums that does this very well. When one enters the stockade of the village, and looks down the street at the houses, animals, and people in costume one gets a feel for what it must really have been like. All the costumed interpreters have funny accents, and speak as it is 1627, with the same hopes and experiences of those who really did live in Plimoth Colony. Colonial Williamsburg does some first person interpretation, as does Strawbery Banke Museum.

There are definite downsides to first person interpretation. Language can be a barrier, both audience members talking about modern day, or role players being hard to understand to audiences. Portraying a time period or culture that had prejudices other than our own can lead to sticky situations as well.

Third Person: the Explanation
There are a lot of things that first person just can not do. Wild Bill Hickock can not talk about his own death. Pilgrims would never talk about sex in polite company. A nineteenth century factory worker can not talk about how Lowell’s factories shaped Massachusetts’ role in Twentieth Century America. A third person interpreter can do all that and more. A third person costumed interpreter is someone who talks like a modern person, but dresses and demonstrates skills from the time period.

Most starting reenactors feel more comfortable in this explaining sort of role, many find it easier to teach, easier to lead discussions and really bring the realities home to a modern audience. You’ve still got the look, the feel, even the smell or taste, but just not the sound. Old Sturbridge Village, for the most part practices this sort of historical interpretation. Looking down the common and seeing the costumed villagers makes for an idyllic picture, and the guides are incredibly knowledgeable when you encounter one up close. Since walking around a modern city is almost impossible to wrap around an eighteenth century mindset, The Freedom Trail in downtown Boston offers guided tours with costumed characters, but all the guides are talking in the third person, for everyone’s safety as well as education.

On the down side, it is easy to do third person badly. A person who has very little public speaking skills may choose to speak from a modern perspective to take off some of the pressure, but they can still do a poor job. Often third person interpretations can become lecture-like and alienate an audience quickly. Just because it is easier, does not mean it does not take some practice and skill building. Also Third person can be confusing for an audience, if a reenactor is dressed in nineteenth century regalia but talking about modern things, certain members of the audience may have trouble grasping what they are doing, or may not trust the reenactor as a source of information.

In Between: Lively Discussions
In the book “Case Studies in Museum, Zoo, and Aquarium Theater” Lynne Conner, Past Director of Stages in History, @ the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania talks about their decision to work in the first person and never “Break Character” or speak about modern things (like explain museum exhibits) Because it puts the actor-historian in: “an impossible situation, wherein the actor-historian tries desperately to have a foot in two worlds and as a result fails miserably at both.”

I completely disagree that it is an impossible situation, in fact I think it is unreasonable to expect that the reenactor (or actor-historian as Lynne calls them) can forget for even a minute that they are a 21st century person in a 21st century world. Even the best audience is suspending their disbelief to engage with the first person character, but they know what year it really is. In fact, Lynne acknowledges that her actor-historians will tell people where the bathroom is, and will throw a few “winks and nudges” at those folks who do not seem to realize that the person in front of them is an actor portraying another time period.

Autumn Tree Armored Combat Company does a lot of educational shows, at schools, for scouts, etc. explaining the life of a knight, the role of the military in the middle-ages, and what it meant to live in such different times. The kids (and teachers) want to see real knights do their thing, and the reenactors in the troupe certainly do that, but they also explain, from a first person perspective, what life was like, and how life was different then from now. Some justify this as a sort of “time travel”, or bringing folks from back then into the future to do the explaining, but for the most part ATACC does not, during performance, acknowledge that they are referencing modern times. Most audiences are willing to meet the performers halfway (just as they are willing to suspend disbelief to think of the reenactors as knights and squires.) This way they get to explain that the interlocking rings that people now call chainmail was just called maile back then, and that while historically, young boys training to be knights were used as squires, modern laws and inclusivity means that adults, and often females, fill the squire role in ATACC. Audiences tend to accept the in-between perspective of a person speaking in accent in character, but acknowledging a few modern things. ATACC does not talk about members’ 21st century lives, but are willing to put historical lessons in context, and I find that makes all the difference.

Which is best?
I think it completely depends on the circumstance. In imersive type environments, first person can be incredibly effective, and also very emotionally engaging, but not all situations allow us to be completely in the moment, and sometimes getting information across is more important than portraying an historical character. Sometimes it is possible to straddle the line and do a bit of both, but this is not easy, and not always appropriate. So when making your decision, whether you are a hobbyist or a museum professional, think it out, because there is no easy choice.

Photo of Plimoth Plantation (top) and Old Sturbridge Village (middle) taken by Alena Shumway. Photo of Autumn Tree Armored Combat Company at the Vermont Renaissance Faire by Jess Boynton. Read this entry on entry page

Breaking the 4th Wall

Though there are plenty of plays and movies, on historical topics some of the most dramatic theater is often done at museums, renaissance faires and history events. There are many things about these performances that make them unique, but it is my opinion that audience participation and interaction are key. In theatrical terms, there is a name for the wall that separates the audience from the action, the 4th wall. Most plays and movies subscribe to the convention that there is an invisible wall --invisible to the audience but real to the characters in the play/movie-- in between the audience and the action, so we as audience can see the characters acting as if they are alone. Modern plays invoke the 4th wall less and less, while movies only rarely break the 4th wall to address the audience directly.

Actors in “Historical event” settings, like museums and renaissance faires, often find their best work is done with the audience. Sometimes performances in these settings look like story telling sessions, where the characters act more as if they were telling a story than if they were living the moment, other performances are interactive, with the needs and wants of the audience dictating the direction that the performance will take. It is very easy to get emotionally invested in this type of performance, often the loose script revolves around this emotional connection. Sometimes the connection is made through humor or entertainment, as is often found at renaissance faires, while at museums the connection is often based on biography and the personal connections a character can make to our own time and place.

Though I have seen some dramatic “staged” performances at historical events (i.e. the kind where there is a 4th wall, or at least some audience separation) my favorites are by far the interactive performances.



Photos of Richard Bingham (left, played by Stephen Pasker) talking swords after an ATACC demo, and Sheriff Bracken (right, played by Ron Beaudion) giving an audience member a "ticket". Photos by Jess Boynton. Read this entry on entry page

In-Class Visits a "Poor" Substitute

Recently the Boston Globe wrote an article about how high gas prices and economic downturns are affecting field trips. Needless to say, field trips are on the decline, kids are stuck in their classrooms and museums are feeling the pinch. The article briefly mentions an alternative, that I think gets short shrift and deserves a little more attention.

In-class visits, are on the rise at Old Sturbridge Village according to the Boston Globe, and that is good news for Autumn Tree Productions and other groups that may not have a physical location, but provide an interactive history experience for school groups.

How does an In-school visit differ from a field trip? Well the obvious one is that the kids never leave the building. In relation to history classes, it means usually a visit from a costumed character talking about life in their own time period. Often they bring props for the students to handle, and give demonstrations of the way things were done. Many museums offer in-class services, Plimoth Plantation has different programs for different age groups, Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, Mass will bring swords and armor into the classroom, even science museums like the Museum of Science in Boston, Mass have programs. There are also groups not affiliated with a museum who do in-class visits, local reenactment groups will often come to visit, though the risk with amateur groups is in accuracy and appropriateness of material presented. There are a great number of unaffiliated people presenting specific historical characters or time periods that will visit a school for a reasonable fee.

Of course something is lost when the student can not see the architecture, walk the grounds, and experience all that a museum has to offer. There is no doubt that a field trip can be more immersive and very stimulating. However a class visit can be very personal, and geared towards the specific audience, and covering very specific topics that a teacher or student may ask about whereas it can be hard for a teacher to guarantee that in the rush of the field trip, their students are actually absorbing the facts and lessons that the teacher had in mind when she let her class loose in the museum galleries or historic house. When the students get to have a back and forth discussion with a medieval monk who is sitting there in front of them, it is much easier to maintain focus on life in the monastery than it is when the kids travel through an exhibit at their own pace and in their own order.

Another advantage can be timing. Is your local museum putting up a spring exhibit on local involvement in the civil war while the classroom schedule covers that unit in the fall? Is the particular day that your class can get free already booked up at the museum? A visit to the classroom often is easier to schedule around a class’ needs than an entire exhibit installation is.

Teachers, please do not be discouraged by the high price of buses, and the inconvenience of disrupting an entire day’s routine. There are a lot of us out there working tirelessly to bring to your school a taste of the past that will spark your students’ appetite for history!

Photos of Autumn Tree Productions offerings at schools in Newington, CT. Photos by Alena Shumway. Read this entry on entry page