Living History as Performance Art

[Tom Dodson]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

This thread has been interesting reading. I wonder, however, what is wrong with LH as something you enjoy doing without trying to categorize and analyze every aspect of it?
Tom Dodson

[OldKingCrow]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

or ask a pard if he's heard from back home?

You could not ask for a better example.

Can you see how this type of fabricated discourse demands: a fabricated or crafted answer ? The ensuing discourse has no other option but to become historically themed fiction.

I value your thoughts on how encouraging improvisation (whose spooning partner is artistic license) betters the research focused interp of historical events ?

On edit: Analyzation is to Internets discussion groups as catching passes is to football practice.


CJ Rideout
Tampa, Florida

[OldKingCrow]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

Mrs. Trent those are excuses all right. Most folks won't come out and say: "No. Thanks though. Not my lane. I am not of such level, skill set or cut from the representative cloth." (Good on Mr Rodman's example of his buds).

So you get weak excuses about phones and such.


Christopher Rideout
Tampa, Florida

[Bill Cross]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

Can you see how this type of fabricated discourse demands: a fabricated or crafted answer?

Huh?

Example: "Tom, have you received any letters from back home?"
Possible answers: "Nope." "Yes, my mother is poorly and asked me to send her more money." "I heard from my cousin that George Fairly has said he'll stand for boro councilman at the next election."

Notice that the first two require nothing more than a normal conversational reply, while the third would work for someone who had done some research into the period in question in that locale. Since there is no hard & fast rule about firper, it's quite easy to tailor one's questions and answers to what makes one comfortable.

The ensuing discourse has no other option but to become historically themed fiction.

I think you're making way more of this than's warranted.

Conversation topics then and now are remarkably similar if you read period letters. I am fortunate enough to have some letters from this period and post-war that are very average in their topics. Things we take for granted now from sharing via in-person interaction or phone calls are what people cared about-- not usually the BIG issues of the day, but whether the crop had been good, was there enough money to go around, or whether Pappy still had the catarrh. The closer you keep your conversation to what you know and what applies to you, the easier it all is and the less "false."

I value your thoughts on how encouraging improvisation (whose spooning partner is artistic license) betters the research focused interp of historical events?

Some folks will spend days in libraries researching what blouse the 112th Hawaiian Brigade wore, but won't spend 5 minutes finding out who the senators from the state were. Others will spend time learning period songs or to play a period instrument. Hank once came to an event with a hunk of the rope used to hang John Brown that he "sold" to me for a dollar or two. He and I talked about the trial and execution, and he later sold another piece of that rope to another reenactor at the event. The True Cross I guess you could say.

We find our way into the period in many ways. For some, it's the guns; for others, it's the playing soldier. For a few of us, though, firper's a way to learn in an interactive manner more about what life was like back then. There's nothing quite like fumbling around in the dark or reading by lamplight to have a feel for pre-electric America.

Analyzation is to a Internets discussion groups as catching passes is to football practice.

Good football teams practice. Anything that helps us hone our skills in this area is a good thing to me.

[OldKingCrow]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

Very well.

Are there any limits or parameters, standards if you will to improvisation in the LH eniron ?

We place great value in the minutia and adherence to the known, though thankfully ever expanding, knowledge base. I bought into the no showy displays of individualism (read: jaguar skin trousers) yet I sense, from your commentary, this is the one area where it is free reign on individualistic creativity.

Through analyzation we see how different hobby is and where respect / value is placed by others. Go long.

Cj Rideout
Tampa, Florida

[Hank Trent]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

It's easy enough to avoid modern topics. It's another matter to maintain period conversation, even when talking about common things, without slipping into modern speech patterns and modern language.

That's certainly true, and it's inevitable. We're modern people, after all, with way more time in the modern world than the past, so habits are hard or impossible to break. I'm always making the mistake of saying "yeah" and stuff like that, as hard as I try.

However, I see a huge difference between honest slips, that everybody does and everybody ignores, and people who dominate the conversation on a modern topic because they just don't care. After many sentences on a blatantly modern topic (not counting health/safety/logistic things of course), it's not an "oopsy." At a certain point it's gotta just be deliberate.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[Hank Trent]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

This thread has been interesting reading. I wonder, however, what is wrong with LH as something you enjoy doing without trying to categorize and analyze every aspect of it?
Tom Dodson

If you're happy doing what you're doing the way you do it, then keep doing it. :)

Personally, I'm with Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living." If I weren't always trying to understand, improve, push the envelope, look at things in new ways, etc. I'd be bored and quit reenacting and find another hobby that was more challenging.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[Hank Trent]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

You could not ask for a better example.

Can you see how this type of fabricated discourse demands: a fabricated or crafted answer ? The ensuing discourse has no other option but to become historically themed fiction.

I value your thoughts on how encouraging improvisation (whose spooning partner is artistic license) betters the research focused interp of historical events ?

But reenacting is historically themed fiction. It has to be, by definition.

In a typical non-fiction history book, if you don't know something, you can leave it out. So if you don't know what color pants a certain historic person was wearing on a certain day, you can either say it's not known or you can just not mention it.

In living history, you can't show up without pants. So you have to pick something typical, even if it's undocumented, because it's more accurate to wear pants than not. What you're doing has already become historic fiction right there.

Carry that over to every aspect. If someone asks whether you've heard from home, and you don't know whether the man you're portraying received a letter recently, you can't just stay silent and refuse to answer, without that in itself conveying something about the man (that he was deaf? antisocial?). So again, you have to pick the most reasonable answer, based on things like whether mail was typically getting through at that time and place, etc.

This is why I think reenacting or living history shares more with performance art (or even fiction) than it does written non-fiction history. The goal is to create the illusion of another time period, so those present can "suspend disbelief" (another literary term). The problem is that the more one knows about the past, the harder it is to suspend disbelief. I can remember going to the least accurate hometown event and getting that thrill of wow, this is just the way it was. Now, to get that same thrill, it needs to be a lot closer to the past, but I still get it, absolutely.

Are there any limits or parameters, standards if you will to improvisation in the LH eniron ?

We place great value in the minutia and adherence to the known, though thankfully ever expanding, knowledge base. I bought into the no showy displays of individualism (read: jaguar skin trousers) yet I sense, from your commentary, this is the one area where it is free reign on individualistic creativity.

Obviously, everyone is going to have a different answer, and there's no real right and wrong. Some events want to at least assign real names, some events are fine with typical choices or a mix thereof.

Personally, the limits or parameters I'd choose are: whatever works. Whatever keeps the illusion alive. If making up a plausible but fictional detail is more realistic than omitting that detail (whether it's a pair of pants or the contents of a letter from home), then I'd say it's better to make up that detail than omit it. On the other hand, if you wind up portraying an actual historic person, there's no reason to omit his or her unusual traits, while filling in the unknown gaps with one's best guess at typical things.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[OldKingCrow]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

But reenacting is historically themed fiction. It has to be, by definition.
Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

Documentary Vs. Gone With The Wind.

Chris Rideout
Tampa, Florida

[Hank Trent]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

Documentary Vs. Gone With The Wind.

That would be third person interpretation vs. farb fest.

How about:

Documentary vs. Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[OldKingCrow]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

I dont mean that sarcastically....well sort of...but I have witnessed the same creative license go all Gone With The Windy at EBUFU events.

Now certainly not from a man of your skill and reputation, but application of contrived discourse, albeit plausible, across the broad spectrum seems to me, at some level, counter to this culture......but as life goes so goes the hobby and perhaps the culture has changed / evolved leaving stodgy old history book geeks behind the times ?

Personally, the limits or parameters I'd choose are: whatever works. Whatever keeps the illusion alive. If making up a plausible but fictional detail is more realistic than omitting that detail (whether it's a pair of pants or the contents of a letter from home), then I'd say it's better to make up that detail than omit it.

Chris Rideout
Tampa, Florida

[OldKingCrow]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

That would be third person interpretation vs. farb fest.

How about:

Documentary vs. Saving Private Ryan or Schindler's List

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

Good example in that accuracy of set, location, kit, costume and dramatic production are certainly more in tune to this community in SPR/SL than GWTW.

Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List, both expertly produced visual masterpieces, are based on historical story lines to which broad dramatic / creative license is applied, most often salacious in some form to make the story more emotionally appealing, marketable and to convey a modern retrospective view / message (Hollywood Filtered for Your Learnin of the Truth) of the underlying historic line.

By Documentary it doenst prevent or discourage first person discourse. It makes more realistic and fact based.

We can talk about the farm, politics, slavery, war... anything really and never have to fabricate.

The true mark of a FIRPER pro should be (lest to my distorted views on everything) the ability to NOT have to make stuff up and most importantly NOT set your fellow participants up with dialogue requiring a contrived response. In that spirit perhaps "received any letters from home" isn't stoking the time travel experience, it is the mark of easy / lazy interp ?

Chris Rideout
Tampa, FLorida

[Hank Trent]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

I dont mean that sarcastically....well sort of...but I have witnessed the same creative license go all Gone With The Windy at EBUFU events.

Oh, I've seen it go far worse than that. As I recall, Rhett Butler never discussed the Screen Actors Guild, and Scarlett never popped a flash bulb in Melanie's face. :)

As I said somewhere above, we're amateurs, we're doing this all "live" with no do-overs. There's going to be bad acting, mistakes, what-have-you. I've also heard reenactors claim ridiculous facts in third person that would never make it into a good documentary. For the same reasons.

But I don't think the solution is just to say if you're not really good, it's better not to try. Otherwise, we'd just let reenactors into history-heavy events wearing modern clothes, if their repro uniforms weren't good enough, instead of trying to loan or teach about better clothing.

Here's the problem I have with the documentary mindset.

When I first started reenacting, I finally asked the sergeant why he was so concerned about getting his uniform right, and then would sit in camp holding a Coke can. He said that the spectators knew the Coke can wasn't part of history, but they might be confused by slightly inaccurate clothing.

That's certainly justifiable by the documentary mindset. We don't wonder whether the guy in modern clothes walking over the battlefield pointing and talking is dressed that way; we realize we're supposed to ignore his clothes and pay attention to the rocks he's pointing to.

But do we really want those kinds of gaps in living history, to keep it "accurate"? If we can't document exactly what so-and-so drank on a certain day, it doesn't matter, so we just drink Coke? I hope not.

application of contrived discourse, albeit plausible, across the broad spectrum seems to me, at some level, counter to this culture......but as life goes so goes the hobby and perhaps the culture has changed / evolved leaving stodgy old history book geeks behind the times ?

What about contrived but plausible clothing? If you can't document exactly what the real individual you're portraying was wearing, do you just go pant-less? If you're willing to "make up" clothing, food, shelter, and most everything else, why not "make up" words too?

And before anyone says, huffily, my clothes aren't made up; they're documented off an original pair of whatever in the whatever collection... I'll just ask, can you (the generic "you") document that the exact person you're portraying was wearing exactly those clothes on the exact day you're portraying? Right down to the color of his socks and whether he was wearing drawers? If not, you made them up, based on your best guess. They're plausible, but that's the most you can claim. If you're not even portraying a specific named person, just being yourself in the 1860s, then you're really doing a contrived but, hopefully, plausible impression.

I think a lot of reenactors are so focussed on getting clothes and other artifacts just right, and have so much of their status and ego invested in it, that they don't stop to think that, in the end, they really are just making up the vast majority of it.

On the man, methods, material triad, I'll never understand why reenactors are willing to try to do their best with the "methods" and "materials," even if they have to make up a lot of it, but think it's somehow more accurate just to substitute modern filler for the "man."

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[Hank Trent]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

The true mark of a FIRPER pro should be (lest to my distorted views on everything) the ability to NOT have to make stuff up and most importantly NOT set your fellow participants up with dialogue requiring a contrived response. In that spirit perhaps "received any letters from home" isn't stoking the time travel experience, it is the mark of easy / lazy interp ?

Chris Rideout
Tampa, FLorida

Didn't see this post before I replied above.

I disagree.

Unless you can show that people in the 1860s talked in such a way as to prevent those around them from having to "make stuff up," then I think that limitation is artificial and creates a distorted picture of life in the 1860s.

Besides, how do you know? What if I happened to have read an original letter that the man I'm portraying actually received a few days before the event is set? Asking if I'd received any news from home would fit exactly within the parameters you're suggested, yet it wouldn't be asked for fear of receiving a made-up answer.

There's no way to know what to be afraid of saying and what to say, because there's no way of knowing what information the other person has.

And there's no way to talk about slavery, farming, etc. without making it all up anyway, because we don't know what the people we're portraying (if we're even portraying actual people) were saying about those topics on the days we're portraying anyway. The most we can do anyway, is guess what might have been typical.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[OldKingCrow]

Re: Living History as Performance Art

Besides, how do you know? What if I happened to have read an original letter that the man I'm portraying actually received a few days before the event is set? Asking if I'd received any news from home would fit exactly within the parameters you're suggested, yet it wouldn't be asked for fear of receiving a made-up answer.

I don't. That is the problem. Applying your previous carte blanch license to fabricate plausible details how would I ? If there is buy in, as with everything else to keep it research based, there would be no issue.

And there's no way to talk about slavery, farming, etc. without making it all up anyway, because we don't know what the people we're portraying (if we're even portraying actual people) were saying about those topics on the days we're portraying anyway. The most we can do anyway, is guess what might have been typical.

Sure there is. I can speak at length on:

Slavery, abolition, Lincoln's election

Period farming methods, varieties, problems, prices / profits

Comes from not fabricating a charachter but inserting yourself in that situation. in real time, properly armed with sound historical knowledge.

If you get assigned Joe Blow from the census at an event, to tie into your assertions above, you dont know what he said, did , felt on any given day. I liken it to folks getting all emotional and conveying their ancestors involvement in the war or abolition. Outside of few rare circumstances, most dont know much of anything about their ancestors intimate details of his life or motivations. But we do know a whole hell of alot about plain, everday, common occurences and motivations which can be conveyed and keep it factual.


Chris Rideout
Tampa, Florida