photo courtesy Drunktailor
Lately, I have felt like a street preacher exhorting people to change their ways.
Feel the power of the primary source.
Behold the possibility in the unknown.
Surrender to uncertainty.
It’s not for everybody, I know. But rethinking reenacting will change not just you and your appearance, but the way you “do” history. The more you dig in, the more you question and change, the more engaged you’ll be—and the more engaged your visitor will be. The more fun you have, the more fun the public will have.
“That’s great, Aunt Kitty,” you say. “But how am I supposed to do that? I’ve already learned rabbtre sous le main and buttonholes and pinning my stomacher and making soap. What more can I do?”
Stop asking how. Start asking why.
Look, I get it. Those 18th century skills are hard to acquire. Tons of people have better skills than I do, and I willingly and happily admit my general incompetence.
The Soap Boiler and Candle Maker. Popular Technology or, Professions and Trades.
Take soap. I cannot make soap. I know that it takes lye and tallow and heat. I know it is slimey and hot and dangerous and vaguely disgusting. (I’ve done my time with tallow candles, thanks.) So I respect the soap.
But honestly, so what? is the question I ask when y’all tell me how to make soap. I want to know why you’re making soap.
Are you selling it? What will you wash with it? How often do you do laundry? Do you share the soap? And if you’re selling soap, how do people know to come to you? Why is your soap better than, say, Bono Brown across the river? He’s cheaper by a penny, why is your soap so special? If you do sell it, what do you do with the money? Are you married? Does your husband drink the profits?
Jean Siméon Chardin
Soap Bubbles, ca. 1733–34
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Wentworth Fund, 1949 (49.24) Soap bubbles I can do.
Tell me a story. Tell me why you’re doing something, or why it was done in the past, not just how. Then I might give a damn. But telling me only how a musket works, and not why you have it and where you got it and what you’ll do with it and whether the sergeant yelled at you the last time you failed to clean it and the punishment you got when you failed AGAIN to clean it…. Well, you see what I mean.
Change the question, change the answer, change how people see history.
Kitty Calash 
I can’t agree more!! I have actually experienced the story telling aspect at an event and it happened in a completely unexpected way. One of my impressions is that of a tavern keeper’s daughter. On a sunny fall morning after the morning dishes were washed, I was chopping seasonal veggies for a stew of some sort when a woman approached me and asked what I was doing before I had a chance to engage her with a question of my own. I explained my task and I was so immersed in the moment and the rhythm of chopping, that out spewed a story about my “father’s” personality and how working for him was enjoyable, but difficult (because of the war and my husband, etc etc) and during my chat with this lady about my lifestyle, up walks my “father” to check on my progress and we engage in a very authentic conversation and it was one of those reenacting moments where you knew you instantly connected with the public and could not have asked for a more perfect experience. When the lady said thank you and bid us farewell, my “father” and I looked at each other and just smiled. Magic had happened.
Transcendence, right? I love those moments when we literally lose ourselves in time, and I think they’re important. They have meaning for us as well as for the visitors, and I love hearing them. Thank you so much for sharing!
I think they’re both very good questions. To me, in interpreting, it’s often a “read the room” moment–is this person interested in my narrative or in the functional nuts and bolts of what I’m doing? You get a lifelong quilter asking sewing questions, and she truly wants to know how I stitched my gown together–she may or may not give a rat about why I’m wearing it. But another visitor will want to know who I am, why I’m there, what part I play in the story they see around me. So, I tend to meet people where they’re at and let them guide the conversation if they’re so inclined–including which question they want to ask 🙂
Of course, for the uncertain or unsure visitor, I think that the narrative “why” is often much more accessible than the functional “how.” And very often our visitors are of the uncertain type who doesn’t have a question formed yet.
Well, yes, of course. I suppose my gripe is with the folks who don’t recognize how to read an audience, and who don’t (can’t?) switch between why and how. I do believe that for all of us, understanding the why makes answering how more interesting– even if only for ourselves.
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