Tag Archives: living history

Free-for-All Friday

24 Friday Jun 2016

Posted by in Events, History, Living History, Reenacting, Research

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Well, at least I can dress myself.

Well, at least I can dress myself.

Most sadly, my obnoxious yellow gown will not be finished for this coming weekend, so I will not be flaunting my goods in such flashy clothing. Instead, I will be dressed like a giant version of the darling Miss B, whom I fear does wear the Space Invaders print better than I.

The real point, of course, is the action expected for Saturday, June 25, at the Craig House. The press release is fairly general about how we’ll be representin’ New Jersey’s 18th century civil war, and no one has leaped up to portray Little Anthony the [Quaker] Insurrectionist, but here’s the scene:

Craig House is empty the day of the battle. John Craig is with the Continental Army, leaving Ann Craig to flee with chattel, child, and two slaves in two wagons. This leaves the house and remaining property vulnerable to occupation and depredation.

An armed member of the Association for Retaliation is snooping around the Craig house and catches Loyalist and Quaker refugees who are squatting/hiding, as well as a “London” trader. He can’t let them go, and he is afraid to move them for fear of the British by day and the Tories by night. The Retaliator is joined by a local farmer who has stopped by to check on Mrs Craig’s safety in the surrounding commotion of the troops moving towards the coming battle. 

“Disaffected” smugglers use the chaos of the war in New Jersey to continue trading with the British and Loyalists. The “London trade” feeds the taste for tea, fabrics, rum, lemons, and sugar that even the Revolutionaries cannot shake.

Quakers are viewed with suspicion and animosity for their pacifist, anti-slavery views, which gives the impression that they are Loyalists. Harassed in Philadelphia by various committees requisitioning blankets and other goods; by 1778, the Quakers’ abolitionist views make them vastly unpopular in Monmouth County.

These characters in search of a plot will encounter each other at Craig House and, with some history improv, portray the tension and conflict between New Jersey residents in the Revolutionary period. Want to come out? Craig House is here, and a visitors’ guide is here.

Privacy and Proximity

23 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in Events, History, Living History, personal

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DSC_0412

Feeling the Wyeth at Kiefer House

It has been a long time since I read Bowling Alone, and longer still since I read A Pattern Language or Jane Jacobs, but all of those came to mind this past weekend.

I don’t mythologize or romanticize the villages of the past: we all know how The Crucible turns out, but I thought about privacy and proximity, and I thought about scale. Let’s take privacy first.

In this century, it’s difficult to experience the past as anything more than a series of simulacra which we piece together in a crazy quilt of understanding, but past notions of privacy are far different from our own.

Bedroom

Early one morning, as I lay in a creaking rope bed, I considered how unfamiliar most of us are with the noises of other humans. The wall of our bedroom just barely fit against the exterior wall, and moonlight on whitewash showed the spaces between planking and the plaster, and we slept with the bedroom door open to take best advantage of the cool evening cross breeze.

As I lay awake, my companion happily asleep, I pondered the true extent of my laziness. How much clothing did I really need to wear to go up to the public facility? How loud would relieving myself in the chamber pot be? And what would the reaction be? (I have been on the side of someone else’s choice not to use a chamber pot, and said, “I wouldn’t care,” but one never knows.) And though I elected to put on more than my shift and walk to the public convenience, I began to wonder: what did the people in the past tolerate, ignore, or politely decline to mention?

What did living together feel like, when people shared smaller spaces? When the boundary between private and public, bedroom and parlor, was pierced with holes?

A Request from the Academie

18 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by in Events, Living History, Reenacting, Research

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At the Inn Door, oil on canvas by Henry Singleton, ca. 1780, V&A Museum 1834-1900

At the Inn Door, oil on canvas by Henry Singleton, ca. 1780, V&A Museum 1834-1900

Gentle Readers, Living History Enthusiasts, and Rev War Junkies: Your assistance is requested. Mrs. Boice’s Historie Academie is looking for your input for future hands-on learning weekends.

There are some interesting topics in the list– brewing? I certainly enjoy the results of brewing. Dairying? I like cows and love the local dairy farm. Language and speech patterns? I could certainly do better. Professions? Hmmm….I’ve considered several. Much to love in this list, and I’m looking forward to learning more.

Go forth, and register your opinion.

15 Ways to Have a Bad Living History Event

13 Friday May 2016

Posted by in Events, Snark

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The Enraged Musician. Chaos has a long history, and often I am for it.

The Enraged Musician. Chaos has a long history, and often I am for it. But not always.

For Organizers

  1. Do not advertise. Having no audience makes an event super-lame.
  2. Have no attendance limits on a closed site. Intense crowds and no security makes an event scary. Add alcohol for intensity.
  3. Do not publish participant standards or a schedule. Confusion and laxity breed chaos.
  4. Publish standards, but do not enforce them uniformly. Creating the appearance that standards are only enforced for people you don’t know erodes trust and credibility and discourages participation, reinforcing adolescent clique behavior.
  5. Do not highlight (or provide) participant amenities like water, toilets, or dry firewood.
John Greenwood, Sea Captains Carousing in Suriname. Good times, no?

John Greenwood, Sea Captains Carousing in Suriname. Authentically bad behaviour.

For Participants

  1. Don’t bring your own lunch, water, or powder.
  2. Don’t follow the rules at a new event. Standards are for chumps. Text your friends while minding a rope line and acting as an interpreter.
  3. Get drunk. Who doesn’t love an inebriate around gunpowder? Safety, schmafety. Besides, drunkenness is authentic.
  4. Smoke cigarettes on the field. You can always hide your hand behind your back, next to your cartridge box…what can go wrong? The captain will never notice.
  5. Make critical comments about the public and other reenactors just within their hearing. Don’t smile.

For the Public

The Death of General Wolfe, Benjamin West. NGC

What, no dogs? The Death of General Wolfe, Benjamin West. NGC

  1. Bring a dog. Dogs love guns, drums, and cannons. “Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war,” right?
  2. Ride your bicycle through the crowd. Make disparaging comments about the crowd interrupting your ride.
  3. Touch things and people. Touch reenactors’ tools, weapons, clothes, children, food. Heck, use their tools. It’s not real, it’s history, so it has to be safe–right?
  4. Interrupt people answering your questions, or better yet, someone else’s questions, and answer yourself.
  5. Get drunk, especially on a hot, humid summer day or night.

Stop.

Breathe.

Think.

Then speak or act. Think about what you’re doing. Is it sensible? Is it kind? Is it how you would like to be treated? Does you behaviour foster a pleasant and welcoming environment?

If not, don’t do it.

Wicked Inspiration

28 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by in Art Rant, History, Living History, personal, Philosophy, Reenacting

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You know that musical? The one you can’t get tickets to unless they were willed to you by your grandmother because she was lucky enough to stumble out of the Tardis right at the box office on opening day, but had to buy them for, like, six years from now, and they’re actually for the Kansas City production? The one in which the founding fathers are, you know, brown? My friends and family assumed I’d hate the whole idea, but I don’t. Like so many people, I love it, and not just for the music, though my preferred method of psyching myself up for GeeDubs1790 or What Cheer Day is listening to the Stones or the Beastie Boys all the way up.

So, what then, interests me in “Hamilton,” and why do I think it relates to interpretation? This: the way that the show filters the concerns of the late eighteenth century through the lens of the twenty-first could make for enlightening listening.

My Shot gives me goosebumps: why? Is it because history and civics are finally sexy?

Maybe. But “Hamilton” as a whole, per Rebecca Mead in the New Yorker, “is a hymn to the allure that America promises the immigrant who aspires to reach its shores; it is also an argument for the invigorating power that this nation’s porous borders, and porous identity, have always offered.”

Porous identity. That’s part of why I’m fascinated. But just as “Sleep No More” and Occupy Providence (really really) were partial inspirations for What Cheer Day, “Hamilton” strikes me as the kind of production worth paying attention to. No, I am not suggesting that the paunchy reenactors start channeling their inner Biggie, though I might well pay to see that.

No, what I’m suggesting is that we reconsider what it is we’re doing out there on the field and in the historic houses, and not just what but how and why. Hamilton takes an unexpected approach to history and it’s going gangbusters, while Amazing Grace tanked. So it’s not about the costuming authenticity, though I implore you not to give that up. It’s about the passion. It’s about coming at things sideways.

What makes you love doing laundry, drilling with precision, telling local gossip, making soap, or whatever it is that you love best about your place in the past? Why does all this matter to you so much? What is it that we can learn about today as you teach us about the past? Let loose that love and passion, share those insights, and ten to one you’ll have more fun and excite more visitors.