I’m a fan of costumed living history interpretation. When I was a kid, visiting Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia and having that immersive experience made a huge impression. But I wanted to try doing it myself. As a park ranger in Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska, I finally saw my chance.
But what character could I adopt? Aboard the first ship entering Glacier Bay in 1883 was Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore, a travel writer who would publish the first tour guide to Southeast Alaska and go on to become the first woman on the board of the National Geographic Society. She negotiated bringing the first cherry trees from Japan back to plant in Washington, D.C. I had lived in the D.C. area during grade school, and my family had walked every spring beneath the blooming cherries. So, I felt a connection with Eliza. She was the one, I decided.
But I needed to learn more about her if I was to portray her. Today, there are lots of webpages and a published biography available, as well as scans of her writing. But in the 1990s, there wasn’t much on the internet I could glean. And I was living in park housing, ten miles from the village of Gustavus, which had fewer than 200 residents and no road to the outside world.
Luckily, Gustavus has an excellent library. I was able to locate one of Eliza’s books through interlibrary loan: a travel guide to India. That was exciting. I had traveled in India myself. It would be fascinating to view the country through her eyes and in another time period.
When we tell stories from our own lives, we choose what to include, a process of streamlining and shaping the tale to make it more effective, or funnier, or shorter, or easier to understand for a given audience. But it’s still our own story to tell. Stepping sideways to tell another person’s story is different. I felt it was vital to showcase as much of Eliza’s authentic self as I could. I wanted to speak in her own words as much as possible, to learn her tone and emphasis from the writing she left behind.
Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore was an early visitor to Glacier Bay and the first to publish a tour guide for Southeast Alaska. Photo courtesy of the public domain.
This photo of young women exploring grounded icebergs on the beach near Muir Glacier in 1899 inspired the author’s costume. Photo courtesy of University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, Fred W. Carlyon, photographer, AWC5241.
Few photos were ever taken of the author in costume, as in this image, where she portrays Mary McBrayer. Photo courtesy of Julia Pinnix.
Fascinating the travel guide was, but in a way I had not predicted. As I read her account of her time in India, I grew more and more dismayed. Eliza represented some perspectives I was in no way comfortable portraying. In short, she was a bigot. This was typical of her time and her social class. But it was not the kind of character I had expected to encounter, and it was certainly not someone I wanted to imitate.
But I had to think about what authenticity is in interpretation. If you are portraying an actual person, it should mean faithfully conveying the values, beliefs, and personality of that individual. But if these are repugnant to you or your audience, what to do? I could frame Eliza’s story with a disclaimer; but that would break the magical connection made between a living history interpreter and the audience, the suspension of disbelief that allows that connection to work. And even with a disclaimer, I didn’t want to act the part of a bigoted individual even if it was accurate.
I didn’t feel I could call my character by Eliza’s name unless I was willing to portray her honestly and fully. So, I would have to take a different tack. Luckily, a friend had a copy of a letter written by his great-aunt when she visited Glacier Bay by ship within twenty years of Eliza. I read through her straightforward account. That was useful, but there wasn’t enough there to base a character on. And I still wanted to set my story in Eliza’s time.
If I couldn’t portray Eliza herself, perhaps I could invent a fictional character who was also on the same ship. The experience of other passengers would be, in many ways, the same as for Eliza. I scoured the existing historical black and white photos and found one of a young woman standing on a grounded iceberg. She wore a girl’s flat-brimmed hat and black knee-length skirt. This could be my character. In the village, there was a woman who worked on cruise ships in winter, sewing costumes for performers. She and I created a simple outfit resembling the one worn in the photo. Onstage, when the picture of the girl on the iceberg came up, I pointed at the image and said, “That’s me right there.”
For the character, I thought of my grandmother, a southern lady with a flair for storytelling. I knew both her voice and her personality well. I adopted my grandmother’s familiar accent and chose her mother’s name for my new character: Mary McBrayer. I introduced myself as an elderly woman who had been asked to tell the story of when she first visited Glacier Bay as a girl.
But in creating a fictional character for interpretation, we are not free to just choose our own adventure. The character must be believable, which means embedded within her time period. Using anachronistic language or attitudes breaks trust that the story you tell is true to the time you claim to represent. Trust is crucial: it allows the audience to accept the messages carried in the story being told. So, I needed not only to look the part, I needed to speak the right way, too.
The author’s grandmother lent personality and accent to the character. Photo courtesy of Julia Pinnix.
For example, British author Jane Austen’s writing has provided a trove of delicious characters to portray in movies and plays. Her novels, including Pride & Prejudice and Persuasion, are rich in dialogue, allowing actors to speak the words of her time and maintain a perfect illusion of being immersed in Jane’s Georgian and Regency worlds. It is jarring when what we see and what we hear don’t match. Anachronistic language or behaviors shatter the experience. I would need to harvest the right phrases to sustain my character.
The script I wrote for Mary McBrayer borrowed from the historical record of early travel in the bay, leaning on direct quotations from my friend’s great-aunt’s letter and Eliza’s books and articles. Often, we have so little evidence of women’s voices that we are forced to fictionalize whether we like it or not. I saw a wonderful interpretive performance of Sacagawea, a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804-1806, that was necessarily a fiction, since we have none of her own words to draw from. But we do have an outline of her life history from other written sources. And the interpreter had consulted closely with Shoshone tribal members to construct a personality and set of values that might match an Indigenous woman living in the early 1800s. The
interpreter adhered to tribal guidance and historical norms, making her performance feel authentic.
Dodging Eliza’s unpleasant traits by using a fictional character also allowed me to avoid something I really dislike: historical revisionism. Revisionism can be a legitimate reinterpretation of evidence. But it should never be an editing of the truth to suit a particular perspective. Had I changed Eliza’s own character, that would have been a revisionist misrepresentation. Creating a fictional character, on the other hand, allowed me the freedom to leave out character traits and attitudes I found repellent.
But why portray a character from the past in the first place? It’s certainly engaging, a way to tell a story that makes it fun for both interpreter and audience. Performing this character really was fun! But it also offers a way of speaking about the past that is familiar. All of us have family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, who tell stories to us about their lives. Storytelling is one of humanity’s most distinguishing traits. And storytelling about ourselves is its most common shape. Borrowing this well-established pathway connects straight to one of our most common shared experiences.
I attended a masterful living history rendition of a military wife of a soldier stationed at Arizona’s Fort Bowie. The interpreter treated the audience as though they were friends who had dropped by to say farewell before she and her husband moved on to a new posting. She excused herself for packing instead of sitting down to tea, as time was short; and each item she put into her suitcase triggered a memory and a story of her time at the fort. The experience felt warm, personal, and real.
But at the end of the program, she dropped her character and addressed us as an interpreter, explaining the foundation of the role and providing a broader context for the site. That is one way of dealing with the limitations of a character’s viewpoint. But it does disrupt the experience of being inside a story.
Done right, living history can give audiences a look at a different time that may contrast or connect with their own. It can be a wonderful vehicle for telling the story of a place or event. But it must be done with conscientious care, with respect for authenticity and accuracy. When it succeeds, the visceral recognition of ourselves in others, the ability to see ourselves in their place, sparks empathy, understanding, and interest. The past comes alive.
The real Mary McBrayer was called “Muvvie” by her children. Photo courtesy of Julia Pinnix.
