It was pretty cool-if sitting on haybales and watching re-enactors tell tales about the Mississippi River's History is cool. With the Hylton household being pretty much out of action last week, it was really difficult for me to spend time working on my riff. So difficult, in fact, that I never had the chance to do a successful runthrough for timing (supposed to be right around 15 minutes) prior to coming on. But it worked about as well as I could have hoped. The Native American speaker finished and I emerged from the trees by the riverbank (wearing my period costume I was borrowing from Historic Murphy's Landing).
The set was similarly cool-we had a firepit going and a haybale backdrop throughout the succession of storytellers, which went from dusk to dark. For the most part, I made Zebulon Pike out to be a nincompoop, and it raised an ethical question with me. Most characters in history can be viewed in many different ways, depending upon your interpretation of events. Even among the histories I read, there were those who thought he was an ass, and an incompetent one at that; and those who thought he was a great explorer. I personally believe he had almost superhuman endurance, was a great and loyal soldier, a good spy, a questionable explorer (if you could consider him an explorer at all), and an ass. I played up the questionable explorer and ass parts, as they made good theater, but it did get me wondering:
who was I to paint the audience's view of the man based upon my interpretation (or worse, based upon what I thought would help the performance)?
A question better left, perhaps, to the next generation of historians.
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11 comments:
I love history and I hope that I can see you on a tape from the public access channel.
Hope to see the video of your performance.
I responded twice becuase I didn't see it registered on your comment space. I refreshed the screen about three times. Sorry.
I thought you just REALLY wanted to see my performance. I'll let you know if there's the opportunity at any point.
The next generation of historians that has time to review the interpretations of community historical reenactments?
That future is one filled with free time, all made possible by extensive use of robots.
Photos from the event here: http://www.photoreflect.com/scripts/prsm.dll?eventthumbs?event=0C21000V&start=0&ts=1127305249
Zebulon Pike is on page 3, but there's a few pictures of Lucy & me scattered around elsewhere. Earlier in the day, this freelance guy was taking pictures of us-I think he thought if he could just keep catching Lucy in a variety of places, he could make it look like there were lots of kids there.
What's up with the crotch bulge, Zebulon?
All those years in the wilderness got you a little hot under the collar?
Crotch bulge? Which photo? Are you so sure it's different than my normal crotch buldge?
All the photos of you principally as Zebulon show a pronounced crotch bulge. Seems like a symptom of ill-fitting pants.
Perhaps when it appeared people were enjoying the show they were really just enjoying the show, if you take my meaning.
Zebulon Pike: Crappy explorer but hung like a horse.
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