The axe falls heavily, slicing a piece of seasoned wood in neat halves. The sharp sound resonates throughout the surrounding town and fields. Luke Johnson continues the daily chore, as a fictional character living in
Prairietown 1836. His life, history, family and personality exist nowhere else other than in the character outline written in Conner Prairie’s Interpreter Handbook. It is our job, as interpreters, to bring these people to life, to portray these characters in such a way as to realistically represent the lives people in 1836 might have lived. We fill in the gaps left by the author of these character’s personalities, and consequently, reveal a unique character every time we step into their shoes.
Each morning before I work, I evaluate my mood, my post, and my jobs assigned for that day in order to pick a character that best portrays my disposition. This assists in letting me realistically represent this character simply by being myself. As I walk out to my post, and into my character’s world, I let myself slip away and let my character influence my exterior persona. My every action is somehow tied into my character’s biography. His relationship to his family and surrounding towns people greatly influence my interactions with guests and the other characters that day.
Contrary to common belief, we do not, as interpreters, only act out life in 1836; we actually live as people would in that time period. Our gardens need to be planted, tended to and harvested just as often as a “real life” garden needs to be. The food taken from these gardens actually supplies our breakfasts and lunches. We also need to keep livestock in order to have meat or to plow the fields, not just to portray a realistic town. Daily, I have guests come up and ask me if whatever tool I am using is real, or if the food I am eating is real food. The fact is, everything out in Prairietown is used to keep the town running as if we lived there. From 10 o’clock in the morning to 5 o’clock in the afternoon we live as our historical characters would have.
The people of Prairietown, Liberty Corner and
Lenape Camp may be fictional; but they represent the thing that has made Conner Prairie famous. It is the careful portrayal of the lives of these people long gone that captivates the minds of the public and really brings a unique attribute to the way Conner Prairie presents history. As an interpreter, it is my job to portray these people by imitating their daily routines and show others how their lives would have been. It is in this way that we bring history to life and resurrect an age lost in time.
One of my many duties at Conner Prairie is to help plan and coordinate Museum Theater performances. This is a challenging responsibility for many reasons, not the least of which is that the demands of Museum Theater are often quite different from the demands of other types of performances; meaning that I cannot always rely on what I learned in school for advice.
However, each season that I have been asked to undertake Museum Theater projects has brought with it a host of amazing experiences, which cause me only to crave yet more opportunities to shape and perform pieces. For example, last year we planned to have the Hard Times Theater Company present various fairy tales for guests during our Country Fair. I set about writing a couple of rough scripts for Rumplestiltskin, the Emperor’s New Clothes, and a Jack tale or two. These scripts were exceedingly fun to write and rehearse. But what we found when we began to perform was that our audience most enjoyed it when we went off-book and improvised our way through a story of their choosing. As a writer, this bruised my pride just a little. But as a performer, the exhilaration of guiding my fellow actors through the stories that our guests presented to us, and the joy of watching them chortle at our antics more than made up for it.
This year, we have been charged with two new projects, both of which will offer up a new and fascinating glimpse of history. The first project is a theater piece that will focus on the connection between historic ballooning and the development of meteorology as a science. This script, which is in the final stages of development, will combine entertaining stories about exciting adventures on balloons, with real-world weather experiments that you, as a guest, can help create. Did you know that some of the first national weather maps were put together at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C.? People from all over the country would send weather reports via telegraph to the Smithsonian, where scientists would assemble the data and even begin to predict how weather patterns would drift across the country and affect weather in other areas.
Our second project is still in its earliest stages of development, but it is no less compelling. During the fall, we plan to present a museum theater piece about William Conner’s life, focusing on the challenges and choices he faced throughout all the stages of his life. I am currently sorting through the various historical resources in our library that focus on Mr. Conner, and I am continually amazed by the world in which he lived and the choices he made. I look forward to trying to bring that world to life every day for guests using theatrical techniques, and helping guests look through Mr. Conner’s eyes to ponder the pros and cons of some of his most prominent decisions.
Be sure to check out both of these exciting projects this year. Discover the world of ballooning and meteorology beginning June 8, 2010 and look for the piece about William Conner beginning sometime in early September.