Enacting History (review)

Living history performances, battle re-enactments, and the flourishing adventure-tourism industry, provide appealing venues that make history relevant to today's customer, the heritage tourist. These are indispensable windows to the past that in recent years have engaged the public where more traditional methods, such as primary documents and meticulously crafted monographs, have failed to garner broad interest. In Enacting History, editors Scott Magelssen, an associate professor of theater at Bowling Green State University, and Rhona Justice-Malloy, professor of theater arts at the University of Mississippi, have collected a series of new essays that examine ten different historical performance sites and interpretive projects. Each essay examines the primary challenge faced by all: is historical accuracy and authenticity, when in collision with a desire to make an event theatrical and appealing to diverse audiences, negotiable?

Since the end of World War II and the advent of the great American motor vacation, the most popular sites in this genre, based on visitation, are sites that the book refers to as locations touched by history. These are sites that heritage tourists have continually sought out because the experience offered a material reality of the past. In catering to this demand--counter to traditional historical sources such as academic scholarship--entertainment value has sometimes been achieved at the expense of interpreting an event fully, as major ideological arguments associated with sites of historical performance are occasionally sidestepped. Nevertheless, these same sites, projects, or historical performances are often extolled for drawing larger numbers of underrepresented groups to our shared history by providing narratives these patrons can identify with, thus expanding the larger discussion.

To craft their book's narrative the editors selected a broad range of topics: Civil War battle re-enactments; the Mormon religion's use of places of memory; self-authenticity policing by employees and guests at living history sites; how museum theaters work to create and convey an effective conceptual framework; the efforts of Brown University to establish a cultural conscious committee tasked with increasing the visibility of history's underrepresented stories; Colonial Williamsburg's effort in layering additional realities, such as the African American experience; and an examination of the television show, Dinner Impossible, and the Maryland Renaissance Festival's collaboration in meeting the expectations of both of their intended audiences. However, the editors' inclusion of additional modern, unique historical performance examples, such as adventure tourism, where tourists pay for the opportunity to experience a simulated illegal United States-Mexico border crossing, provide the reader with an understanding of how each venue makes history relevant and increasingly accessible to larger audiences.

Each essay contains examples of how aspects of the past are effectively conveyed to the heritage tourist that sometimes are less successfully communicated through traditional scholarship. For instance, in the essay "History, Archive, Memory, and Performance: The Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Play as Cultural Commemoration." Author Richard L. Poole states, "Even if they [the audience] don't believe they are watching historically accurate representations, doesn't the mere fact of having our minds, hearts and, imaginations engaged allow us to understand more about what it is to be human" (84).

The essays selected by Magelssen and Justice-Malloy have well cited resources, offering both reference and explanatory endnotes at the end of chapters, that behoove the motivated reader toward their own research, and add to Enacting History's feel of a well thought out academic approach to the subject of living history. The diverse selection of essays provides a wide appeal and value to the reader, who may very well be motivated to visit the sites discussed in the book and see for themselves, these widows on the past and how historical accuracy and drawing an audience co-exist both in message and intent.