VISITING THE PAST: A REENACTMENT HANDBOOK
Together with the University of Highland and Islands we are working on a publications which will offer both professionals, enthusiasts, and spectators to understand and develop the joy, educational potential, and complexity of reenactment. Below you can read all about this exciting project!
Since the late 20th century re-enactment/living history has grown steadily as a form of direct and participatory practice of public history. Around the world many thousands of history enthusiasts have (quite literally) stepped into the shoes of people from the past as a way of exploring aspects of living in a time other than the present. At the same time, re-enactment has also become a method for public history mediation among professional public history bodies such as archaeological or historical museums. Both re-enactors and museums have recently voiced a need for more in-depth dialogue on the practicalities of re-enactment as public history. In this call for papers, we welcome contributions on how to practically go about organizing re-enactments, from, for example, re-enactors, guides, museum curators and educators, experimental archaeologists, historians, and teachers. The purpose is to develop a practical handbook for those interested in using re-enactment to explore, experience, and mediate history as a public history project.
What is meant by reenactment/living history here is an event which “seeks to advance [individual and collective] historical understanding through an authentic simulation of past objects, events, practices, and experiences” (Agnew and Toman 2020: 20). We include living history, LARP, and digitally mediated immersive experiences. We are interested in all cultures and historical periods. Re-enactments could focus on a specific historical event or they could be comprised of a combination of characters and events that create a more general period setting from across the world, such as Silk Road reenactment, everyday life in the Iron Age, life on an American plantation, or World War II.
MAKING HISTORY COME ALIVE
A common terminology for all who are involved in re-enactment/Living History.
Considering material authenticity: sources and compromises.
Achieving authenticity through immersion and embodied experience.
Risk management and insurance considerations.
Representation in reenactment/living history (i.e. whose story is being told).Best practice case study of how to deal with difficult participant responses
How to re-enact darker historical events, for example life as a refugee, the Holocaust, enslavement, Viking raids.
Best practice case study of successful reenactment of dark historical event
How to deal with beliefs or practices in the past that clash with the present, for example politics or religion.
Best practice case study of exploring beliefs in the past that differ from the present.
EXPLORING HISTORY
Starting out with reenactment on a low budget: what can be done without building a custom ‘set’?
Story and plot.
Re-enactment, living history and LARP, including opportunities to let participants ‘make history’.
Preparing and playing characters.
Historical, composite, literary (incl. saga) characters.
Taking on 1, 2 and 3rd role impersonating historical characters.
Representation, diversity.
Crafts and crafting activities
Fun, easy starters, challenging participants and enhancing skills, safety
Food, Information sources, recipes, cooking for or cooking with, hygiene.
Clothing – make it yourself or purchase.
Re-enactment IRL vs re-enactment in the Digital world
Games, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality.
Contribution to science by experimental work.
MEDIATING and sharing HISTORY
Re-enactment for school groups: how can schools, museums, and reenactors find each other and work successfully together?
Best practice case study of a reenactment with school age participants
Re-enactment as recreation and tourism.
Best practice case study of re-enactment as recreation and tourism
Re-enactment as community heritage work.
Best practice case study of reenactment as community heritage work
How to deal with complex characteristics of participants and characters, for example gender, body, race, disability: aiming for inclusion, openness, and diversity.
Best practice case study of inclusion, openness, and diversity.
How to find, deal with and incorporate new historical or archaeological research in re-enactment.
Best practice case study of how to incorporate new historical or archaeological research in re-enactment and living-history
HANDS ON HISTORY’S CONTRIBUTION: ABSTRACT
The sun shines bright, and somewhere on a sandy stage two people are hacking and slashing away at one another. Their faces are read, their bodies panting with effort. One of the figures lunges in for a final blow. It strikes his opponent exactly where he means too, and he stuns him instantly. Taking the opportunity, he overpowers him and clasps the helpless gladiator in a strangled position. The crowd goes wild. Then, a figure draped in a fine purple toga rises and looks at the two men in the middle of the arena. They both stare back intensely as the senator raises his hand and holds his thumb sideways. The crowd is quick to catch on and in unison they scream: “Blood, blood, blood” whilst pointing their thumbs firmly downwards. A moment of doubt as the senator’s thumb seems to go up, but then, it surges down. The gladiator does not hesitate and slashes his blade across his victims’ throat as a substantial spurt of fake blood comes gushing forth. The audience gasps and looks somewhat shocked, some cheer. As the lifeless body is dragged away from the field and the victor makes a victory lap, but a strange silence settles in as everyone reflects on what has just happened, too the gladiators and themselves.
This intense scene seems to come straight from antiquity, or Hollywood, but it is in fact the (in)famous gladiatorial closing act in Archeon taking place in 2016, an open air museum in the Netherlands. Admittedly, it is spectacular, and the performers are great at what they do. However, it does reveal something fundamental about the concurrent situation in re-enactment and living history, namely the emphasis on the martial aspects of humanity. Whether one visits Napoleonic, U.S. Civil War, Roman, Viking, High Medieval, or Edo Period events or otherwise, one is bound to encounter guns, gore, and steel taking center stage. Indeed crafts, experimentation, and sale are not wholly unrepresented, but in general events and their marketing remain dominated by fight shows, people with weapons and images of romanticized, albeit domesticated, violence. Nevertheless, re-enactment and living history might be uniquely positioned to treat and engage with said violence and the “dark” parts of our past, even therapeutically so perhaps.
To explore this salient and complex topic this article will examine three re- enactment/Living History case studies, representing three different historical epochs and themes, from the methodological and theoretical perspective of Critical Heritage and Dark/Thano Tourism studies. In so doing it will attempt to first explore what exactly is going on and if it is fair to say that martial culture takes center stage at all, and if so, in what forms. Next up is a reflection regarding the underlying reasons for why this situation might be as it is, including an analysis of visitor as well as participant motivations. Afterwards a discussion will take place which treats the relevant ethical and moral questions inevitably accompanying this topic. However, in the spirit of contributing to a hand-book for re-enactment the article will avoid polemicist rhetoric and instead present practical suggestions for an ethical and sustainable engagement with a martial, and domestic, past through clear definitions and an encouragement for self-reflection.
Niek van Eck
COO of Hands on History.