Developing a persona

[Howie Loewen]

General question from a newbie.

When developing your persona, do you select an actual individual and build your persona on that person, or do you develop a composite personality made up of multiple people? In other words, is the character you portray real or a fictional character made up of other real life experiences?

I'm interested in creating a civilian character and am interested in your thoughts on this.

[tompritchett]

General question from a newbie.

When developing your persona, do you select an actual individual and build your persona on that person, or do you develop a composite personality made up of multiple people? In other words, is the character you portray real or a fictional character made up of other real life experiences?

I'm interested in creating a civilian character and am interested in your thoughts on this.

It depends. At some events, such as put on by the Trents, civilian reenactors are given specific persons to research and portray for the event. For other events some individuals develop their impressions around specific individuals that they have researched, regardless of whether or not that person was famous or not, while others just develop an impression around a specific civilian occupation and then add as much detail (home town, family, etc.) as they see fit.

[Curt-Heinrich Schmidt]

Hallo!

IMHO...

In brief and to over-generalize, "persona" and "impression" are Hobby jargon, and not universally agreed upon terms. As I use them...

A "persona" is a more detailed "impression" that is interpreted and portrayed in the "First Person" as well as in the specific Everyday Life and Experience details of a person.
An "impression" is more generic, universal, representative than a person, and is portrayed in the "Third Person."

"Personae" are a Sliding Scale of detailed information about either real people or made-up people that deals with who the person was- where he/she was born, to whom, what family members, what upbringing, education, occupation, religion, politics, beliefs, hopes, dreams, Life experiences,likes, dislikes, druthers- combined with what the person looked like physically, how they dressed, spoke, etc., combined with what they did or do.

"Impressions" of the "Third Person" type are a Sliding Scale of visual information or presentation such as what a Civil War soldier or civilian wore, carried, used, and did in a "Civil War soldiers marched and drilled." Or "They ate hardtack."

In some, many ways... it is very hard to know "everything" about the "mental and physical" man ( or woman) so "personae" often tend to be the best researched "composite" we are capable of putting together as it is rare to impossible to know the fantastic detail that is/was a complex, breathing human being living in his/er Time and Place.

And as they say... the rest lies in the "details."

Others' mileage will vary...

CHS

[Linda Trent]

It depends. At some events, such as put on by the Trents, civilian reenactors are given specific persons to research and portray for the event.

Tom, are you thinking of any event in particular? I can't recall assigning people any real people as that's generally against my policy.

I just remembered as civilian coordinator for a military event (ITW) we did use real names, but otherwise at the events that I put on we develop composite characters which are loosely based on an average of the people of the time and place being portrayed.

Thanks,

Linda.

[hanktrent]

It depends. At some events, such as put on by the Trents, civilian reenactors are given specific persons to research and portray for the event.

Actually, I can't recall any events we've put on where participants portray specific historic persons. Plenty we've attended like that, and no particular reason we haven't done that, it just seems to be the way it's happened.

Usually there are certain specific roles that need filled--cook, judge, etc.--and a participant can pick what fits best and then add whatever fictional/typical characteristics they want, beyond that. Or there might just be a basic premise--you need to have a reason to be traveling at a certain time and place--and participants can come up with their own motivation.

To address the original post, it really depends on the event(s) you'll attend. The disadvantage of portraying a real person is that the odds of him being at the historic situation of every event you want to attend is slim. If he was there, and integral to the situation being portrayed, and the event is looking for someone to portray him, you've got it made! Otherwise, you'd need to do it as a self-contained, stand-alone impression, not integrated with the larger historic situation, which some events will allow and some won't, or you'd need to do it as a "What if" situation. What if a real-life reporter had been at some battle he wasn't? That's pretty easy--he'd interview people and/or draw pictures of it. But what if P.T. Barnum was trapped under fire at some battle instead of happily running his museum in New York? Not so logical.

Another disadvantage of portraying a real person is that you can never know enough, so at some point, the details need filled in with typical/fictional ones anyway.

On the other hand, a disadvantage of portraying a fictional/typical person is that he's not real, yet he needs inserted logically into the real world. Like in historical fiction, there's a varying range to how well this works, before it turns into fantastical alternative history. A fictional president? Not believable, gotta be Lincoln or Jeff Davis. A fictional captain of a company? Probably believable. A fictional farmer or seamstress? Sure, there were plenty of them. Though in some cases, it's still awkward to claim "that farm" as your farm, when historically everybody locally knows it belonged to another real person.

And then there's the other difficulty of picking a fictional/typical persona. If you only pick and research one, there's still the problem of fitting in to a wide variety of historic situations. There might not logically be a plantation owner, or an abolitionist, or whatever, at every event. Though that's easier to overcome when starting with a fictional persona, because you can change things to fit. A basic farming persona can grow wheat when reenacting in Ohio, hemp in Kentucy and cotton in Alabama; a basic minister can switch from M.E. to M.E. South depending on what side he's on, etc.

Like Curt says above, there's no single accepted answer, and no way of doing it that has only advantages or only disadvantages. I generally see what a particular event wants, and try to go with that, though some events don't ever really specify what they want for civilians.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[tompritchett]

Tom, are you thinking of any event in particular? I can't recall assigning people any real people as that's generally against my policy.

I just remembered as civilian coordinator for a military event (ITW) we did use real names, but otherwise at the events that I put on we develop composite characters which are loosely based on an average of the people of the time and place being portrayed.

Thanks,

My mistake. I has gotten that impression from posts about one of the earlier McDowells that someone had researched some of the local townspeople for adoption as impressions during the event. Considering the level of research involved, I assumed it had to be one of you two as you all definitely on the high end scale of research behind your reenacting. Oh course, my impression could easily have been mistaken also. I also thought that during the reenacted trial, you had people portray actual people that were involved in the original.

[Linda Trent]

My mistake. I has gotten that impression from posts about one of the earlier McDowells that someone had researched some of the local townspeople for adoption as impressions during the event.

Hi Tom,

Yes, the McDowells did encourage people to use the real names of the townspeople, but neither Hank nor I were the organizers. I believe the organizers of the town portion of the event in '01, '03, and '05 may have been AGSAS (I'm not sure about the first year). Hank was asked in '03 to portray Reverend Price, and found Price's diary at the Charleston WV archives, so we went there and transcribed the portion regarding the town, and then published it on the web, but he was nothing more than a participant, same as me.

Abby Walker was the organizer of the '05 Davis Run portion of the event, and I was her assistant. When Abby needed to bow out near the end due to a surgery she asked me to run the event from the site though I never took credit for it, and will always credit her with the success of it. Again, we did use real names off the census, though most everything else was added based upon what was common or typical.

Two things about portraying real people. For the most part unless one is portraying someone for whom a great deal has been written, one will need to substitute so much information that eventually it hardly resembles the real person anymore anyway and it becomes a composite with a real name. This is what happened at McDowell.

Having real people also somewhat locks in the historic events. If we had a historic case for the trial event then the participants would come knowing the guilt or innocence of the accused. Having fictional characters that the participants didn't know one way or the other left it open ended, and gave them each the "real" job of judging, defending, prosecuting, and deciding. Their fate was unknown right down to the verdict being read in court.

Of course we did research how a courtroom should look, how a court would run, the laws of the Commonwealth, and all that sort of stuff. We only allowed the participants to know what they would know, various participants having different knowledge than others depending upon their roles.

But having real people limits a person in what he/she can do; whereas having composite characters allows room to manuever and do whatever one wants to do within reason.

Linda.

[Linda Trent]

I also thought that during the reenacted trial, you had people portray actual people that were involved in the original.

Oops, were you talking about the trial of the Williamsville Five at McDowell '05? That was the military, not the civilians. We had a couple of civilians attend since the boys were local. Their momma (Terri Leamer) and I believe Mr. Probst (Hank) were the only two civilians who attended that. But it was 100% put on by the military, and we don't know whether or not those two particular characters were at the trial.

Linda.