Works Cited and References
- Townsends' Living History Personas guide states this pronoun convention directly, alongside its broader eight-step approach to persona-building covered in Chapter 2. Building a Persona from the Ground Up.
Nat Lasley, who has portrayed Patrick Henry at Colonial Williamsburg since 2025, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned above; see Interpreting History for session details.
See Colonial Williamsburg's own Nation Builders program page. Colonial Williamsburg's African American interpretation programming, discussed at length in Chapter 8. Portraying Across Station, Race, and Bondage, dates to 1979 and predates the Nation Builders branding, which was introduced in 2005 for a roster of interpreters portraying named historical figures.
Jay Anderson, Time Machines: The World of Living History (American Association for State and Local History, 1984) — see a period review in the Indiana Magazine of History for a concise overview of Anderson's three-part typology and his tour through sites from Plimoth Plantation to reenacted Mayflower voyages.
For the underlying education-research concept behind this claim — that inhabiting a historical perspective from the inside builds understanding hindsight-driven narration can't reach — see Keith C. Barton and Linda S. Levstik, Teaching History for the Common Good (Routledge, 2004), a widely cited entry point on "historical empathy" written for classroom teachers but directly applicable to first-person interpretation's underlying claim.
See "How does the brain learn? And why don’t we teach that way?"
History Preserved, "The Dilemma of First-Person Interpretation".
The same essay's preferred alternative is worth reading in full for its specific examples of "experimental" third-person activities — spinning, period recipes, period games — that it argues produce more durable understanding than sustained first-person immersion.
The Modern Reenactor, "The Role of First Person Interpretation".
History Preserved, "The Dilemma of First-Person Interpretation".
The Modern Reenactor, "The Role of First Person Interpretation".
Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage (University of North Carolina Press, 1957); see the Wikipedia overview of Tilden's life and influence and the publisher's current edition page.
The National Association for Interpretation publishes certification standards and training materials built substantially on Tilden's framework — see Chapter 14. Finding Your Community and Going Further for how to find its programs.
Katherine Pittman, who has portrayed Martha Washington at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned above; see Interpreting History for session details.
See the Isaiah Thomas Press Reconstruction blog for details.
Colonial Heritage Festival — a three-day living-history celebration of the American founding, held annually in Orem, Utah, timed to coincide with Independence Day.
See Interpreting History for session-by-session details on the workshop and its guest lecturers.
Townsends' Living History Personas guide lays out the full eight-step sequence in more detail than this chapter can reproduce — worth reading in full before you build your first persona.
Daniel Shippey, who portrays George Washington at Mount Vernon and nationally, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Townsends' Living History Personas guide lays out the full eight-step sequence in more detail than this chapter can reproduce — worth reading in full before you build your first persona.
Daniel Shippey, who portrays George Washington at Mount Vernon and nationally, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Two Nerdy History Girls is worth browsing directly for more examples in this vein — the blog's archive runs to thousands of posts built almost entirely from exactly this kind of object-and-document-level detail.
Don N. Hagist's British Soldiers, American War: Voices of the American Revolution (Westholme Publishing, 2012) builds an entire book's worth of ordinary-soldier detail from exactly this kind of record, and is a good model to study for how much a patient reader can extract from sources most people skip past. The crowdsourced Freedom on the Move database, run out of Cornell University, aggregates tens of thousands of runaway advertisements for enslaved people into a single searchable archive and is worth searching directly for any persona whose life intersects with enslavement, whether as an enslaved person or as a person on the other side of the bondage equasion.
Probate inventories and wills are typically held by the county (or, in New England, town) court where the estate was settled, with many now digitized by state archives, historical societies, and genealogical research services. A state library or archive's own research guide for the relevant colony is usually the fastest way to find out what survives and how to search it; the nonprofit genealogy site FamilySearch offers free access to a large volume of digitized probate and court records organized by county.
Val D. Greenwood's The Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy (Genealogical Publishing Co., multiple editions since 1973) is written for genealogists rather than interpreters, but its chapters on court, land, and probate records are a thorough, practical introduction to exactly the record types this section describes — useful well beyond genealogy specifically.
The 18th Century Material Culture Resource Center is a useful starting point for cross-checking written descriptions against period portraiture and surviving objects; see Chapter 5. Material Culture: Dressing and Furnishing the Person: Material Culture for a fuller discussion of how to use sources like this one.
Nat Lasley, who has portrayed Patrick Henry at Colonial Williamsburg since 2025, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Pre-1782 Virginia tax and tithable lists survive unevenly by county and are mostly reached through FamilySearch rather than a single unified database; its Virginia Taxation research wiki is the fastest way to find out what survives for a given county and year and to reach the scanned originals.
Nat Lasley, who has portrayed Patrick Henry at Colonial Williamsburg since 2025, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Katherine Pittman, who has portrayed Martha Washington at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Noah Lewis, who has portrayed the documented Continental Army artillerist Ned Hector for nearly three decades, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Alex Robb, history interpretive specialist at Washington Crossing Historic Park (Bucks County, PA), "Primary and Secondary Sources" workshop presentation, given as part of the same workshop series described in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard.
The Journal of the American Revolution, also cited in Chapter 2. Building a Persona from the Ground Up and Chapter 8. Portraying Across Station, Race, and Bondage, and the Museum of the American Revolution, both publish ongoing book reviews and recommended reading well beyond military history specifically.
Emanuel Leutze's Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851) is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection, whose own catalog entry discusses the painting's well-documented inaccuracies alongside its status as an enduring, allegorical image of the event.
Robert F. Smith, Manufacturing Independence: Industrial Innovation in the Quartermaster's Department during the American Revolution (Westholme Publishing, 2016).
Katherine Pitman, who has portrayed Martha Washington at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Chapter 8. Portraying Across Station, Race, and Bondage covers the interpretive stakes of this in full; the companion volume's own chapter on the speech of enslaved and free Black Virginians is the linguistic counterpart.
Kathleen Hellier, author of 18th Century English as a Second Language and a longtime Colonial Williamsburg historian, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Suzanne Romaine, ed., The Cambridge History of the English Language, Volume IV: 1776–1997 (Cambridge University Press, 1998) is a standard scholarly reference, considerably more technical than the companion volume but useful if you want to go deeper on the linguistics itself, including regional diversification of English across this exact period.
John R. Rickford's African American Vernacular English: Features, Evolution, Educational Implications (Blackwell, 1999) is the standard linguistics reference behind the companion volume's discussion of this material, and a good next step for anyone who wants the fuller scholarly picture — including its extensive treatment of the Anglicist/creolist debate summarized there.
Kathleen Hellier, author of 18th Century English as a Second Language and a longtime Colonial Williamsburg historian, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Katherine Pitman, who has portrayed Martha Washington at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Linda Baumgarten and John Watson's Costume Close-Up: Clothing Construction and Pattern, 1750–1790 (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1999) remains a standard reference for construction-level detail. Colonial Williamsburg's DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum holds one of the largest single collections of period American and British decorative arts, much of it browsable through the Foundation's own online collections search.
Digitized collections of period newspapers held by state libraries, historical societies, and university archives are the most efficient way to search runaway and deserter notices at scale rather than paging through microfilm — search by colony, county, or year, since coverage varies significantly by region and archive. Encyclopedia Virginia, a project of Virginia Humanities and the Library of Virginia, is a reliable, freely available starting point for Virginia-specific social and material-culture context, with entries fact-checked by working historians.
Michael Ramsey, Colonial Williamsburg Department of Historical Clothing and Dress, "18th Century Clothing in America," workshop presentation. Object photographs in this section are reproduced from that presentation's slides, each a piece in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation's own collection; The Peale Family is sourced on those slides from Wikimedia Commons and is in the public domain. Confirm reproduction rights with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation before distributing this chapter beyond the workshop's own participants.
Linda Baumgarten and John Watson's Costume Close-Up: Clothing Construction and Pattern, 1750–1790 (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1999) remains a standard reference for construction-level detail. Colonial Williamsburg's DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum holds one of the largest single collections of period American and British decorative arts, much of it browsable through the Foundation's own online collections search.
Linda Baumgarten and John Watson's Costume Close-Up: Clothing Construction and Pattern, 1750–1790 (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1999) remains a standard reference for construction-level detail. Colonial Williamsburg's DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum holds one of the largest single collections of period American and British decorative arts, much of it browsable through the Foundation's own online collections search.
Katherine Pitman, who has portrayed Martha Washington at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
This chapter draws on a guest lecture on the eighteenth-century economy given by Robert Weathers, who portrays George Wythe as part of Colonial Williamsburg's Nation Builders program, delivered as part of Interpreting the American Founding, the ten-week workshop this book grew out of and described further in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
The Royal Mint Museum's Pounds, Shillings and Pence traces the 240-pence pound to this original Anglo-Saxon pound-weight-of-silver striking, and to William I's silver penny standardizing its weight closely enough that the arithmetic held for centuries afterward.
Newton's 1717 report as Master of the Mint effectively fixed the guinea's value at twenty-one shillings by setting the gold-to-silver exchange ratio the Mint would honor — a decision that, combined with silver's steady export overseas, is often credited by economic historians as an accidental first step toward Britain's later, formal gold standard.
Coin World's "Power of the English gold guinea in colonial America" traces the guinea's naming after the Guinea coast and its Royal African Company connection, its roughly quarter-ounce gold content and exchange rate against the Spanish milled dollar, and the John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Martha Washington examples cited above.
Britain's Royal Mint did not strike a circulating copper penny at all between the 1770s and 1797, when the oversized, steam-struck "cartwheel" penny and twopence finally addressed the shortfall; see CoinWeek's "The Copper Coinage of George III" for the fuller numismatic history of Georgian copper, including why the halfpenny and farthing carried the whole burden of small change for most of the century.
The University of Notre Dame's colonial coin collection maintains a detailed introduction to counterfeit British coppers circulating in eighteenth-century America, including the Massachusetts origins of the "bungtown copper" nickname.
The National Park Service's overview of Spanish colonial coinage covers the piece of eight's dominance in colonial American circulation and its direct influence on the later U.S. dollar; Encyclopedia.com's entry on "Pieces of Eight" is a useful, more compact companion account, including the coin's literal division into "bits."
The University of Notre Dame's Massachusetts Bay Silver 1652–1682: General Introduction covers the Hull and Sanderson mint's operation and the willow, oak, and pine tree design periods in detail; CoinWeek's "Why the Massachusetts Bay Colony Struck the 1652 Pine Tree Shilling" is a more accessible companion account of the same material.
The Massachusetts mint's authorization was granted for a term of seven years from 1652, technically expiring by 1682, the same year closer royal scrutiny brought its operation to an end; the Massachusetts Bay charter itself was revoked by the Crown in 1684, ending the colony's original government. See the History of Massachusetts Blog's overview of the charter's revocation for the fuller political context surrounding the mint's closure.
The specific mid-century flashpoints in this colonial financial relationship — the Two Penny Acts of 1755 and 1758, which capped the price of tobacco used to pay Anglican clergy salaries during a shortage, and the resulting Parson's Cause lawsuit — are well documented at Encyclopedia Virginia, a project of Virginia Humanities and the Library of Virginia; search its entries for either term for a fuller account than this chapter has room for.
Virginia's tobacco inspection system dates to the Tobacco Inspection Act of 1730, later revised in 1748, which required tobacco to pass through public warehouses and be graded before an inspector's note could be issued against it. T.H. Breen's The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (Oxford University Press, 2004) and Ann Smart Martin's Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008) — both recommended by Weathers during that same lecture — are strong next steps for the consumer and credit economy covered in this chapter, with Breen the more accessible starting point of the two.
Passion for the Past is worth following directly for its detailed, season-by-season posts — the wheat-threshing sequence referenced here is one representative example among many in the blog's archive.
Sandra L. Oliver's Food in Colonial and Federal America (Greenwood Press, 2005) walks through both the seasonal work of food production and how that food moved from field or hearth to table across the social spectrum. George Washington's Mount Vernon documents its own well-recorded eighteenth-century agricultural operation, including its shift from tobacco to wheat and the resulting change in the plantation's yearly labor rhythm, on its 18th-Century Farming page; Old Sturbridge Village's Freeman Farm documents a comparable New England agricultural calendar a generation or two later, useful for contrast with Virginia's.
K. Walters at the Sign of the Gray Horse documents this work directly and is worth following for further, more specific detail than this chapter can cover. Historic sites with active open-hearth cooking programs generally publish their own reading lists and recipe adaptations as well — worth seeking out directly for whichever region and decade your persona occupies, since hearth cookery practice and available ingredients varied considerably even within the eighteenth-century colonies.
Nat Lasley, who has portrayed Patrick Henry at Colonial Williamsburg since 2025, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Ira Berlin's Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998) is a foundational, Bancroft Prize–winning account of exactly how these hierarchies formed and varied across region and period. Colonial Williamsburg's Nation Builders program page and the Foundation's Slavery and Remembrance project are both worth exploring directly for further documented examples of individual biographies and institutional approaches.
Noah Lewis, who has portrayed the documented Continental Army artillerist Ned Hector for nearly three decades, discussed this at length as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
See contemporary coverage of Conner Prairie's Follow the North Star program and of its 2019 reimagining, as well as Conner Prairie's own site for current program details — worth studying as a model for how a site can convey coercion and stakes without requiring an interpreter to sustain a subjugated first-person voice for an entire visitor day.
James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, eds., Slavery and Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory (The New Press, 2006) is a collection written specifically about the challenges museums and historic sites face in representing slavery honestly — including essays touching directly on the emotional and professional demands placed on interpreters who do this work.
Many major living-history sites publish their own guidelines for how they frame difficult first-person scenes to visitors before they begin; a site new to this work is generally better served studying and adapting an established program's framing language than writing its own from scratch.
The economic centrality of slavery to colonial life generally — not just to plantation agriculture — is well documented in Berlin's work above and in the broader literature on the colonial Atlantic economy; personas' specific regions and stations will determine exactly how directly that economy touched their own lives and livelihoods.
Nat Lasley, who has portrayed Patrick Henry at Colonial Williamsburg since 2025, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Katherine Pittman, who has portrayed Martha Washington at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
This chapter draws on a guest lecture, "The Art of Hospitality," given by Jen Tousey as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
George Washington's Mount Vernon maintains a Digital Encyclopedia article on the Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour, including its French Jesuit origins and Washington's own copying of the text as a young man.
Daniel Shippey, who portrays George Washington at Mount Vernon and nationally, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
George Washington's Mount Vernon maintains a Digital Encyclopedia article on Elizabeth Willing Powel, including her Philadelphia salon and her documented friendship and correspondence with George Washington.
George Washington's Mount Vernon's Digital Encyclopedia article on toasting covers the era's toasting customs, including the postwar tradition of thirteen toasts at formal celebratory dinners, one for each state.
This chapter draws on a guest lecture, "The Art of Hospitality," given by Jen Tousey as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
The Modern Reenactor, "The Role of First Person Interpretation".
Nat Lasley, who has portrayed Patrick Henry at Colonial Williamsburg since 2025, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Noah Lewis, who has portrayed the documented Continental Army artillerist Ned Hector for nearly three decades, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking's The Museum Experience (Whalesback Books, 1992) remains a standard reference in museum studies for how visitors actually experience an institution's offerings — including the difference between an experience visitors choose and one imposed on them, which is precisely the distinction this section is drawing for first-person encounters specifically.
Nat Lasley, who has portrayed Patrick Henry at Colonial Williamsburg since 2025, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Katherine Pittman, who has portrayed Martha Washington at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
I'm Living History, "Portraying a Historical Character (1st...)". Catherine Hughes's Museum Theatre: Communicating with Visitors through Drama (Heinemann, 1998) is a standard reference in the museum-theater field for exactly this kind of deliberate, controlled movement between first-person, third-person, and direct-address modes within a single presentation.
Nat Lasley, who has portrayed Patrick Henry at Colonial Williamsburg since 2025, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Katherine Pittman, who has portrayed Martha Washington at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Your own site's emergency procedures, first-aid certification requirements, and incident-reporting protocols take precedence over anything in this book — treat this chapter as a reminder to know those procedures cold, not as a substitute for them.
Daniel Shippey, who portrays George Washington at Mount Vernon and nationally, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Arlie Russell Hochschild's The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (University of California Press, 1983) coined the term "emotional labor" and remains the foundational text for understanding the specific kind of fatigue that comes from managing one's outward emotional performance for an audience over a sustained shift — directly applicable to first-person interpretation generally, and especially to the demands discussed in Chapter 8. Portraying Across Station, Race, and Bondage. The National Association for Interpretation publishes broader professional-development resources that also touch on sustainable practice for interpreters doing emotionally demanding work.
The American Alliance of Museums maintains an ongoing library of practitioner-oriented education and interpretation resources, including guidance on group and family learning that goes well beyond what a single chapter can cover.
This section draws on a guest lecture on interpreting difficult histories given by Kurt Smith, who has portrayed Thomas Jefferson at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Nat Lasley, who has portrayed Patrick Henry at Colonial Williamsburg since 2025, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Nat Lasley, who has portrayed Patrick Henry at Colonial Williamsburg since 2025, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Nat Lasley, who has portrayed Patrick Henry at Colonial Williamsburg since 2025, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
This section draws on a guest lecture on interpreting difficult histories given by Kurt Smith, who has portrayed Thomas Jefferson at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Noah Lewis, who has portrayed the documented Continental Army artillerist Ned Hector for nearly three decades, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Katherine Pittman, who has portrayed Martha Washington at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Nat Lasley, who has portrayed Patrick Henry at Colonial Williamsburg since 2025, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Chapter 8. Portraying Across Station, Race, and Bondage covers the first and hardest of these questions at length; the further reading listed there and in Chapter 14. Finding Your Community and Going Further is the right next stop for building a genuinely well-grounded answer rather than a rehearsed line.
Noah Lewis, who has portrayed the documented Continental Army artillerist Ned Hector for nearly three decades, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Katherine Pittman, who has portrayed Martha Washington at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Noah Lewis, who has portrayed the documented Continental Army artillerist Ned Hector for nearly three decades, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Katherine Pittman, who has portrayed Martha Washington at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Nat Lasley, who has portrayed Patrick Henry at Colonial Williamsburg since 2025, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Daniel Shippey, who portrays George Washington at Mount Vernon and nationally, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Viola Spolin's Improvisation for the Theater (Northwestern University Press, 1963) is the foundational text for theatrical improvisation training generally, and its exercises for building spontaneous, in-the-moment response translate directly to first-person interpretation, even though it wasn't written with living history in mind. Donald Schön's The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (Basic Books, 1983) is the standard reference on structured professional reflection more broadly.
Formal peer observation and feedback structures — one interpreter deliberately observing another with a specific focus, then debriefing afterward — are common practice at sites with established training programs; ask your site's training coordinator whether a structured version of this already exists before improvising your own.
Katherine Pittman, who has portrayed Martha Washington at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Nat Lasley, who has portrayed Patrick Henry at Colonial Williamsburg since 2025, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
NAI's certification tracks were developed for a broad range of interpretive settings — parks, nature centers, and cultural sites alike — not exclusively living history, so expect to translate some of its general framework to the first-person-specific concerns this book covers.
Katherine Pittman, who has portrayed Martha Washington at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Katherine Pittman, who has portrayed Martha Washington at Colonial Williamsburg for over a decade, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
Daniel Shippey, who portrays George Washington at Mount Vernon and nationally, discussed this as part of the same workshop mentioned in Chapter 1. Why First Person, and Why It's Hard; see Interpreting History for session details.
