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Meet the Audience: Doing Local History (I of II)

© Valerie Borey

For me, what bridged the space between mid-August and mid-September was about 200 years of the history of North Minneapolis. I was invited to collaborate on a storytelling event that encouraged the local community to envision conditions experienced by those who had set foot on the banks of the Mississippi at various periods in U.S. history. My role was initially defined as doing some basic research and writing up a few scripts for the storytellers (actors) to work from. As I became more invested in the project, however, I found myself doing exploratory field trips, interviews, and even playing a role myself in the production.

Over the last year or so, I've been fascinated by the idea of theatrical performance as a tool for cultural understanding. Theatre is not only a compelling form of presentation, it is also a vehicle through which one learns to "live and breathe" an alternate identity as an actor. I therefore jumped at this opportunity to be involved in a project with such transformative possibility. The roles I ended up researching included 19th century explorer Zebulon Pike, a "river pig" who drove lumber down from Northern Minnesota, a person who worked in the sawmills near and beyond St. Anthony Falls, a workhouse superintendent, an African-American school teacher, and a post-WWII resident of a public housing complex just off the river.

Without a whole lot of time to prepare, I literally immersed myself in exploring the history of this area of town I had never been quite familiar with. I spent about two weeks doing quite a bit of library and internet research, visiting museums, taking long walks and drives around the area, studying maps and pictures, emailing back and forth, and interacting - directly or indirectly - with some of the people I planned to base my monologues on.

As I worked on each script, I tried to get a sense of the person it represented rather than the period. While I adore history and could have worked at more of an abstract level, knowing that an actor would have to perform the part tied my focus into trying to capture some of the more human elements of the Mississippi riverbank experience. What guided my research and scripting was the idea of life as a mortal drama - that, when you look at individual history up close, it is a series of blips: exalted peaks and crushing lows, and lots of in-betweens.

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