Popcorn Series To Relive History Forum To Bring Legends To Life
North Idaho College is preparing to prove wrong anyone who considers history to be a dull subject.
Next month, a dozen experts on famous people in history will bring those historical figures to life through dress and speech.
The weeklong forum’s topic is “Journey Through Time: Conversations with the World’s Great Women and Men.”
Thomas Jefferson, Galileo, Susan B. Anthony, Socrates, Confucius, Sacajawea and several others will share their lives and philosophies - with a little help from some contemporary scholars.
“Everyone would like to go back in history and talk to someone they’ve admired,” said Tony Stewart, an NIC faculty member and director of NIC’s Popcorn Forum series.
Stewart and other Popcorn Forum organizers are hoping the series will help show how relevant history is in the present and future.
“If you get grounded in history, it’s a tie to the past and the future at the same time,” Stewart said.
After each presenter performs a soliloquy as the person they are presenting, the audience will be able to ask questions of the character. Sometimes people ask them to apply their philosophy to present day problems, Stewart said.
“It’s an attempt to bridge from that time to now,” he said.
Many of the presenters are experts at role-playing the parts of historical figures.
The scholar playing Thomas Jefferson, Clay Jenkinson, is one of the founders of the Chautauqua movement, which uses historical roleplaying to teach humanities. Jenkinson began first-person historical characterizations in 1976. He has portrayed the role of Jefferson more than 1,000 times, including a performance before President Clinton.
NIC found some of the presenters through organizations on the Internet. Frederick Krebs, who will play Galileo, was discovered through an Internet search. A chautauqua presenter, Krebs is adept at playing Ben Franklin, John C. Fremont, Thomas Paine, William Allen White, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Some of the presenters are actresses, such as Kathryn Woods, a Boston woman who will play the courageous slave Sojourner Truth.
Following their individual performances, the presenters will join a response panel made up of community members playing other roles from that time.
George Ives, an NIC instructor, will play Ernest Hemingway, for instance. Attorney Scott Reed is studying to perform the role of James Madison. Nursing instructor Joan Brogan is playing Florence Nightingale. The amateur actors have been studying their characters for months, Stewart said.
The general public has a month to study their favorite historical figure for a game on March 27 when everyone can try their part in role-playing.
The forum series will be held from March 25-29 on campus. The college was able to bring in a dozen expert speakers and presenters because of donations from the Associated Students of NIC, the NIC Foundation, The Idaho Humanities Council and the Citizens Council for the Arts.
, DataTimes