A Date With History Lecture Series Gives Audiences The Chance To Question Historical Figures And Get Responses

George Frein isn’t who he says he is.

That’s why he’s in such demand. As a scholar, Frein shines. But as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Father Pierre Jean DeSmet or Henry Brooks Adams, Frein is brilliant.

“It’s the closest thing to talking with the dead,” says North Idaho College’s Tony Stewart. Stewart invited Frein to play Henry Brooks Adams next week at NIC’s second weeklong lecture tour through history.

The program will give the public the opportunity to chat with dozens of people from the past. If history does repeat itself, audiences will forget that the historical characters are really role-playing scholars.

In addition to Adams, the week’s “guests” will include Thomas Jefferson speaking on freedom and justice and John Wesley Powell speaking on the human quest to understand nature. Fifty teachers playing roles from Socrates to Betty Friedan will analyze each guest’s message.

There are few things Frein enjoys more than scholarly role-playing.

“Put on a white suit and play Mark Twain and everyone comes,” says the University of North Dakota professor of philosophy and religion. “There’s no fear of asking Mark Twain questions, unlike a lecturer. And no one’s ever asked me if this is going to be on the examination.”

Scholarly role-playing is a popular pastime in the Midwest and growing in popularity in the Northwest, thanks to Stewart and NIC.

Its century-old roots stretch to Lake Chautauqua, N.Y., where Methodist ministers decided in 1874 to make Sunday school more entertaining by inviting traveling teachers to conduct Bible studies.

By the turn of the century, “chautauquas” had evolved into traveling tent shows that featured political debates and orators, such as William Jennings Bryant.

Attendance at traveling shows dipped in the 1920s after cars and movies hit the scene. Chatauquas struggled to lure audiences with jugglers, sword swallowers and yodelers, but the Depression finally killed the traveling shows.

The National Endowment for the Humanities resurrected them in the 1970s when it encouraged colleges to reach out to the public.

College professors took their lectures on the road, but teachers in North Dakota balked at driving during snowy winters. They agreed to travel in the summers, but found audiences didn’t want to sit inside during the warm weather.

Outdoor canopies solved the problem. Still, lecturers attracted sleepy crowds until one professor decided to portray the character about whom he was lecturing.

“People got into the act, played along,” Frein says. “We found out if the characters come to town, the tents fill.”

North Dakotans lifted chautauquas to new intellectual heights. Clay Jenkinson, a North Dakota scholar in English, Renaissance literature and theology, brought to audiences his stirring interpretations of Meriwether Lewis, John Calvin, John Wesley Powell and - his specialty - Thomas Jefferson.

Jenkinson learned his subjects so thoroughly that audiences forgot he was playing a role. They asked questions, argued with his character.

Twelve years ago, Jenkinson convinced Frein to try role-playing in the summers.

“It’s a wonderful way to teach,” Frein says. “Promise to give them Mark Twain rather than some be there.”

NIC’s Stewart, who has organized lecture series for the college for 27 years, decided last year to venture into chautauqua territory.

A friend had told him she’d love a chance to speak with people in history. Stewart was intrigued.

“It so sparked me,” he says.

He surveyed students and staff to find out which people in history they wanted most to meet. Of the 400 names the survey generated, the most votes went to Jesus Christ, John F. Kennedy, Adolph Hitler, Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Marilyn Monroe and Benjamin Franklin.

Stewart organized a weeklong program with 11 role-playing scholars, including Jenkinson and Frein, and 12 response panels. Each panel contained five or six teachers, each of whom agreed to take on the role of a historical character.

The research required to play those roles was exhausting but addictive. NIC librarian Denise Clark played author Edith Wharton last year.

“I had to reread her work, her novels, her autobiography and read some works by her I’ve never looked at before,” she says. “I had so much fun with it.”

The format brought the wit and wisdom of six dozen historical figures to Coeur d’Alene and drew 7,300 people to NIC’s lecture series. Those people talked to Sojourner Truth, Ernest Hemingway and Beethoven, among others, and they wanted more.

“We’re accomplishing what we’re trying to do - getting people deeply into a theme,” Stewart says. “But we’re not finished.”

This year, Stewart decided to explore age-old themes - freedom and justice, equality, economic security, survival of the family, spirituality and interacting with nature.

In addition to Jenkinson and Frein, the speakers will include three current experts in their fields: Bill Wassmuth, the executive director of the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment; T. Hensley Williams, a labor relations professional; and Diane Medved, a clinical psychologist and author.

Panels that will discuss each speaker’s message will include such historical figures as John Muir, Mohandas Ghandi, Rosa Lee Parks, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther.

NIC English Department secretary Linda Erickson will play Boadicea, a British queen who died in 60 A.D.

Romans flogged Boadicea and raped her daughters after her husband died. She retaliated by rallying 800,000 Celtic warriors and burning London to the ground. She will respond to Thomas Jefferson’s speech on freedom and justice.

“She tried to be reasonable and that didn’t work. Something in that appeals to me,” Erickson says. “I have a stack of 30-some books I’ve studied to get to know her.”

Frein says he hasn’t seen any program quite like Stewart’s.

“This is unique in that it gets a goodly number of faculty members to the point in their scholarship that they can do this,” he says. “To be one of these characters effectively, a scholar has to be on his toes - and that’s the most fun.”

NIC’s programs are free and open to the public.

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