Revolutionary Stories

New vignettes reveal revolutionary citizens from different angles, explains Bill Weldon, Colonial Williamsburg’s manager of public history. March 5, 2007

Transcript

Lloyd Dobyns: Hi! Welcome to Colonial Williamsburg: Past & Present on history.org. This is “Behind the Scenes” where you meet the people who work here. That’s my job. I’m Lloyd Dobyns, and mostly I ask questions. This time, I’m asking Bill Weldon, and at Colonial Williamsburg, he’s manager of public history. I know we’ve talked before, I think about Revolutionary City.  

Bill Weldon: We’ve talked indeed, last year, about Revolutionary City.

Lloyd: And this time, a piece of that has been expanded, and now it’s “Revolutionary Stories,” and you’re going to tell me what they are.

Bill: Yes, indeed. The Revolutionary Stories are designed to be an enhancement and an expansion of the Revolutionary City program. These are scenes that will occur at exhibition sites in different locations around the Historic Area that happen in the different part of the day than the Revolutionary City actually takes place.

And, they’re meant to accomplish two things. As I’ve indicated, the first thing they’re meant to accomplish is to enhance and expand on the Revolutionary City idea, as an introduction to the characters and the stories that people will hear when they attend the Revolutionary City. They’re also meant to give us an opportunity for guests to get to know some of the Revolutionary City characters in different capacities, and maybe in more depth than they have the opportunity to learn about in the Revolutionary City.

Lloyd: OK, now, give me an example.

Bill: OK, at the Governor’s Palace, in the spring, beginning March 19, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, we will have a program called “Dunmore’s Dilemma.” This is a scene where you meet the governor, the royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, as he learns about the protests that the House of Burgesses, the representatives of the people of Virginia, have mounted as a way of supporting the patriots in Boston, in light of the Boston Tea Party, the destruction of the tea.

In this scene, you meet Lord Dunmore, you learn a little bit more about all the different concerns that he has, regarding governance of Virginia, the expectations of him from the British ministers, his bosses, and how he’s really caught in a balancing act between keeping the ministers in London happy, and the representatives of the people of Virginia.

Lloyd: So, you get a chance to see just how difficult it was for Lord Dunmore, who became quite the hated character, whether he should have been or not. It’s difficult for him to do his job, not only because of pressure from the patriots, but the pressure from his bosses – he must hear from them, from time to time.

Bill: He hears from them very regularly, and they’re not always happy with the measures that he’s taken, which are actually very supportive of Virginians, and of their interests. So that’s his dilemma.

Lloyd: I’d never heard that he was supportive.

Bill: Oh, very much supportive. As a matter of fact, there’s a wonderful piece of a letter that Patrick Henry writes to a man named Silas Deane, who was a representative from Connecticut to the first Congress, and now, this is after the first Continental Congress has taken place, where Henry is very praiseworthy toward Dunmore because of the efforts that the royal governor has taken regarding the land interests of Virginians.

Lloyd:  Learn something every day. OK, you’ve got this scene at the Palace on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays. I tell you something that bothered me, and maybe this is the time to bring it up: Revolutionary City, the scene between the two Randolph women, the mother and the daughter. I am not a historian, but I know enough about that period to know that women of that stature didn’t stand in the street, arguing.

Bill: That’s what we’re led to believe, and certainly the etiquette of the day would indicate that they would not engage in that kind of behavior. But, I think there are two things we need to consider: I think there are always exceptions that prove rules, and I think that one of the things we recognize in order to bring these stories to life, we have to exercise certain dramatic license with the characters and their stories in order to communicate them.

Lloyd: I was wondering if that scene couldn’t be played even better in Randolph house.

Bill: Well, you’ve given me a nice lead-in to another one of our Revolutionary Stories. Beginning this summer – it won’t happen in the spring – but with the summer schedule, which begins mid-June, we will in fact have Peyton Randolph -- who is the speaker of the House of Burgesses, and a patriot -- duel verbally with his brother John Randolph, who is the attorney general of the colony, and who is a Tory, or someone who is very loyal to the British king, and the British government. So, another expansion of the Revolutionary City will be this story that we will tell at the Randolph house in Williamsburg.

Lloyd:  Now, John lived here as well, right?

Bill: Yes.

Lloyd: But on the other side of town, if I’ve got my map in my head right. Is any plan being made, that you know of, that would involve John more, in the sort of daily give and take of Williamsburg?
 
Bill:  Yes, especially on the Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, which are the days that we call “Collapse of the Royal Government,” the first part of the story. In addition to this scene that will feature John and his brother Peyton at the Randolph house, people will also find John just out and about on the streets, sort of espousing his politics and telling his side of the story.

Lloyd:  Interesting. Not to pin you down, but can you say how many of these little scenes there will be?

Bill: This spring, we will introduce two a day, in the morning time, opposed to the Revolutionary City, which occurs in the afternoon. Over the course of the next two or three years, we hope that we will introduce maybe as many as five, six, of the Revolutionary Stories that will occur.

Lloyd: So, in time, you actually would be able to sort of walk around and stop in on scenes, not at will, but kind of …

Bill:  That’s the idea. If guests to the Historic Area choose, they will be able to base an entire stay’s experience following the Revolutionary Stories and the Revolutionary City program in the afternoon.

Lloyd: OK, now, the two you’ve told me about were both Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. Do we have Monday, Wednesday, Friday?

Bill: On Mondays, we’re actually going to introduce an entire new day to the Revolutionary City, and it’s a day that we call “Nation Builders.” We will feature the founding father characters who are most significant to Williamsburg: George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson.

In addition to these founding fathers are people that we consider to be founders. We’re also going to introduce other characters of less notoriety, on whose shoulders the founding fathers stood to accomplish the things that they did. People like Lydia Broadnax, who was an enslaved woman at the George Wythe property in town, like Gowan Pamphlet, who was a Baptist preacher …

Lloyd:  I’ve interviewed both of them.

Bill: Indeed, yes. Well those will be part of this core group of characters that we’re going to identify as nation builders. Mondays will feature their stories, in addition to the founding fathers’.

Now, on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, which is the second part of the Revolutionary City scenario, we will have two scenes each day at the Governor’s palace, one of which will feature Patrick Henry, and his vision for the new republic of the United States, and a second scene which will feature a group of politicians, of representatives, who were instrumental in the passing of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, and the establishment of the new government after declaring independence.

Lloyd:   So actually, you’re just expanding this in about 16 different directions.

Bill: At least, I think, yes.

Lloyd: We’re not just talking about scenes, we’re talking about whole new days.

Bill: That’s right, and over the course of the next several years, we recognize that in order to keep the story fresh and appealing to people who want to return and follow up on the story, we’re going to have to continue to develop new scenes, and introduce new features to the program.

Lloyd: Introducing new scenes – what sort of preparation has to go into the scenes?

Bill: It all begins with a group constituted of our historical research staff, staff historians, who meet with program planners, people that work in the area that I’m most immediately associated with. Basically, we inform each other about the historical stories that exist, and how we might best dramatize those, how we might best turn those into public presentations. So that’s where it starts.

When a story is identified and recognized as one that we want to build into the program, then we draft a storyline, an outline of what the scene might look like, and then we assign a scriptwriter who actually then drafts a script that that program will follow.

Lloyd: I have interviewed several people here who interpret characters who have studied, I think, everything there is to study about the character. Do you ever consult them, or does the scriptwriter ever consult them? Because, it seems to me they’d be great sources.
 
Bill: Oh yes, as a matter of fact, for this Nation Builder program, we’ve consulted with all of the gentlemen who portray George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry. We’ve also brought Gowan Pamphlet and Lydia Broadnax, or the portrayers of those characters into the outline process in the script drafting process.

Lloyd: It seems to me that it would give it a little bit more life than you might otherwise get from historians who are accurate but not necessarily living the part.

Bill:  Yes, and I think it’s a combination of the in-depth study of the particular character, and characters like those that they portray, with the more general historical application, that the historians actually bring to the equation.

Lloyd: With all this new material that starts in the spring, and you’ve got it planned for some years, how will you know whether you have been successful, or less than successful, or less successful than you want to be – what’s the key?

Bill: We are going to let our audience inform us of how successful we have been. We have an evaluation process which began this past year that’s actually going to be expanded to just let the folks who come and experience Revolutionary City tell us where we’re succeeding, and where we need to reexamine what we’re doing.

Lloyd: So you are prepared to change it to make it better from the spectator’s or visitor’s point of view?

Bill: We absolutely are, and we now, I think, after the first year, understand that what we’re now calling performance-based interpretation, is very popular with the folks who come to spend time at Colonial Williamsburg, and it’s a matter now of refining that process, and looking for more applications for it, and we’ll see, we’ll let them tell us how successful we’ve been.

Lloyd: The performance-based – were you surprised by that?

Bill:   Not really, because the Revolutionary City was founded on experiences that we have offered over the years, but not nearly in as broad or developed a way as we have with Revolutionary City.

Lloyd: That’s Colonial Williamsburg: Past & Present this time. Check history.org often, we’ll post more for you to download and hear.

© 2024 The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

URL: http://www.history.org