Who Am I? Persona development and research in Living History

I have always thought this was an important and very loaded question. Important, because it shapes who we portray when 'in the field' at events. Loaded, because we can address tricky aspects of our shared history, or, make such a mess of them that we can be thought of as racist.

Ask yourself who are you.

If you're a soldier, that's easy, you wear what you are told to wear by your unit, you do what you're told to do...

Easy, right? If you answered yes, then this article may not be for you at this juncture in your living history career. Tuck it away for another date.

For the rest of us, being told what to do and how to dress just isn't an option. If our bodies prevent us from being a line soldier, either through extreme gender shapes, or any other reasons, we might have to look at other options. If we live nowhere near a military installation or unit, being a soldier might not be an option. If we are getting a bit too old for that sort of profession, it may be a good time to look at other options.
So who are you?

I've often said that the easiest personas to portray are ones that are close to our own modern lives.  When you break down who we are to the basic ideas, we are business people, wives, husbands, mothers, fathers, children, our ethnicity comes into play in a huge way for most of us. Are we religious? If so, what sort? Are we alone, raising a family through death or divorce?

These are all easy questions to answer and give a good groundwork for persona development.

So I will give you my persona as a case study so that you may use it as a guide to help you in yours. First off, my body is overtly feminine, so I dress as a woman. I would look like a very silly shaped man, and I am really femme, so this wasn't something that entered into my thought process. I am feminine. I am also a wife, a mother whose children are grown. I am a military wife too. This all speaks to my social standing in the world, how much money or class level I'd be in, what social roles I portray. I am an artist and craftsman, I am intellectual and work with my hands. I also come from a very Catholic upbringing, and still hold to many of the tenants of that religion. I come from the Gaelic culture.

Ok, if you know me, you can picture me in your mind's eye.

Now picture me in eighteenth-century clothes.

I am a soldiers (sailor's) wife of a certain age. I dress in middling class clothing, wool, linen. I wear many petticoats, stays, a gown, maybe a shortgown (jacket), and I dress modestly. I make clothing for people, and am often seen making or repairing the clothing of the clothes of the people in my group, or military units near me. My clothes may be old, but are in good repair.
And something you might not know about the Gaelic culture if you didn't grow up in it, we all tend to appear stand-offish, but love to be around people. We don't make eye contact, or like to be touched, but love to let loose with our friends with music and good cheer.

So who is my persona? I've just told you. I may change it up a tiny bit, to accommodate the event we are attending. At Louisbourg, I am fresh off the boat, waiting on a land grant so that I can set up house before the next sailing season, I might run a tavern to make a little bit extra money. At Ticonderoga, I am a Loyalist woman, walking to Canada, depending on the event...if the Americans are in power at the Fort, I am a spy, down from Canada with my Mohawk husband. If in later years of the war, we may be straight up Americans looking to supply the Fort with provisions. If I am in Annapolis Royal, I am a Loyalist again, travelling with the military from New York or Charlestown, waiting on a land grant in the Valley, I hear there's good farmland to be had.
I am always a Gaelic woman of a certain age, with a husband who may have seen military service. I am middle class, no higher. My clothes may get dirty, but will always be in decent repair.

Now that I have given you my case study, my persona, ask those questions of yourself. And then start doing some research. What would you wear, what would you own. Create a research binder to help you keep track of all these ideas in your head. Please don't fall into the trap of copying another, fellow re-enactor. Doing that results in a badly played game of telephone, and causes 'fashion trends' in the profession that may not have actually been fashionable in the period.

Look at a lot of art! If you are lower or middling sorts, look at Hogarth, Sandby, avoid oil paintings featuring ladies and gents in fancy silks or velvets unless you are of the upper sorts. Hogarth and Sandby tend to be genre painters, every day folk in morality lessons. Portraiture holds a whole other layer of semiotics that you have to be aware of. It's a good place to start developing your eye though, telling your mind what you should look like...that can be vastly different from what your modern eye thinks you should look like.
Read books, not just the history of the period, but also the material culture and clothes. Read newspapers of the period, what was available at the shops? What were the runaways wearing and stole?

It tends to be far less expensive and much less frustrating, if we all start with who we are and work from there. Then we can make or buy only what we need, and not make costly and frustrating mistakes along the way...I'm not the only one with a closet full of silk gowns I'll never wear again in their current state. They will eventually get repurposed into modern garments, because I get dressed up for the Mess once a month, something my 18thC persona would never do. That's a lot of $40/metre silk I really didn't need to buy.  It's pretty, but really...

As I begin to develop my own research binder to present for my comprehensive exam in research/creation, I hope you'll all start one too.

Start by asking the question, who am I?