A book by it's cover, perhaps...

Roller Coasters vs. Brass Doorknockers

by Paul Caputo

As a child, I visited Williamsburg, Virginia, with my family. Prior to the trip, I spent months anticipating a day at an amusement park called Busch Gardens. I was consumed with and petrified by a roller coaster called the Loch Ness Monster, which featured multiple loops and a 114-foot drop. I studied photos of the roller coaster in a Busch Gardens brochure and wondered if I would have the courage to get into one of those metal, yellow cars when the time came to do so. (I would, and it was great.)

My 10-year-old brain had blocked out the fact that Busch Gardens would only be one part of a vacation that included several other sites. So you can imagine my surprise when, on the first day of the trip, I found myself not on the greatest roller coaster ever, but watching a living history interpreter in period costume demonstrate how Colonial-era Americans made brass doorknockers.

Once I stopped comparing the relative adrenaline rushes associated with the Loch Ness Monster and brass doorknockers, I appreciated the immersive historical experience of Colonial Williamsburg. I may not have understood all of the history I was seeing, but I left (in spite of myself) with an appreciation of how different my life was compared to what it might have been 200 years earlier. I learned something about the origins of my country and the people who made it what it was.

What I did not appreciate at the time was all of the discussions that go on behind closed doors at sites like Colonial Williamsburg. I did not think about how easy it would have been for poorly researched or inexpertly presented first-person interpretation to warp a visitor’s sense of what life was like in the Colonial era. It never occurred to me that management might have chosen to use interpreters in contemporary dress to educate visitors in the third person. Once I bought into the experience, I never questioned that what I was seeing was anything but purely authentic or that there was any other way to present it.

At a site like Colonial Williamsburg, I am confident that the living history presentations were then and continue to be of the highest quality. However, whether it is because of poor planning or a lack of resources, that may not be the case at every site. This issue of Legacy discusses some of the many factors that go into creating and providing effective, genuine historical experiences, and explores the whys and hows of different methods of doing so.

Author Paul Caputo has been the art and publications director for the National Association for Interpretation (NAI) since February 2002. He earned a master of fine arts in visual communications from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2001 and a bachelor of arts from the University of Richmond in 1995. He is a Certified Interpretive Trainer and the editor of Legacy magazine, and he has presented sessions on graphic design and interpretation nationally and internationally. Paul lives with his wife, Sheila, and their children, Joel and Maya, in Fort Collins, Colorado.