Re-enactment

I love seeing the story again and again. I saw the Renaissance Festival in the US some years ago, with actors playing the roles of real people who might have lived in Europe in the XV century. They stayed in character and amazed me with historical information and good humour. It was as if I were living there in their neighbourhood; it was as if I were there in time and space.


Old Sydney Town is no longer here, neither in its historical setting, subsumed year by year by more modernity and post-modernity than can fit on George Street, nor in its capacity to re-enact itself up the Central Coast. The old village atmosphere next to the Australian Reptile Park, was a classic, again with actors playing the roles of magistrates and captains, villains and heroes, all related to the beginnings of Sydney in XVIII century Sydney town.

My family and I certainly enjoyed going there, as well as Williamsburg, Virginia, or meeting villagers in Shakespeare's old haunts in Stratford-on-Avon, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and even Sturbridge, Massachusetts. These historical venues of re-enactments are helpful for the history major at a university, and helpful for all people to sort out what 'really' happened in varied and multiple cites worldwide.

Deb Fuller has 20 years of experience in running and participating in reenactments.  She wrote about it on this website: https://exarc.net/issue-2019-1/mm/how-run-reenactment-part-1.

Almost two years ago in Washington, DC, a museum opened which featured scenes of biblical history and conversations you could have with living interpreters. The "Museum of the Bible" was opened just blocks from the US Capitol.             

Visitors listen to a “living history interpreter,” right, in the old Nazareth exhibit at the Museum of the Bible on opening day. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post). 

Here's what I'm saying, that there is a certain historicity which a re-enactment brings, a certain authority. When we hear an actor on stage or screen, telling us that they want our ears, along with other friends, Romans and countrymen, we, like the crowd who watched Julius Caeser for the first time in the XVI want to rail against Brutus and the other conspirators. We want justice for fallen Caeser. We believe the oration of Mark Antony, no matter the cost.

When a reenactment of the Moon Landing which took place 50 years ago comes on our History Channel or Oliver Stone produces yet another episode in his litany of hostile-to-history films, we get caught up. We are torn. What is true? What really happened?

Facts and fiction fight one another, and a person has to be sure that the repetition of history in reenactments highlights the former. 

Tomorrow night begins the Jewish holiday of Tabernacles (Sukkot) which itself is a reenactment of the history of the wandering in the wilderness by the Jewish people after they left Egypt in 1500 BCE or so. God provided for us; we were cared for; none of our shoes wore out; we had daily food, and so much more. When we build the sukkah, when we sit in it, and see the fruit hanging, when we read the book of Ecclesiastes and ponder again all the Almighty can do and did-- when we do all that, the force of the reenactment is powerful and helpful. We gain faith. We trust God all the more. 

I hope your understanding of truth and history continues to grow; think of God, and think on His great deeds among all people. He is Worthy!