7 Questions With Laura Rocklyn, Writer, Actress, and Historical Interpreter

 

Laura Rocklyn is an acting troupe member with History At Play, a museum interpreter at The Paul Revere House Museum, and an Associate Company Member at The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company. As a freelance living history performer, she writes and performs historic character portrayals for educational groups up and down the East Coast, such as the Jane Austen Society of North America, The New York Society Library, and the North American Friends of Chawton House. Laura has published articles in Brontë Studies and The Revere Express, and her short stories have appeared in the literary journals Stork, New Square, and LitMag. You can follow her work on Instagram and Twitter @Laura_Lost_in_Time

1.          How and when did you get  hooked on history?

My love of history started early.  My mother was a teacher and, in addition to exploring the rich history of our hometown Charlottesville, Virginia, she planned all of our vacations when I was growing up around history and literature.  This made the historical stories and characters I was studying feel very real and near to me, not like tales of a far off or unimportant time.  I remember the particular magic of a trip to England when I was around seven or eight and deep into an obsession with the musical Camelot, where we went in search of the historical King Arthur.  We visited sites with Arthurian connections, from Tintagel Castle to Stonehenge to Glastonbury Abbey.  My mother guided me on how to separate fact from legend as we read and researched different accounts of King Arthur along the way.

Then, when I was in sixth grade, my mother got a job teaching in Salisbury, England, and I went with her and attended the Salisbury Cathedral School.  The school had been founded in 1091 by St. Osmund, and is housed in the old Bishops' Palace, parts of which date back to the 13th century. Being immersed in that depth of history on a daily basis fascinated me, and I loved living in a place where tangible evidence of historical events was all around.  There is nothing quite like walking every day up a stone staircase where each step is worn down in the center from all the people that have walked the staircase before you over the last 800-odd years.

2.          What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?

History is very much a part of my daily life.  Since my childhood experiences, I have always been drawn to live in places that have a strong sense of history, from Old Town Alexandria, Virginia to Boston, Massachusetts.  As an actor, writer, and first person historical interpreter, I find that historical stories are my greatest inspiration -- there are so many good ones that have yet to be uncovered -- and I love to be in a place where I can stumble across new stories and historical figures around every corner.

My work on Marian "Clover" Adams actively changed my life because she is the reason that I now live in Boston.  When the play that Ty Hallmark and I wrote about Clover was produced by Ally Theatre Company in Washington, DC in 2017, Clover's biographer, Dr. Natalie Dykstra, very graciously came to see a performance and join us for a Q&A.  When we were talking after the show, I told her how much I admired her work and asked what she would recommend for an aspiring young biographer.  Without hesitation, she said that I should go to Emerson College in Boston and study with a specific professor there who had also been an extraordinary mentor to her.  I was in the midst of applying to graduate schools for Creative Writing MFAs and added Emerson to the list.  I was accepted, fell in love with Boston and all of the extraordinary stories that are held in its stones.  The rest, as they say, is history!

3.          How does history play  a part of your professional life/career?

History has come to be the main focus of all of my work.  Growing up, I always knew that I loved telling stories, both writing them and bringing them to life on stage as an actor, and most of the stories that truly captivated me were about historical women.  Like many young girls of my generation, my two best friends and I had the American Girl dolls, and our first plays as very young children were about the adventures of Kirsten in 1854, Samantha in 1904, or Felicity in 1774.  I didn't know quite how I could make writing and performing historical dramas into a practical job when I was an adult in the real world, but I felt something like a vocation to inspire others to be fascinated by history in the way that I had been inspired.  Then, in the summer after my junior year of college, I had the extraordinary opportunity to do an internship at Colonial Williamsburg in what at that time was called the Theatrical Interpretation Department.  Performing four educational shows a day at the Playbooth Stage, I discovered that writing and performing historical stories was a real job that I could do very well!

My main focus for many years was working as a freelance actress, performing mostly in Shakespeare and other period dramas, but my "day jobs" always had a historical focus, too.  I worked as a first person historical interpreter for Mount Vernon, I portrayed various characters for Natalie Zanin's Historic Strolls, I gave tours at Gadsby's Tavern Museum, and, increasingly, I began to develop programs of my own on historical women who intrigued me.  Now, a couple of master's degrees later, I tour with portrayals of Jane Austen, Dolley Madison, Louisa Catherine Adams, Clover Adams, and Charlotte Brontë, and I have a long list of new programs that I want to develop.  I have also published a number of historical fiction short stories, some nonfiction articles on my research, and I am currently working to finish the historical fiction novel I began as my MFA thesis at Emerson.  I also perform in several of the ensemble programs offered by History At Play and, by day, I work as a museum interpreter at the Paul Revere House Museum.

4.          Why is studying/knowing history important?

I have always admired the mission statement that John D. Rockefeller Jr. gave on the founding of Colonial Williamsburg: "That the future may learn from the past."  I don't think it's possible to overstate the importance of trying to understand and learn from the past as we move forward, especially in such turbulent times as these.  History can give us extraordinary examples that we can follow, and by which we can be inspired.  Just as importantly, history can also give excellent examples of what not to do and what should be avoided.

The laudable National History Day program highlights another reason that the study of history is so vital: teaching children how to read primary sources thoughtfully and critically in the study of history can enable them to apply those same critical skills in reading current articles and news stories.  If students learn to question, "Who wrote this historical document?" " What were their biases?"  "Were they writing this piece for a specific audience?"  then those students will know how to ask similar questions about the current news articles and other pieces of information that pop up in their social media feeds.

History can also be a great source of encouragement and even comfort.  I navigated the early months of the pandemic in 2020 by reading about the series of smallpox epidemics that swept through Boston in the 18th century and about the 1918 flu epidemic.  There was reassurance to be found in the fact that humanity has been through similarly terrifying times before and come out on the other side.

5.          What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?

My first serious historical love was 19th century England because I spent most of my teenage years obsessed with the novels of the Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, and Anthony Trollope.  I wrote numerous papers in high school with titles along the lines of:  "Charlotte Brontë's Shirley and Dickens' Hard Times as Windows into Life During the Industrial Revolution," and my undergraduate thesis was on spirituality in Charlotte Brontë's novels and the politics of religion in Victorian England.

As an adult, I've found that the historical period on which I focus at any given time is strongly influenced by where I'm living.  When I was based just outside of Washington, DC, I was completely absorbed by the Federal Era.  Reading Catherine Allgor's book Parlor Politics as a young woman in DC was a revelation to me because it introduced me to all of these fascinating, powerhouse women -- Louisa Catherine Adams, Dolley Madisosn, Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte -- who made incredible contributions to the development of our young country, but are all too often overlooked by the history books.  My first ever visit to do research in an archive was to the Maryland Historical Society to look at Betsy Bonaparte's papers, and I was blown away by the sweeping view of American and European politics that came through in the letters, invitations, and scrapbooks of this woman from Baltimore.

Now that I am in Boston I am still fascinated by the incredible women shaping society here in the Federal Era -- a lot of my work these days is swirling around Hepzibah Swan and Sarah Wentworth Morton -- but I am also looking closely at the experiences of women during the American Revolution that formed these creative women of the Federal Era.  I love that, in all of these time periods that one might think we study in such detail in school, there are so many stories -- especially about women and people of color -- that have been overlooked and still need to be brought into the light.

I guess, looking over what I've written, the short answer would be that I tend to focus on women's history in the United States and Britain between about 1770 and 1870.

6.        How do you select the characters you portray? Is there a common theme among the characters you portray?

The characters I choose to portray are all women whose stories inspire me, and to whom I have felt a strong personal connection.  When I was younger and just starting out as a living history performer, my first two portrayals were my two favorite authors, Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë.  I still think there is a value in portraying those two well-known women because fans of their novels are drawn to the programs.  Then, in talking about the broader lives of these authors, I can share stories about their involvement in historical events with which they aren't often associated, such as the experiences of Jane Austen's naval brothers during the Napoleonic Wars, or Charlotte Brontë's experiences in Brussels.

Now that I have more experience and more years of research under my belt, I like to find women whose stories and work deserve a wider audience.  This is why I portray Louisa Catherine Adams and Clover Adams.  Abigail Smith Adams is such a towering figure in history that the remarkable women who married into the Adams family in the subsequent generations are often overshadowed.  One thing I particularly enjoy is that, when I mention my program on Louisa, I generally get one of two responses: people are either curious because they've never heard of her, or they get really excited because they adore her.  There is rarely a middle ground.  I am so glad that I can now be the means of showing more people why they should, not only know who Louisa is, but adore her, too.  Because Louisa did such an exquisite job of documenting her experiences all over Europe while her husband, John Quincy Adams, held various diplomatic posts, that program is also an exciting way to explore a wide view of culture and politics from Massachusetts to Russia in the late 18th/early 19th century.

7.      What do you do in order to prepare for your portrayal in terms of research and creation?

Once I've pinpointed a woman I want to portray, I always read as many different biographies of the person as are available so that I can get a good overview of the figure's life and world.  Then, the most important part of my process is going back and immersing myself in the historical figure's own writings and papers, so I can draw my own conclusions and form my own picture of them from their own words.  I want to portray the person, not the legend.  (In a couple of cases, for programs I'm working on now, going to the person's papers in the archives has had to be the first step because there isn't yet a biography.)  I like to get as close to the person and their thoughts as possible -- I have spent many wonderful hours with Louisa Adams' papers on microfilm at the Massachusetts Historical Society -- but, if possible, I also always get the published collections of their papers to have in my study so I can refer to them at any time as I'm writing, like Margaret Smith's extraordinary three volume Letters of Charlotte Brontë.

To ensure that every aspect of my portrayal is as accurate as possible, I like to visit any places connected with the figures, see any of their possessions that still exist in museums, look at portraits, read any books that they mention reading in their papers, listen to the composers I know they admired, look at paintings they mention having seen.  I do my best to immerse myself in the historical figure's life and world as much as possible.  From this research, I like to add little details in my dress and setting as little treats in each program that scholars or real fans of the character will notice, even if I never refer to them in the performance.  For example, my Jane Austen always wears a replica of the topaz cross that was given to her by her brother Charles, and the dress I commissioned for my Charlotte is based on her "Thackery dress" in the collection of the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

I have a playlist for each of the characters I portray of music they mention in their letters, other music of the era, and any songs that remind me of them.  I listen to that collection of music before each performance, and that helps me be taken back to that headspace and into their world.

To start writing, I choose a dramatic moment in the life of the person so that something active is calling them to look back over their life.  I want the humanity of the character to come through in my portrayals, in addition to the facts of their life.  I think it's important to convey that these were living, breathing, fallible, caring, inspiring real people.  In my programs, I want history to come off the page and into people's lives.