When Did You Become a History Hoyden?

I was thinking last Sunday as I was getting ready to watch the new Upstairs Downstairs series on Masterpiece (who else remembers when it was called Masterpiece Theatre?) on PBS that the original series from the 1970s as well as other Masterpiece Theatre series such as Poldark and The Pallisers, probably mark that point when I well and truly fell madly in love with period drama, (not to mention men in poufy shirts, buff-colored breeches and shiny boots, with swords at their hips, and the full-skirted and full-bosomed women who loved them).

The Three Musketeers

I was also mad about the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

A Glorious Day, a musical adaptation of GB Shaw's Getting Married

And from earliest childhood I drew pictures of princesses with flowing tresses and flowing gowns. So I caught the royalty bug early on, too.

Guinevere and Lancelot in King Arthur

Some years ago in NYC, before I started writing, I founded a nonprofit professional theatre company dedicated to performing "neglected classics of the 19th c. English stage." We mixed it up a bit with plays from other centuries, and not-so-neglected classics as well, but I think the work I did with Survivor Productions fulfilled the history hoyden in me. Not only was I the producing artistic director, but I performed in most of the shows -- and I insisted on costuming them. I have never heard so many grown women whine than when I insisted that they wear corsets and petticoats, not just in performance but in rehearsal, because it changes everything about your deportment.

The Taming of the Shrew

This post is filled with photos from shows I produced and performed in with Survivor. I look at them now and clearly see the trajectory toward becoming a historical novelist.

James R. Bianchi as King Arthur

This post is also a tribute to a dear friend and one of my favorite costars, James R. Bianchi, who passed away suddenly last week at the age of 61. Jim played King Arthur to my Guinevere (in an 1895 iambic pentameter version of the story with underscoring by Sir Arthur Sullivan; we got the score from the Morgan Library); we were the first professional performers to play it in New York since it was first performed in the city by the original cast -- starring Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in January 1896! A few months after we did the show I brought Jim down to The Players club on Gramercy Park and showed him around the famous theatrical social club founded by American theatre luminary Edwin Booth. [In the interest of full disclosure, fellow hoydens Lauren and Isobel helped me murder a bottle or two of Prosecco at The Players one night.]

The Players club is like a living museum of American theatre history and as Jim and I were looking at some of the memorabilia we noticed a silver urn inscribed to The Players from Henry Irving in January 1896. They must have honored him when he was in NYC performing King Arthur. Unfortunately, they would not have feted his costar, Miss Terry, as the club was all male at the time and admitted women into the club house only on the rarest of occasions. In fact it took a petition just to have an honorary evening for Sarah Bernhardt!

Jim also played Reverend Morell to my Candida (Shaw's Candida),

and Chasuble to my Cecily (Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest).

He was a gentle spirit and the most generous of actors. He had all the talent in the world to be a star of the first magnitude but lacked the requisite steeliness that it all-too-often takes to make it to the top. But he was a success on his own terms and for that he was deeply admired and loved.

All of these shows, and many more, (I produced between 30 and 40 productions in about 8 seasons), not only fed my passion for acting, but my love of the past and my desire to recreate those eras and share those creations with the public. Sometimes I adapted novels (like Ivanhoe and The Prisoner of Zenda), taking them from the page to the stage. But not until now did I begin to realize how much my artistic career was shaped by going in the other direction as well -- from the stage to the page.

So, readers and authors, what was the spark for you? How did you become a history hoyden/geek/buff/aficionado?