Dear Sheila,

You may already know that Jenny Rieghur was involved with the design
of "First Winter" while she was working for the Toronto Historical
Board.

Jenny has specialized in issues and design of perforance based
programming in 'museums' and wrote her final research paper for her
Masters of Museum Studies at U. of Toronto on this very topic. Contact
me if you wish to know where you can read this work.

Along the way, we have noted the use of live actors programmers in
some Historic Sites of Parks like Lower Fort Garry , North of Winnipeg;
years ago the Manitoba Museum of Man and Nature had some actors as
programmers; the Ontario Science Centre has used actors modelling on
the programming done at Minnesota at the Science Museum which is
renowned for this work.

There is a lot of programming using actors in museums in Britain. I
note especially the programming at the National Maritime Museum in
Liverpool, actor interpretation used at the Science Museum, and the
Museum of Moving Image to name only a few examples. This is a
tradition which I first noted twenty years ago with a dramatic program that occu
rred at Sudeley Hall or was
it Sunbury-- my memory is fading. Britain has a strong tradition of
using actors or theatre troupes rather than trained interpretors. In
fact, twenty years ago there was a dramatic resistance to the North
American use of interpreters, people in costume, as "Disneylandish".

The use of actors to supplement interpretation/programming
was that tradition that Dr. David Perry brought to the Canadian Museum
of Civilization and which we hope will be maintained there despite his
unfortaunate death last June.

Still, I think that "First Winter' is another kind of interpretation
in that it does not use either interpreters or actors in short set
pieces as they function in  character but is more of an original play staged
against the backdrop of the Fort but is not particular to the Fort.

Please contact me if you would like Jenny's phone no. or access to her paper.

Lynne Teather,
Museum Studies,
Univ. of Toronto,
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