Whether intimately enmeshed with objects and spaces or haphazardly projected onto the landscape to serve an explicit purpose, history is narrative. Scholars of folklore and performance studies have theorized the importance of narratives, their construction, and their presentation, providing frameworks that can guide analyses of historic narratives. In 1968, folklorist Roger Abrahams called for an inclusive approach to studying performance when he wrote: “In fact, what is needed is a method which would emphasize all aspects of the esthetic performance:
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performance, item, and audience.”33 Later discussing a method outlined by Kenneth Burke, Abrahams continued, “The importance of [his] theory is that it causes us to consider the form and function of the isolated item; we look simultaneously at the performer, at the piece he performs, and at the effect which this has on the audience.”34 To study a performance we must first recognize that we have isolated an item (form) and removed it from its original context, and secondly that the performer’s intentions, the audience’s reception, and their resulting interactions (function) are as important to understanding effect as the actual words themselves.
Abrahams’ approaches directly apply to tours given at historic sites and at Duke
Homestead, as the item, performance, and audience can be easily delineated within these events. Item, audience, and performance are mirrored in viewing historic narratives as existing along a fluid spectrum between scripted, spoken, and received. The “item” is the scripted information at hand: the history of the site and the narrative used to share the desired information. This
narrative is based, at least in part, on a written manual used to train new guides, and outlined with the intention of creating a level of consistency between the tours given by the many guides. The narrative is used to take visitors through the historic site, stopping outside of the curing barn and pack house, and entering into the third factory and the Duke farmhouse. The history shown in the Tobacco Museum is set, printed on panels, and hung on walls. While the performance of the information is in flux, the site’s “official” narrative is outlined in print and on paper. It is defined.
At Duke Homestead, the “audience” is made of up the visitors, the people attending the particular tour who receive the narrative. Visitors come from a variety of places, as local as
33 Roger D. Abrahams, “Introductory Remarks to a Rhetorical Theory,” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 81, No. 320 (April-June 1968), 144.
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Durham and as far away as Germany. They have a varying degree of prior knowledge of tobacco, Washington Duke, and Reconstruction, but they generally recognize the Duke name because of Duke University. Some visitors are actively engaged in the tour, asking questions and nudging the guides into extended tours and conversations. Others remain relatively silent, falling more into the role of an observer than a participant. The dynamics between guides and visitors vary drastically depending on the guide’s personality and the interest level of the visitors, but one thing is always certain: tours are not given unless there are visitors at the site.
The received narrative depends on the audience, and not only as reason for presentation. The audience receives the narrative they are able and willing to hear. Guides vary their delivery and information depending on the visitors, but the visitors do not always receive the information in the manner intended by the guide who speaks the words. Particular nuances in language may be missed, references may not be understood, and personal backgrounds and opinions may shape the reception of the information, allowing for the narrative as taken to differ from the narrative as presented and as intended.
The “performance” is the actual presentation of the information itself: the narrative as it is spoken. It is the specific event in which a guide leads a group of visitors throughout a
particular area sharing the site narrative. And despite any script, guidelines, training, or standards that any site may have in place for their tour guides, no two performances are the same. The narrative presented varies each time it is spoken. Each guide has their own habits and tendencies towards variation within the scripted narrative. No two guides present the information in the same manner. Additionally, there is inconsistency within the tours given by the same guide. The questions asked are dependent upon the visitors in attendance and the interpreter’s “reading” of her or his audience. And guides alter their tours to include new information, to better emphasize
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particular points, to accommodate the other events occurring at the site at any particular time, among other reasons that call for adjustment and variation from a standard routine. These questions then influence the performance, altering the dynamic between the “performer” and “observer.” Each performance is unique, though unified by the three elements outlined by Abrahams.
Performances reflect the culture in which they are born, and they are shaped, in turn, by that culture. In his 1977 study of performance theory, folklorist Richard Bauman outlined a number of types of performance, explaining how they function and how they may be studied. He discussed the idea of a “cultural performance,” an event drastically unlike the personal and storytelling traditions usually associated with narrative. “Cultural performances tend to be the most prominent performance contexts within a community. They are, as a rule, scheduled events, restricted in setting, clearly bounded, and widely public, involving the most highly formalized performance forms and accomplished performers of the community.”35 These performances clearly are of great societal value and are worthy of study and consideration. Yet Bauman continued: “As interesting as cultural performances are, performance occurs outside of them as well, and the most challenging job that faces the student of performance is establishing the continuity between the noticeable and public performance of cultural performances, and the spontaneous, unscheduled, optional performance contexts of everyday life.”36
The event of a guided tour on a historic site sits between these two discussed categories, not fully a cultural performance yet not spontaneous or unscheduled. Specifically considering the tours at Duke Homestead, these presentations of history are scheduled (every fifteen minutes
35 Richard Bauman, Verbal Art As Performance, (Propsect Heights: Waveland Press, Inc., 1977), 28.
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after the hour), restricted in setting (through the historic site owned by the state of North Carolina), and widely public (the site is free to the public). Yet they do not completely match Bauman’s additional criteria. While they are, in fact, clearly marked with a beginning and end explicitly stated by the tour guide, they are not “bounded.” They are, however, the only way visitors may go inside of the buildings, creating a controlled circulation of particular experiences and knowledge. Visitors who arrive at the visitors’ center shortly after the departure of a tour are frequently encouraged to catch up with the group, and there is no rule against leaving a tour early.
The guides at Duke Homestead all receive some level of training and many are quite skilled at their presentations, but their age, educational level, and amount of time spent training is inconsistent, disqualifying them from Bauman’s “most highly formalized and accomplished performer” category.37 When beginning as a staff member, intern, or volunteer, the full-time interpreter gives the guides tour materials that include the script outline and supplemental readings on the Duke family. The assistant site manager is the person who actually carries out the training, familiarizing guides with the procedures, protocols and best practices for working at the site. The training process, however, is not consistent, as different guides receive varying levels of attention when they begin. For example, intern Omar Hamad began in May of 2015 just before the full time staff departed for a two-week event off-site. With the staff distracted by the upcoming event, Hamad’s training was rushed, and his initial tours received little oversight. While the provided materials, specifically the tour script, is uniform, the attention, mentorship, and engagement between new guides and staff varies greatly depending on such circumstances, contributing to incongruence between guides’ tours.
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Evaluating the tours in relation to the more casual performances Bauman discusses, it is clear that they do not fully align with “the spontaneous, unscheduled, optional performance contexts of everyday life.”38 The tours they are not spontaneous or unscheduled. They are simply optional. The guide takes on the role of the performer, clearly aiming to communicate specific information in a planned manner, with the hope of being educational and engaging. They are not, however, actors on a stage. Visitors interrupt, question, interject, and contribute to the tour experience, actions with the potential to enhance or hinder the success and reception of the narrative at hand.
In addition to the ambiguities brought about from the differences in training, performer skill and style, and the unknown variable of visitor interaction, the narrative presented is not fixed. There is no one “true,” or “authentic” story of the buildings, people, industry, or lives connected to Duke Homestead. And even if it was possible to gather all of the information linked to this place, it would be impossible to communicate it within the allotted forty-five minute timeframe. But as is, the different tour guides are at the liberty to present slightly different stories. They are asked to cover the same basic structure and progression, including many similar facts, concepts, and ideas. Their nuances and delivery, however, varies greatly. One guide spends more time on the labor movement, while another focuses more on the agricultural aspects of tobacco production. These differences, while at the surface level appear slight, alter the overall narrative presented and thus create varying understandings of the history that is connected to this place.
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CHAPTER FOUR: DUKE HOMESTEAD ON TOUR