Doing pasts: authenticity from the reenactors’ perspective

Re-enactment in Lighter Dark Tourism: An Exploration of Re-enactor Tour Guides and Their Perspectives on Creating Visitor Experiences

“…Rather, they are bringing to life those who once lived and suffered, which requires them to have an empathetic appreciation for enacting those people's history (Christie & Mason, 2003;Potter, 2016) in order to appropriately respond and adjust their tour when visitors appear to find the content upsetting. Such considerations for how they personify real people who once suffered demonstrate their commitment to what Braedder et al (2017) calls, responsible representation, and further evidences they understand the needed gravity and seriousness in their personifications, further extending the literature by demonstrating their emotional intelligence and ability to assess how content affects visitors (Brin & Noy, 2010;Cheng et al, 2021). This is of upmost importance considering they depict plague suffering in a post-COVID-19 world, which may now be more upsetting for visitors considering the similarities between the two pandemics in terms of human loss and suffering.…”

“…Rather, like re-enactors, RTGs embody those who once actually lived. Being able to perceive how visitors are responding to their portrayals is essential for not only ensuring a good experience, but for ensuring responsible representation (Braedder et al, 2017;Magelessen, 2006). Moreover, while Tu et al, (2019) suggests humor can be a powerful tool for helping visitors to cope with difficult and/or uncomfortable content, RTGs who use humor or satire must be able to make the necessary judgements of when to lessen their lightheartedness in response to visitor reactions.…”