MAKING A GOOD IMPRESSION: I

In living history, the term “impression” refers to how a reenactor is dressing, behaving and presenting to the public and to fellow reenactors. A reenactor can create a feasible & believable persona impression. That impression—also referred to as persona or character—tells you how you should dress, behave and present yourself and is, therefore, integral in making certain that your living-history portrayal is not just another fantasy LARP.

–PERSON IMPRESSIONS

By this we refer to how a reenactor presents himself to the public. There are three sorts of these approaches of dealing with the presentation.

First-Person

This is an acting option where you portray yourself as a person from the time being portrayed. People with first-person impressions cannot give any hint that they know after the time they portray, though they do not have to speak in the common language of the time.

Third-Person

This is more a dress-up than an acting option. While you accurately dress as a person from another time, you do not portray yourself as a person of that time. You know things after the time of you portray and can help to put it all in perspective with the rest of history—even today—when talking to a MoP.

Second-Person

This is a combination of first- and third-person impressions—sometimes also referred to as a ghost impression—where a person usually portray himself as a person of the time but can break into this portrayal to be a modern person if needed to clarify things.

There are some people who say a third person impression means that you really do not need an impression. I disagree vehemently. The impression tells you what you should wear and what you would know. Otherwise, you might wear an eleventh-century tunic, cotton pyjama bottoms, rhinestone sunglasses and Keds, telling everyone you are a Viking…

Historical Impression

Most impressions are of everyday persons of the time, and living history itself usually deals with is standard. Yes, they have a Buddha statue in Viking-Age Helgo, Sweden, but the chances are that not everyone had a Buddha statue!

The exception is when the person portrays an actual person from the time: King Ælfred, Knúdr the Great, Sir Walter Raleigh or Abraham Lincoln for example. These are first-person impressions on high octane, since you must not only be well versed with what an ordinary person of the time knows but with actual biographical data.