- Living History Displays -

Although the principle focus of the White Nights re-enactment will be the last few hours of the Peoples Temple community the audience will also experience close contact with participants by asking questions and learning about life in the Peoples Temple Community from the Living History Display. In role, these re-encators will portray the background and sequence of events that precipitated the deaths in Jonestown.

The living History Displays will be pivotal to the White Nights re-enactment, encouraging a better understanding of the 914 deaths by depicting both the internal struggles and external disruption to the community, offering individual perspectives on Jim Jones and the events depicted by the White Nights re-enactment, as they unfold in front of the audience.

Living History Displays

In a separate area from the main reenactment Living history Reenactors will describe conditions in the Jonestown community, including day to day considerations, such as what the houses were like to live in, how they were built, where the food was grown and what an average day would have been like in Jonestown. They will also portray the morale and beliefs of the community members they represent. This will be done in costume with some props.

Preparation for Living history Reenactors will include considerable reading (I can supply texts/books etc) and detailed knowledge of the peoples Temple. It is important that these reenactors are also comfortable spending time talking and sharing this knowledge with the audience. These roles will be more demanding than taking part in the reenactment. At certain points throughout the day the Living History Reenactors will also be incorporated into the narration of the event either in an interview type situation or giving a short talk on a specific aspect of The Peoples Temple.

Much of the testimony that has emerged from the event is very contradictory. Consequently each living History reenactor will give a different, paradoxical accounts of life in jonestown. The Living history Reenactors will be able to take up three key types of role, thereby creating a fragmented picture for the onlooker:

Peoples Temple Community member:
As a Peoples Temple member with direct experience of daily life in Jonestown you will be able to discuss aspects of daily life and the goals of the community, including the free medical care, plentiful fresh food, separate nurseries for toddlers and infants that Jonestown inhabitants have.

Concerned Relative:
The Concerned relative were a small group of vociferous ex members and relatives of Peoples Temple members who campaigned for the The Peoples Temple, and specifically Jim Jones, to be investigated or human rights abuses and ultimately for the community to be disbanded. The Concerned Relatives eventually managed to persuade congressman Leo Ryan to travel to Guyana to investigate the community on November 17 1978. Ryan's trip effectively precipitated Jim Jones catastrophic decision to go through with the White Night suicide drill.
As a concerned relative you will be able to catalogue the abuses that you know are taking place in Jonestown, and argue the case that your family members should be freed and Jim Jones tried for Human Rights abuses.

Journalist:
Journalists and the media played a hidden but pivotal role in the events that took place in The Peoples Temple. The whole community relocated to Jonestown, Guyana from their base in San Francisco after an article in the San Francisco New west magazine which alleged Jones was guilty of mistreatment, physical abuse, extortion, embezzlement and blackmail. In other instances the media had warmly supported Jones and The Peoples Temple, for example when Jones was named as one of the 100 most outstanding clergymen in the US by Religion in American Life, an inter faith organisation.
Jones believing he was a radical leader of the stature of Malcolm X, or Martin Luther King never really trusted the press and believed that he had become the target of a witch hunt, orchestrated by Government who had deployed the CIA, FBI and the Media. The same sort of effort that he believed had been directed against the Chicago Seven and other radical proponents of the new left.
As a journalist you will present this hidden retrospect view of The Peoples Temple. Neverthe less your view is primarily from the outside of the community and the strange contradictory accounts that emerge from it.

Facilitators:
The project presents obvious logistical difficulties of managing up to several hundred reenactors, an audience possibly of the same size and all the challenges a public event in a public space might throw up. I am looking for a team of facilitators who can help with the running and prior organisation of the project. Being a facilitator does not necessarily preclude taking part in some aspects of the days events as well.