Persona Development
Internal Pages
- Cariadoc's article "The Little Things": A very good stating place for developing your persona. Gives a list of questions your persona should probably know the answer to.
- Persona Interviews (planned)
External Pages
- [| So you want to have a persona]: A list of things to help you on your way to thinking and discovering your persona.
- [| Four Easy Steps to Persona Development]: An Article from Tournaments Illuminated, 1994
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There is nothing more annoying to a person who wants to stay "in persona" than having people around them speak of things in a modern context. Such conversations usually go like this: "Yesterday we got a new program for our computer that will organize all my 16th century Slavic embroidery patterns for me!" While this may be potentially useful information to you, and you may like to speak about the subject further, it probably can wait until after the SCA event or perhaps occur someplace where anyone who is trying to maintain a "period feel" will not overhear your out-of-period conversation. Many other people have these same concerns.
> From the [Poulet Gauche] website: > At many SCA events, persons in perfectly made ensembles stitched by hand with well-documented and laboriously-executed needlework spoil the effect by chatting about the features of their new Pentium. Worst of all is the "meta-conversation" we have about our personas and the Society: "Hello, I'm a 13th century Welsh bard...", "Playford isn't period so therefore...", "The way they did that in period is..." These kinds of things pop us out of our milieu and make us observers of our own experience. For us, a lot of the magic of living history recreation comes when your forget that you're in the twentieth century and for a brief moment you see the world through the eyes of another time and place. Some people don't stay in persona simply because they are afraid they won't have anything to say.
> When some people first come to the Poulet Gauche, they are terrified that there's nothing to talk about. But the truth is, pregnancy is period and so are births, deaths, marriages, separations, courtships, congratulations and envy on honors and privileges, compliments, cattiness, flirtation, boasting, haggling. In many ways the stuff of human conversation has changed very little. And with just a little bit of thought, even those annoying meta-conversations can be redirected in a way that enriches the experience. "Hello, I'm in town to sell sheepskins at the fair..." "I've never heard of an author named Playford, but in my country we do this dance..." "The way my grandmother used to make that kind of pie is..." > One of the ways to develop your persona and avoid feeling left out of in-persona conversations is to take a tip from Duke Sir Cariadoc and consider a list of questions that your persona would have known the answers to. Some of these questions might be: > > "What kinds of money do you use?" > "How do you tell what time it is?" > "Can you read? If so, what have you read?" > "What do you eat for breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? What do you drink?" > If you were asked these questions today, you would probably be able to answer them without a second thought (we hope). Why should this be any different from your historical persona? Yes, this type of persona-play can take a bit of work and quite the mind-switch, but it can be very worthwhile in the end. This site is here to help you make the most of your Russian persona. Ask the Slavic Discussion Group questions, give us comments. We may not know the answer, but we would like to try!
