Historical Story

In our Historical Story, we wanted the style and customs of the pioneer days to meet with the archetypal ideas of love, patience, and stubbornness.  We hoped for the audience to be able to recognize these universal feelings in a historical setting.

This script aimed to create a correct setting in which the story could come alive.  We researched the time period well, in order to know where Abigail and Matthew would be geographically, what people wore at the time, how they spoke, and much more.  All of these little details helped establish a truth that the audience could recognize.  We called attention to people's clothing early on in the script so a correct image could be established and the audience could appreciate where the characters came from.

This way of illustrating time and setting is similar to Satrapi’s approach in The Veil. Although her descriptions were almost completely communicated through drawn pictures, they functioned in the same way as our written descriptions. They placed the characters and plot in a specific time and place, and in doing so, helped to bring the story to life.

Another way in which we tried to hold true to history was through the dialogue of the script.  We tried our best to reflect the dialect and style the pioneers may have spoken in.  We also wanted to use words that a husband and wife would use with each other.  This way we could create an intimate setting while staying historically correct. 

An outside work that also uses dialogue to help identify historical context is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. In this book, Mark Twain spells out the accents and dialects specific to the various characters’ backgrounds. Reading Twain’s dialogue as he wrote it really authenticates the characters and brings the adventure to life for the reader. In our script, we tried to do the same, by using dialogue that would be appropriate for the time and place in which our story takes place.

Doing this wasn’t easy though. The dialogue was difficult because in our story, so much is expressed through body language instead of spoken words.  Also, many emotions are due to a character's inner understanding, and verbalizing such ideas does not sound natural.  We cheated this issue in a few ways.  First, we painted pictures vividly for the audience.  For example, in order to get across that the piano was old and an heirloom, we explained that the piano was scratched up and tattered down.  Also, we had Abigail tell a story that references the piano as a belonging to her grandmother.  Another way we got around overly explaining things in dialogue was by having Abigail express herself through a prayer.  We were able to hold the integrity of the story as a pioneer story while expressing Abigail's true feelings that cannot easily come out on screen.