37 PLAY

Robbert-Jan Adriaansen

Reenactment is undeniably a form of play. Reenactments are performances in which reenactors play historical characters and in which historical events or situations are staged or improvised as play—not necessarily only in the sense of a theatrical production, but in the broadest sense of “play” as a verb.

In some cases, reenactment can even be classified as a game when it is explicitly regulated and when an element of competition is involved, particularly when it takes the form oflive action role-play (EARP). While the English language conveniently distinguishes between play and game, the latter of which may be understood as a formalized mode of play, the cultural theory of play has traditionally reflected on play in the broadest sense of the word, which includes theater only as one particular form of play.

As easy as it is to recognize play, it is not easy to define. In consequence, theories of play tend to define the phenomenon by focusing on the functions, characteristics, or genres of play. One of the earliest theorists of play, Friedrich Schiller, conceptualized play as one of the essential drives of human nature, reconciling the human drive for the absolute with the human experience of being in, and subject to, time, concluding that “man only plays when he is in the fullest sense of the word a human being, and he is only fully a human being when he plays” (Schiller, [1795] 1967, p. 107). In his Homo Ludens, another classic of the theory of play, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga understood play in cultural terms. Departing from the position that play is more than simply playing games, he argues that culture arises in and as play, and he recognizes an element of play in all cultural forms. Music, theater, dance, poetry, and rituals contain aspects of play, but so do war, science, and law. This does not mean that the latter are not serious aspects of culture and society.

Rather, Huizinga claims that they can be carried out in the form and mood of play, which might be best understood as an agreement to accomplish something in a limited spatiotemporal setting while consenting to a set of more or less explicitly pre-established rules. In some cases, play may result in the relief of some tension. In this sense, defenses of doctoral dissertations, aerial dogfights, rap battles, and many elements of historical culture, including historical reenactment, are clearly conducted as play. To a certain extent, these cultural forms satisfy the definition Huizinga gives of play, in which he discerns seven characteristics.

First, Huizinga claims that play is a “free activity” (Huizinga, 1949, p. 13), by which he means that play exists solely for its own sake. It is an expression of human freedom that answers to no demands beyond the demands it sets for itself. Second, play is not serious in the sense that it pretends and does not have to worry about the basic necessities of everyday life. This does not mean that play is not serious at all, however. Quite the opposite is true: engaging in play thoroughly absorbs the player—the third part of Huizinga’s definition. Fourth, there is no material gain associated with play, which reinforces the fact that play serves no purpose beyond itself. Fifth, play has its own specific spatiotemporal parameters. It takes place in a defined playing field and can be repeated over and over again. Sixth, play relies on a rule system. Whether the rules of play have been explicitly stated or not, every player abides by the rules voluntarily when deciding to play. Even the cheater acknowledges the rules by still pretending to play; it is only the spoilsport who breaks the circle of play by deliberately renouncing the rules. Last, play shapes community, as all players share in the spirit and experience of play. Historical reenactment facilitates forms of play in the sense that play may be a part of staging the past; children can play with historical toys, reenactors can joust, dance, or shoot craps.

On a larger scale, reenactment itself is also a form of play, as it constitutes the spatiotemporal “playing field” and determines the “rule system” in line with which the past is staged.

Advancing Huizinga’s work, Roger Caillois provides a useful taxonomy of forms of play, discerning between agon (competition), alea (chance), mimicry (simulation), and ilinx (play that effectuates a temporary disruption of perception) (Caillois, 2001). Acknowledging that particular games can combine a number of these forms, Caillois creates a rather versatile model that positions all forms of play on a continuum between two poles: ludus—games with explicit rules—and paidia—playful activities that are less structured and rely on improvisation.

Although the theories of Huizinga (1949) and Caillois (2001) are not always consistent with each other and have been challenged and amended many times, criticisms of both theories converge around one important point: they both distinguish between play and reality. Setting play apart from real life involves a theoretical inconsistency, as it contradicts the claim that play is self-referential and cannot be reduced to anything exterior (Anchor, 1978). According to Jacques Ehrmann, this distinction is a hierarchical one, in which play merely represents a reality that exists prior to it and that serves as its standard measure (Ehrmann et al., 1968). In response, scholars like Eugen Fink have conceptualized play as an ontological category, arguing that in order to move beyond the modern dichotomy between play and reality, it is necessary to understand that play never occurs outside of reality (Fink, 1968). Play does have its own reality, but all the elements of play—the playing field, the objects of play, and the other players—are simultaneously part of the reality of play and the reality of everyday life. Based on the same critique, Hans- Georg Gadamer made play into a central category of philosophical hermeneutics. As a concept, “play” was useful to Gadamer’s larger hermeneutic argument that the subject matter can never be objectively known, and that, instead, the aim of understanding is a broadening of the interpretive horizon of the interpreter.

Play loses even the suggestion that understanding might have anything to do with the subjectivity of the author or the interpreter. The most important characteristic of play, Gadamer contends with Huizinga, is the absorption of the individual player in the to-and-fro movement of play. Therefore, play cannot be understood as a purely subjective act. For this reason, the concept of play became one of the main tools for Gadamer to explore a hermeneutics that did not rely on a self-contained rational subject (Gadamer 1986; 2013). This opens up the possibility to think of play as a dialogue that deepens understanding.

The rise of historical game studies has been largely responsible for bringing the concept of play into the study of historical culture (Chapman et al., 2017). Game studies has been subject to ongoing debate between narratologists, who study games as narrative representations (Jenkins, 2004; Murray, 1999), and ludologists, who study games as ludic simulations (Aarseth, 2004; Eskelinen, 2004; Juul, 2001). Understanding games as simulations means interpreting them as systems (of rules) that model the behavior of an original system (Frasca, 2003). While ludology uses play theory to analyze game mechanics, gameplay, and the player’s immersion in the activity

Robbert-Jan Adriaansen

(Salen and Zimmerman, 2003), narratology uses literary theory to study the narrative that is expressed in the game.

Today, there is a general consensus that the distinction between narrative representation and ludic simulation is an artificial one and that games contain both elements (Frissen et al., 2015; Murray, 2013). Noting that a strict distinction between representation and simulation is difficult to maintain, William Uricchio defines simulation as “a machine for producing speculative or conditional representations” (Uricchio, 2005, p. 333) and claims that historical representations and historical simulations constitute two ends of a continuum on which all forms of historical games can be situated.

In games that have clear narrative structures, outcomes, and goals and that deal with particular events, the representational element is dominant. In such a game, the play element is restricted to playfully taking part in historical narration. In other games, such as strategy games, the simulation element is dominant. These games generally deal with the larger historical structures and developments that are represented in the rule system. They are, moreover, speculative and counterfactual, because players can determine the path of history through creative play, which is made possible by the rule system granting them a certain degree of agency through—for example—a decision tree model. In such games, players do not play a character in a historical setting that is determined through an established narrative, but can set the course of events themselves, as they can opt to act in ways that are at odds with historical reality (Figure 37.1).

Several scholars of historical game studies have compared historical video games with reenactments and have argued that video games, as ludic simulations of the past, are digital versions of “analogue” historical reenactment (Chapman, 2016; Rejack, 2007; Vowinckel, 2009). However, although many scholars of historical reenactment do refer to reenactment as a form of simulation or mention the element of play, a systematic analysis of reenactment as play has

Figure 37.1 Cannon Hall Napoleonic Reenactment Day, 27 August 2009. Source: Bryan Ledgard.

yet to be written. Viewing reenactment as a form of play offers a number of advantages to and possibilities for further research.

First, it enables us to study historical reenactment as a relevant part of historical culture with its own epistemic, aesthetic, ethical, and—as Eugen Fink has argued—ontic relations with the past. This can help solve one of the key problems of reenactment studies, namely the fact that some scholars tend to take academic historical scholarship as a normative benchmark to which reenactment and other forms of popular historical culture are explicitly or implicitly compared, thus maintaining a hierarchic dichotomy between objective textual history and subjective bodily memory (Schneider, 2011).

It is only in this comparison that reenactment appears as an amateurish activity susceptible to mythologizing and glorifying the past. A study of the play element of reenactment can reveal how the reenactor gains an understanding of history through his or her actual engagement with the game world of the simulated past.

Second, play can help deepen the conception of reenactment as “affective history” (Agnew, 2007; McCalman and Pickering, 2010). While many studies emphasize that the immersive aspect of reenactment—the “period rush”—serves as a major drive for reenactors (Br≈dder et al., 2017; Daugbjerg, 2017; Kalshoven, 2015), this phenomenon is difficult to make sense of due to its apparently subjective nature. Analyses of such immersive experiences often result in thick description of them as sublime historical experiences in the sense that they seem to temporarily suspend historical distance but ultimately end up in the traumatic realization that the past is gone (Ankersmit, 2005). Yet such descriptions hardly solve the problem of interpretation, because they ultimately settle on the conclusion that experience is defined by unintelligible qualities. Play theory can offer new vantage points here. Mads Daugbjerg, for example, describes the difference between scripted battles performed in front of an audience and tacticals, in which Civil War reenactors improvise (2017). While the scripted battles appear to be more authentic in the sense that they aim at representing the historical course of events, the tacticals feel more genuine to the reenactors, as the format offers a plethora of individual choices that can be made, simulates the chaos of the battle, and provides a higher degree of immersion. One could say that historical representation governs scripted reenactment, while simulative and aleatory elements are predominant in the tacticals. Viewed as a form of play, experiencing authenticity during tacticals can be explained not as an experience of a distant past, but as the experience of immersion in historical simulation.

Third, play enables us to study the educational value of historical reenactment. Currently, the field of reenactment studies tends to see reenactment as having minimal educational potential. If anything, historical reenactment is granted the capacity to contribute to “wanting to know more” about history (Hunt, 2004). Generally, it is argued, reenactors tend to rely on rather shallow notions of historical authenticity, which is thought to hamper an understanding of larger historical structures and connections. Whereas this focus is viewed as impeding a proper understanding of history, the enthusiasm reenactment generates is seen as being able to inspire reenactors to learn more about the past through an engagement with historical scholarship. Living history and artistic forms of reenactment have been treated more positively as responsible representations guided by professionals (Apel, 2012). From this perspective, historical reenactment has no educational value, but can inspire enthusiasts to conduct further, serious, and cognitive (as opposed to experience-based) historical studies. From the perspective of play, however, cognitive learning need not be prioritized over affective learning, because in historical reenactment, play constitutes both the context and the object of learning. This means that the simulation of the past relies on a rule system that creates the playing field and defines the modes of historical conduct—but in order to be able to play, one must also understand and comprehend this system. Being able to successfully play means that one knows how the model functions, and thus that

Robbert-Jan Adriaansen

one does not simply understand the model but can also apply it. This does not imply that no historical mythmaking takes place in reenactment—such mythmaking can be analyzed in the scripts, scenarios, and rules and regulations that have been drawn up and approved of within the reenactment community prior to the event. But it does mean that reenactment is an act of historical understanding in its own right and that this can be studied sub specie ludi.

Fourth, as play, reenactment shares a number of aspects with other forms of play, such as ritual. One could argue that reenactment has always been intertwined with rituals, as the enactment of myths and the reenactment of deeds from the past have been part of rituals since time immemorial (Eliade, 1987). Ritual reenactment enables believers to experience the foundational events of a religion or a religious community, but it does so through an actualization, or de-historization, of the archetypical event, which brings the believer into the timeless realm of the sacred (pilgrimage). Such aspects are not lost in secular reenactment, and they may well explain that the quests for endurance, revelation, or atonement undertaken by the enacted person are at the same time experiences that the reenactor can personally identify with, because the play element of both ritual and secular reenactment enables the full identification of the self with the historical persona.

37 PLAY

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