A new batch of scholars to talk history
Six-part Jamestown Director’s Series starts Jan. 18
JAMESTOWN — For about 30 years, Thomas Jefferson has come to life through the interpretation and research of historical interpreter Bill Barker at Colonial Williamsburg and more recently at Monticello.
Barker will talk with Christy S. Coleman, executive director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, about his research and portrayal of Jefferson on Jan. 18. The talk is the first in the 2023 six-part Director’s Series at Jamestown Settlement.
Conversations with other scholars and public figures, all scheduled at 7 p.m., will take place on select Wednesdays throughout the year in Jamestown Settlement’s Robins Foundation Theater.
Tickets are limited and must be purchased online in advance. The price is $10 per program, $50 for the entire package.
Barker, who began his professional career in the theater as an actor, director and producer, stumbled into his Jefferson role in the spring of 1993. He was seeking a summer job at Colonial Williamsburg and found that CW was looking for someone to portray the nation’s third president.
When he started working at CW and saw the historical presentations on the street, he realized that the interpreters were more than actors.
“They are historians. They are making history come alive.”
Barker’s tenure in Williamsburg ended in 2019 two weeks after the publication of his book, “Becoming Jefferson: My Life as a Founding Father.”
The gray-haired Barker was ready to stop presenting Jefferson as the youthful Declaration of Independence author. Monticello, Jefferson’s home near Charlottesville, thought Barker would fit in well as Jefferson in retirement.
Barker moved to Charlottesville and he is at Jefferson’s home
Tuesdays through Saturdays.
Coleman said she is looking forward to sitting down with Barker, with whom she worked at CW. “We’ll share some behindthe-scenes issues that few could imagine,” she said in an email. “I think this is what helps make the
Director’s Series work — we either know each other or connected through others. Therefore, the conversation isn’t just about their work, but their approach to it, the challenges of it, and more.”
Other scheduled speakers in the series are:
March 15: Kimberly Gilmore, chief historian of The History Channel/A&E Networks and senior vice president for corporate
social responsibility. She holds a doctorate in U.S. history from New York University.
May 17: Alexis Coe, presidential historian and New York Times best-selling author, is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and Columbia University. She was consulting producer on and appeared in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s George Washington series on The
History Channel.
Sept. 20: James Horn, president of the Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation, is an expert on early Virginia. Horn received his doctorate of philosophy from the University of Sussex in England and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He is the author of numerous books, including “A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America” and “A Brave and Cunning Prince: The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America.”
Speakers for the Oct. 18 and Nov. 15 programs will be announced later, Coleman said.
Visit jyfmuseums.org/ events/directors-series for details.