The Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts will welcome a First Couple this upcoming Saturday, February 27th. “An Evening With John and Abigail Adams” is a first-person, interactive program starring Bill Chrystal and Suzan King, both long-time first person interpreters.

This reviewer was dismayed by the lack of information about the show, so she decided to get right to the heart of the problem by speaking with John Adams himself—in the form of his twentieth century stand-in, Bill Chrystal. The show is not meant to be a static production, with the audience on one side of the footlights and the actors on the other, but rather a chance to interact with the Adamses. “We’re going to start with a scripted monologue,” Bill explains, “but we’re going to spend the majority of time answering questions. We’ll answer whatever people ask us, even if it’s way out of our character’s timeframe. We sort of have a suspended sense of time. We know everything they [John and Abigail] knew, and we have a pretty fair knowledge of everything that’s happened since they died.”

Bill has been interpreting John Adams for over fifteen years. Like so many interpreters, he was introduced to the idea by a friend who was already involved in interpreting. In this case, the friend was Clay Jenkinson, also known as Thomas Jefferson, of the Thomas Jefferson Hour. Jenkinson suggested that Bill “become” Adams to add more depth to the program. Adams and Jefferson had a turbulent and fascinating relationship, as they alternately united and fought against one another in our nation’s founding. Jenkinson’s suggestion that they recreate this historical friendship for a radio show led Bill to develop an interest in interpreting, an interest he took beyond the airwaves. These days he continues to interpret Adams—but can also “do” Hamilton in a pinch.

“Clay Jenkinson really invented the ‘chautauqua technique,’” Bill explained. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, rural communities across the country would be visited by entertainers, musicians, ministers, and lecturers for cultural events that could last for days, inspired by a movement that had taken hold in Chautauqua, New York. These visitors would inject a little culture and excitement into parts of the country that were not easily accessible in the days before mass media. By the 1930s, however, the Chautauqua assemblies had mostly died out. Jenkinson revived the idea in the early 1980s, when he began interpreting Thomas Jefferson, injecting a little eighteenth century culture into North Dakota. Jenkinson’s interpretation technique, also known as “chautauqua,” is different from other first person interpretations. He permits his characters to speak on topics that would have happened outside their range of experience, all while staying true to the historical personage.

This is the technique that Bill Chrystal uses as well. He related a story that happened when his family visited Plimoth Plantation, a historical site that interprets the 1620s: “My oldest daughter got so excited because she found the house her ancestors lived in, and she went in and tried to ask the interpreters questions. They were important questions to her, but they were out of the time frame interpreted there, so they [the interpreters] were unable to answer her…I watched her just kind of get deflated. Just go from being really excited to really deflated, because she couldn’t get the information out of them. And I watched them be frustrated too, wishing they could answer, but because of the methodology they couldn’t.”

Norfolk and the larger Historical Triangle is blessed with an abundance of historical interpreters and re-enactors. It’s always refreshing to see new faces, however, especially historical figures who don’t often appear around here. So what can John Adams say about Virginia? “I think Adams was an astute geopolitican. He really understood needing to get the South involved in the Revolution. He was the one, really, who nominated George Washington to be Commander-in-Chief of the army, which was stationed in Boston at the time.” And of course, there’s his famous friendship with Thomas Jefferson: “They had a falling out midcareer, but resumed their friendship in old age. It’s one of the richest correspondences that exist in American history, where they talk about all manner of things.”

It sounds like the Suffolk area is in for a real treat, a chance to look at some of the local history from a different viewpoint. Bill Chrystal will be ably joined by another chautauqua interpreter, Suzan King, a retired theatre professional who also interprets Eleanor Roosevelt. From their time in France to their retirement in Massachusetts, the Adamses are prepared to answer any question that might come their way. Even questions that don’t involve the eighteenth century--because, as Bill succinctly puts it: “People ask questions because they want to know the answer.”

Tickets are $20 for adults, $15 for students and are available from the Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts or by calling (757) 923-2900.