Tallahassee has a birthday coming up and local theater troupe.

Theater with a mission has big plans to commemorate the event.

We're a troupe of actors, performers, researchers, community activists who really enjoy seeing how history connects to today.

The cast of historical actors is highlighting the series transition from Spanish Florida to Florida's territorial capital with a series of public performances.

In 1823, commissioners set out from Saint Augustine, Dr. William Simmons, and from Pensacola, John Lee Williams, to find a place for a new capital.

History and historians write dow magnificent facets of the life from the past.

But we get to go in and create the context and context makes things so rich.

Theater with the mission is performative.

Yeah, it's performative.

They put on historical reenactments.

They put on historical pageants and so forth, but it's also ritualistic.

Here's an idea.

Yes.

aunt Rachel, let's.

Start our story with the change of flags.

The Spanish style here descended a half mast.

Stars and stripes rising to meet it has Florida becoming U.S. territory.

That's where this habeas corpus fracus really begins.

More right here.

Ladies and gentlemen, damas y caballeros Mesdames et Messieurs Floridamos and lovers of liberty everywhere.

One of the things that Ben does, and I think it's very important, is that he is that he reenacts those rituals, whether it be the ritual of a territorial ball, for example, which was one of the things he was going to do, whether it be the ritual of the Spanish dance, which he has done, whether it be the ritual of reenacting the territorial legislative debates, which he is going to do, even even if you're a historian of the old South, the ritual of killing each other in the duel, you know, where there were very specific rules involved.

You didn't just you didn't just, you know, start shooting.

You had to you had to follow certain societal rules.

And if you didn't, you were essentially banished from essentially banished from the community.

And that's what Ben reminds us of.

I mean, he's fun.

I mean, the stuff that he does is fun and it's entertaining, but it's also very important in reminding us of of of the ritualistic aspects of creating a community from the wilderness.

2021 gave us the bicentennial of Florida becoming U.S. territory.

So we started investigating stories that connect people to history there, too.

And we found some wonderful ones.

Most recently, we've been dramatizing the run in that Governor Andrew Jackson had with the outgoing Spanish governor in Pensacola, Jose Maria Cavour, Because liberty is the legitimacy of law, and liberty governs Florida now.

Ha ha ha.

And that brings us to Williams, Simmons and the beginning of Tallahassee.

Their instructions were to come find a territorial capital that's midway between Pensacola and Saint Augustine.

So we don't have to travel, you know, over the state, you know, half all the way across the state every other year and so forth.

We're trying to dramatically reconstruct historical events.

And that does give us a framework.

It does give us some artistic restraints.

So it also sets us up to imagine very specific things.

Williams came by water and and came, you know, right in the middle of hurricane season and apparently got shipwrecked on Saint George Island, from what I understand.

And Simmons came came by horseback from Saint Augustine.

And from our reading of the chronicles John Lee Williams's journal he was not a very forth thinking kind of man.

He was not tremendously organized.

He's leaving from Pensacola, which has been a major port for years and years and years, centuries by that time.

And he says in his journal, I didn't have any charts, any nautical charts with me because there just weren't available in Pensacola.

So here is where 1823 Pensacola meets 1632 Spain, and we take la capiadora and make it into the cape snatcher or dressing for success.

So our reading of that is John Lee Williams was a party boy.

And so.

He was charming.

The ladies all loved him and he was too busy having parties saying, I'm about to go.

Won't see you for a while.

Must, must have a party.

He was too busy with his send off to prepare himself for the journey.

And so, you know, it's interesting.

I mean, we're sitting there doing this in Myers Park, and they came here under the under the orders of the then territorial governor, William P Duvall.

And of course, when they got here and decided on this place.

Why why do we get Williamson summons and why did we not get somebody else?

They were commissioned to write journals.

They wrote the journals, the journals got published.

The journals are the official record.

Look for public performances by theater with a mission now through 2024 and Happy 200th birthday, Tallahassee.

For WFSU Public Media, I'm Mike Plummer.