Partial funding for the production of Our Place Our Time is made possible by a grant from the Allison Jay and LOW Parsons Foundation.

Next on Our Place, Our Time, we're going to Colonial Williamsburg to learn about a new program which is interpreting religion in the 18th century capital.

We'll also go behind jail bars where there are artists at work and then we'll meet Jack Nelson who's also known as Mark Twain.

Thanks for joining us for our place, our time, and welcome.

I'm Vian Webb.

Our first story is about a new program at Colonial Williamsburg that's giving visitors to the historic restoration a new perspective on the life and times in the colonial capital.

Ever since it first opened in the 1930s, Colonial Williamsburg has told the story of the American Revolution and of its great leaders, Washington, Jefferson and Patrick Henry.

Beginning in the 1960s, that story was broadened to include the social context that those leaders helped shape and indeed were shaped by.

Now you can learn more about the life of blacks in the 18th century, both as slaves and as freemen.

And certainly you can learn much more about the life of women in the 18th century.

Now as producer Tim Morton tells us, there's an even newer program which informs us of the spiritual life of the colonial times.

Your honors, members of the house, gentlemen, ladies, good afternoon.

I am pleased that so many have arrived to hear my discourse today.

I have chosen - Every Wednesday afternoon, B.J.

Pryor, dressed in the garb of an 18th century Anglican minister, climbs into the pulpit of Bruton Parish Church and delivers a sermon that caused a furor when it was delivered at Bruton in 1772.

Pryor, as the historical figure, the Reverend Samuel Henley, plays a lead role in a new program at Colonial Williamsburg that is interpreting the importance of religion in the life of the 18th century capital.

Lanky John Turner is the manager of Colonial Williamsburg's religious studies program started just a year and a half ago.

As well as being a scholar of religious history, Turner is an ordained Presbyterian minister and has an ecumenical background.

He is presently the pastor of a Disciples of Christ Church in Mineral, Virginia.

How are you going about telling the religion story here at Williamsburg?

Partly by educating interpreters, by whenever a new core of people comes and trains for a site now.

Most recently, the capital training.

I've been involved and my associate, Dave Simone, has been involved.

We come in and teach quite a bit to the new interpreters about how religion was involved in everyday life in Colonial Virginia.

Specifically how the established church, the Anglican church being the established Church of Virginia, how that made a difference in everyday life.

One of the things that we are doing we're presenting a sermon on Wednesday afternoons by the Reverend Samuel Henley.

This was a sermon that he preached in 1772 in response to the Burgesses saying, "We need to hear a sermon about what the proper relationship between church and state is. "

And this isn't 1772.

It's still very much a controversy.

Because there were many people at that time who believed that you could not have an orderly government without an established church.

And so here they asked the person who was at the time acting rector of Bruton Parish Church to give them a sermon and the Burgesses come, they come to this, the Bruton Parish Church to listen.

And then he blew some of them out of the tub because here the Anglican minister goes up into the pulpit and says only God should decide these things and people should have complete freedom of their conscious to, to worship as they please.

He said that in very much 18th century language and academic sorts of terms, but that was the message.

And it wasn't lost at all on Robert Carter Nicholas, one of the senior wardens of the church.

And he personally saw to it that Henley was never named as full-time rector of Bruton Parish Church.

He's an arrogant bastard to be blunt.

A history graduate of the College of William and Mary Pryor made a lengthy study of Henley's life and personality before he assumed the interpretive role.

The thing that I find most interesting is to show them the 18th century as it saw itself rather than as we looking back with our hindsight see it.

The emotional content who liked to and who didn't like to.

What the politics of the day looked like someone who was enmeshed in them.

We tend to think that, oh, in those days the issues were so simple and straightforward.

Americans fighting for liberty and British supporting tyranny and it was real easy to tell which side was which and who were the good guys and who were the bad guys.

Here's Henley in one hand espousing a lot of the, the ideals that we associate with the American Revolution and at the other side being very much a Tori and very much against all the revolutionary agitation.

So hopefully it, it, it, it pokes at people and helps stir up their imaginations.

To see the story of religion in 18th century Williamsburg, you have to start with Bruton Parish Church.

Bruton's architecture, it was the first cruciformed church built in the colony and the model for many others and its lengthy construction history over almost a half a century tell a story of changing social conditions and religious attitudes.

Inside, even though Bruton has an active congregation, the church preserves its 18th century heritage.

Here the royal governor sat when he came to services.

The Bruton baptismal font is a relic from an earlier church in Jamestown.

On the campus of the College of William and Mary, you can get still another view of the establishment Anglican Church inside the chapel of the Wren Building.

We were fortunate on the day we visited the chapel that a William and Mary Sr., Andrew Wells, was playing music of Scarletti and Bach.

Though restored in the 1930s, the chapel's design is based on precedents of much older college chapels in England.

Memorials in the chapel preserve the names and histories of some of the great religious personalities of 18th century Williamsburg.

Blair is certainly the first one, you have to say, because he, he's given credit for, for deposing several governors just from his own power and his own, his own influence.

And that, that's a pretty powerful thing for any minister.

Blair also is a wonderful symbol of, of the direct relationship between church and state here.

He, he was the top clergyman, but he also wielded tremendous political power.

He was on the governor's council.

He was, he was right there.

He was with the policymakers and the lawmakers all the time.

He had a vote.

You know, it, it was about as close a connection between church and state as you could possibly get.

When was it that the dissenting groups or the outside groups, the Presbyterians and then the Baptists began to come here?

The Great Awakening formally started in 1739.

And that year or the next, soon after that, George Whitfield came and preached in Williamsburg for the first time.

And he was actually invited to preach in Bruton Parish Church.

Unfortunately, we don't know the exact sermon that he preached, but we have from time to time had people portraying George Whitfield in Bruton Parish Church, mostly for training purposes, for our own in - house interpretive programs.

But that's something I'd like to do more is to have more and more ministers from the 18th century that were here in Williamsburg, either permanently or in and out portrayed and that's what we're in the process of doing.

Another historical figure being interpreted in the religious studies program is the Methodist evangelist, Joseph Pillmore, who came to Williamsburg in 1772.

I talked with Ken Ritter, who is interpreting Pillmore, in the yard of the Capitol, a few feet away from where Pillmore preached to an emotional throng.

What was it Pillmore wanted here in Williamsburg?

Why did he come here?

To spread the gospel.

A gospel that was different from what was being preached by the Anglican church.

It was a gospel that was reaching out to the poor, to the lower to middling class.

They as opposed to the Anglican church who was speaking more to the intellectual, I guess you could say.

Tell me what you do when you lead people through this.

When does it take place?

What is it you do?

As you said Pillmore did speak on the state yard.

So you know, I will be introduced.

First of all, I come out from the Capitol and we'll have a little stage set up here.

I'll be introduced by another costumed employee and then I'll preach a sermon that was comparable to one that was preached by Pillmore in the 18th century.

Do you deliver the actual text of Pillmore?

Yes.

Is it fire and brimstone?

One of the ones that I do is, is pretty to the point.

It's a, it's a basic salvation message talking about the free will of man and you know, coming to, to God through the Lord Jesus Christ and God's power to to bring us into that kind of a fellowship.

There's another sermon where I talk about the love of God being, you know, what draws men into the presence of God.

And it's a very very warm and moving type of sermon.

I get a lot out of it every time I preach it.

I see most of what I do here at Colonial Wilsburg as a ministry.

Trying to help potentially millions of people be more aware of, of their religious heritage, whatever it is and how it contributed to the whole growth and development of this country.

And there's the sky's almost the limit in terms of what we could do.

You know, I, I would like to see us have more costume ministers on the street because you have seven or eight at William and Mary all the time that would've been up and down the streets of Williamsburg.

So we have other buildings that could be focused more on religion.

George Davenport House, for example, could be an exhibition place at some point that showed that this was the first public place of worship for Presbyterians.

There's so many things that we could do to bring religion into people's minds more as how it contributed to the formation of this country.

At the Virginia Beach City Jail, there's a section they call the art block and the inmates in that block are learning about and making art.

Mike Sinclair talked with the people who are teaching and guiding that program.

And then he went behind bars to visit with some of the inmate artists.

It has been said that paintings belong in museums, hung along pristine marble halls and not in the halls of justice.

But no one told that to Major Willard Smith.

Smith has created a program at the Virginia Beach Correctional Institution that is bringing art behind bars.

Each Thursday evening, the men of cell block 3E gather their pencils, pastels and paper and meet for art class.

They talk of blending colors, shading and perspective.

This is hardly talk you'd expect behind the bars of the city jail.

But teaching art to inmates is anything but typical.

Major Willard Smith is the father of the inmate art program.

Why did you begin this program?

I think some people would be rehabilitated and I think by giving a guy something constructive to do, occupy his mind and give him an outlook on life perhaps probably turn him or her around.

Keep someone from breaking into your home once they release some confinement.

Were you an artist?

No, I wasn't.

I was working in what you call our main control center one day and I just happened to notice some envelopes coming through the mail.

A lot of drawings and doodlings on them.

So I looked at them and I got this brainstorm.

Hey, why not institute an art program?

I talked to the sheriff and he says, "Well, it sounds like a good idea.

See what you can do. "

Currently, 29 males and 17 females are enrolled in the jail's art program.

The women meet separately and have their own instructors.

The inmates don't just paint for their own enjoyment.

They exhibit and sell their work at two shows a year.

One is held outside the jail and the other at Norfolk State University.

Dr.

Rod Taylor has been a part of the program from the beginning and is head of the art department at Norfolk State.

We have a waiting list and and people are dying to get into the class.

I would like to include more things.

I would hope that we could all... One of the things that I would like to see happen eventually is that the students could go on to college once they got out or could pursue some kind of occupation in the arts.

We've had a couple people now to finish and to actually get jobs in arts.

The class is privately funded and costs the taxpayers nothing.

Much of the supplies and instruction time are donated.

Norfolk State professors like Gary Jenks help with the class as well as the two paid instructors, Norfolk State Alumni, Carl McDuffie, and Elton Davis.

When you first approached me about this program, you know, I was like skeptical about coming down here as far as being, you know, inside of the jail per se, you know?

It was my first time ever being this close to an institution of this kind.

But once it start, the program first started, you know, I adapted to it, you know.

All the guys with senior, you know, they were real nice guys, you know, just they had a bad break in life.

As they, they showed me a lot, you know.

I helped them a lot and you know, they helped me because now I tell them we, we are a unit, you know, we won.

And whatever problem, you know, they have, you know, come to me or go to any, anybody else in here.

We all try to pitch and help each other out.

The classes begin with the basics.

The students primarily work in graphite and colored pencil, although some of the more advanced students are using paint.

The inmates help and encourage one another.

Each class period includes a critique session where the inmates hold their work in the front of the class and await suggestions from the other students.

Inmates are well behaved.

They, well, they enjoy the classes and they're quite enthusiastic.

The first time out I didn't know what to expect.

You know, I'd seen several of the movies about it and I found that they were very well behaved, that they were interesting people.

And so the inmates will work during the class period and then they will take the work home and have homework assignments.

So I went the first night and they came with the homework assignment.

They would hold up a work and they would explain what they had done and everybody would applaud.

And they would yell and scream and whistle and this kind of thing.

To participate in the class, the prisoners must have a clean record while in jail and a high school degree or be enrolled in the GED program.

In this way, the major encourages the men to finish their education.

The class offers an alternative to the boredom of jail life.

For many of the inmates, this is the first they have ever been exposed to art.

Brian Skyler is a current class member.

How long have you been involved with the program?

I was locked up October 23rd.

I was fortunate enough to be put on a block adjacent to the, to the art block.

And as soon as I saw what was going on there, I knew that this was for me.

What has the program done for you?

There's about three things you can do in jail.

You can you can play cards, you can fight and go to sleep and eat.

Here, we have an opportunity to to bring out, to, it's therapeutic to bring out a part of us that needs to be expressed.

I surprised myself with, you know, some of the stuff that I, that I did because I, I though I could draw a little bit.

And then when I picked up a pencil, it was like that looks pretty good.

I'll, I'll try a little bit more and I'll try a little bit more.

And right now I plan on furthering, you know, my, my art ability.

You know, when I do get out of here, I'll be working.

I think by the time I get out of here, I'll be a professional.

I'll be a professional artist.

The inmates take their art very seriously, drawing up to 50 hours a week.

Some of the artwork, they hang in shows and others they send home to family and friends.

The rest covers the walls of their cells.

The inmates paint a variety of subjects, including landscapes, animals, cartoons, and freedom, like this painting of a fox hunt where the fox has alluded to hounds.

I have probably run a good 200 people through the program since it's been in existence and oftentimes they'll call me and tell me, "Hey, I'm still pursuing my field."

I have several people who have been placed as silk screen artists down on the oceanfront.

I have several people who are now hanging some of their wares at various flea markets, rather than go out and beg, borrow, steal and bring someone's home.

While in the art program, the inmates have the opportunity to sell their work.

They send the money home or they use it to buy art supplies and personal items.

The saleability of their art encourages some of the inmates to seriously consider an art career.

It's opened my eyes to the fact that I am an artist and that's what I need to do.

You know, I was living before I was locked up.

I was living in an illusion.

Now I see, you know.

So yeah, I am an artist.

I'm going to continue it probably for the rest of my life.

When I get back out now, I, I have something else under my belt and that'll be art.

And you know, maybe I can pursue something in, you know, in an art field.

You know, hopefully somebody will grab one of my pictures at, you know, in an art show or something and say, you know, this, I like this work, you know?

Who is, who is this guy?

And you know, maybe I can, I can get something out of that.

According to the major, this class is making a difference.

He would like to see this type of program instituted in every jail throughout the state of Virginia.

If I turn five people around, you know, I feel very, very good about this.

Sheriff tells me, well, that's your program, you know?

But I, I love it.

I, I really do.

I think that we are contributing, when I say we, I mean the whole sheriff's organizations contributing something to society on the outside by helping to turn these people's mode of thinking around.

I feel very good about it.

I really do.

Mike Sinclair tells us that since we first reported that story on the art block in the Virginia Beach City Jail, that the number of participants has nearly doubled and now prison officials are hoping to start an art program for juvenile inmates.

Out of makeup, Jack Nelson doesn't look very much like the great American humorist and writer that he has portrayed on the stage for 20 years.

A native of Norfolk, Jack Nelson, has taken his impersonation of Mark Twain around the world.

But he's back in Norfolk now at the Tidewater Dinner Theater with a one man show that he calls The Trouble Begins at Eight.

Mike Sinclair talked with Jack Nelson and went backstage to see the transformation of Jack Nelson into Mark Twain.

It takes actor Jack Nelson nearly three hours to shed his 20th century trappings, turn back the clock and step into the persona of one of America's greatest authors, Mark Twain.

Creating the makeup is an evolved and exacting process, but one that Nelson has perfected over nearly 20 years of performing Twain.

The stage is set simply as it was when Twain lectured with a table, a cigar, a candle and a podium.

I'm always sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors because to have such sad habit of dying off.

Charles or he's dead.

So is Melton and so is Shakespeare.

I'm not feeling very well myself.

I spoke with Nelson before one of his performances.

How did you become interested in Twain?

What was it specifically about him that caught your interest?

Originally I got into Twain as an acting vehicle.

I simply though he would be a good character to do and I wanted to see what I could do with him because the range on stage is so wide from the sheer comedy to the pathos to the depressing later days of his life.

So originally I picked him just for that reason.

Then I got to know him and kind of fell in love with him and liked what he had to say and I did not tire of his material.

In the two decades Nelson has been performing Twain.

The show has continually changed.

First performing Twain as a young man, Nelson has grown up with the character.

The trouble begins at eight, depicts Twain near the end of his life.

We picked Twain at the age of 70.

After wife, daughters have died.

He's lost all of his money.

He lectured at that age but very little and he didn't do it for money.

Most of his lectures were given as a young man.

People don't realize that.

The vast majority were given as a young man.

The reason I picked that age is simply because we can look back at everything that's happened and I had that freedom to talk about childhood and his marriage and his financial woes, which he addresses on stage.

That's why I pick him at the older age.

And obviously there's another reason and that's that people recognize him at that age.

You know, ladies and gentlemen, I'm the only man living who understands human nature.

God has put me in charge of this branch office.

Now when I retire, there will be no one to take my place.

In the meantime, however, I shall continue doing my duty so that when I get to the other side, I can use my influence to have the human race drowned again.

And this time drowned good.

No omissions.

And no arc.

Over the years, I think I've come to know him better.

He, he once said everyone has a everyone is a moon and has a dark side, which he shows no one.

I think I've come to know his dark side a little bit better.

As far as my changing, I think it would be hard to work with a character like Twain for so many years and not have some of that seep into your character.

I try to keep the good and blow the rest away.

How has your perspective on Twain changed from the time you began with the show until you're doing the program today?

One thing I do is I, I use material that I never would have dreamed of using when I first started.

I try to show a bit of that dark side of the moon by using material that he said or wrote late in his lifetime, simply to give the audience a complete picture of him.

When I first started, I only did basically a standup comedian, which he was when he first started.

And I didn't let that other stuff get into the show.

But over the years I've consciously put that material into the show.

I once interviewed the king of the Sandwich Islands.

He said, "We understand Christianity.

We have eaten the missionaries."

In the two hours of watching Twain, you see a man who, who was not defeated by everything.

He kept going and he'd never quit trying with all the problems.

And I think we can all take something from that atitude in our own lives.

He still kept his sense of humor.

You know, it's Twain's phrase you have to laugh to keep from crying.

And one sees that on stage.

And I, it's the old Falk Nurian tradition of man will not merely endure, he will prevail.

You know, the human race in all its poverty has unquestionably only one really effective weapon.

And that's laughter.

Power and, and money, persuasion and persecution.

All the forces in all of our lives, all these things can uplift the human condition at a colossal humbug.Push it a little, weaken it a little, century by century, but only laughter and blow it to rags and atoms at a single blast.

We're against the assault laughter.

Nothing gets down.

Jack Nelson's The Trouble Begins at 8:, an evening with Mark Twain, plays at the Tidewater Dinner Theater through December the 29th.

Jack's working on a new one-man show, by the way, based on the lectures and poetry of E.E.

Cummings.

Next week on our Place Our Time, we're going to enter into the spirit of the season as we talk with a retired Navy man who makes toys for needy children year round.

And then we're going to meet Alice Taylor, a woman who for 12 years has directed a private program which helps the needy who've been denied that help elsewhere.

And then we're going to celebrate Kwanzaa, a harvest festival that's rooted in West African tradition.

On behalf of the staff of WHRO, we certainly wish you peace and prosperity for Our Place, Our Time.

I'm Vian Webb.

Partial funding for Our Place Our Time has been made possible by the Arts Commission of the City of Chesapeake with additional support from the Arts Commissions of the Cities of Virginia Beach, Newport News, Norfolk, Hampton and Williamsburg.

Partial funding for the production of Our Place, Our Time is made possible by a grant from the Allison Jay and LOW Parsons Foundation.