Clay Jenkinson has no script. He reads about great American characters and visits their stomping grounds, then embodies them, in full costume, on stages across the United States. Improvising with humor and applied knowledge, he allows figures like Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and John Steinbeck to “speak for their own time.”
This Thursday, April 3, and Friday, April 4, Jenkinson will bring John Wesley Powell and Julius Oppenheimer to Moab. Powell will appear for the Moab Museum’s (sold out) Annual Gala on Thursday at the Hoodoo, and Oppenheimer at Star Hall for a Friday night performance.
With both figures holding regional significance, Jenkinson plans to localize his performances.
Although Moab’s uranium mining boom, led by Moabite Charlie Steen, didn’t directly supply Oppenheimer’s projects of building an implosive bomb, flying it in a bomber, and using atomic power for peaceful post-war purposes, the international implications of the Manhattan Project transformed Moab’s socioeconomic landscape.
“[Mining] booms create insane greed, unregulated development, and cultural madness,” Jenkinson said. “If there’s money to be made, you see a hectic rush to the epicenter.”
Jenkinson’s pop culture example of this was I Love Lucy’s 1958 episode “Lucy Hunts Uranium”, which finds Lucy and friends descending on Las Vegas to strike it rich. The episode aired at the time Moab itself became chock full of miners, as detailed in the Moab Museum’s current exhibit, U92: Moab’s Uranium Legacy.
As for Powell, the river frontiersman who ran an uncharted Colorado River in 1869, Jenkinson researched at Green River’s John Wesley Powell River History Museum.
“To see the boats at the museum is to be filled with a sense of wonder and bewilderment,” Jenkinson said. “How did they survive?”
Jenkinson began his work as a historical impersonator in 1994 as Thomas Jefferson, for a White House event sponsored by then-President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton. Jenkinson holds a degree in English Literature from Oxford; his performances allowed him to branch out into areas of history unknown to him. He currently co-hosts a podcast called Listening to America, and is an acclaimed humanities scholar at Bismarck State College.
“My method as a historian is not to act,” Jenkinson said. Recordings of Oppenheimer and Roosevelt speaking exist for Jenkinson to study, and the phonetic spelling style of other figures can cue him into their speech, but voice acting is not Jenkinson’s focus.
“The audience will suspend their disbelief and pay attention to the facts and information,” he said. “My method is to make sure I know what I’m talking about.”
Using his own voice as a historical scholar, Jenkinson dresses in accurate costume and often includes audience Q&A after his monologues.
Jenkinson plans on hitting the road to continue learning and dialoguing in his Airstream for America’s 250th anniversary.
“I’m getting to see America… it cheers you up,” he said. “I’m a deep patriot, and I’m confident we will survive the loss of will in our nation… what will it look like to survive and continue doing great things without demonizing anyone?”
Jenkinson’s goal ahead of our nation’s quarter-millennium celebration is to hold lectures and mock conventions on the US Constitution. He posited that the Founding Fathers would find an unchanged constitution absurd in the wake of technological progress like the automobile, internet, and nuclear bomb.
“Most nations just happen, but we were founded on an idea,” Jenkinson said. “We need a new investment in that idea to reinvigorate a sense of what America means.”
Readers can follow Jenkinson’s projects and travels at ltamerica.org, where he publishes a free newsletter.
Jenkinson’s Oppenheimer presentation is on Friday at Star Hall beginning at 7 p.m. General admission is $25.
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