"Curtains Rise in the Cemetery: Living Biographies Take the Stage"Drama, Memory, and Meaning Beneath the Heavens of Western Heights

Written by Van Johnson

Last October, Preservation Dallas included Western Heights Cemetery on its annual cemetery tour.  We initiated our Living Biographies historic storytelling series at that event and received an enthusiastic reception from attendees.  

Ten individuals each portrayed a resident of Western Heights Cemetery and presented their life story in the first person to visitors.  To be true to the life of each resident, the rules were:

* They could not change the person's biography. 

* They could not change national or world events.

* But based on the person's origins and experiences as shown in their biography they were encouraged to imagine a personality for the resident and try to imagine what they thought of various world events and speak about those events and their view of them 

The discipline of creating a character's personality based on their known biography and then applying that personality to vividly educate attendees about historical events yielded some wonderful results. For example, an 84 year old woman portrayed our 102-year-old resident born 1870 (died 1972) and in addition to telling her life story, spoke passionately about what it meant to her when she was a 50-year-old woman to finally be able to vote for the first time in her life (!) after the passage of the 19th amendment in 1920.  (Keep in mind the tour took place shortly before the 2024 presidential election, which added an extra layer of poignancy.)

We later reprised our Living Biographies performances a couple weeks later on Veterans Day and told the stories of the lives of several of our 25 veterans, portrayed by actual veterans in most cases.

This Saturday May 3rd we are again presenting our Living Biographies historic storytelling.  Here are the 10 Living Biographies we performed last October, all actual people buried at world famous Western Heights Cemetery:

* French La Reunion colonist Jean Loupot 

* Gangster Clyde Barrow's mother

* A World War I black soldier from Kansas who isn't buried here, but curiously has a headstone here! Fascinating story.

* An intellectually disabled 21 year old man whose family buried him under just his initials, whereas everyone else in the family has their full name on their headstone.

* A Civil War soldier captured at Gettysburg when he was 19 years old.

* The mother of a young boy buried at Western Heights (a woman with no previous theatrical experience, she cried during several performances and sometimes made audience members cry also!)

* A woman who fell from a prosperous lifestyle into poverty during her 20 years of widowhood in the days before survivor benefits. 

* The woman who saved 35 people during Dallas Great Flood of 1908 before the levees were built

* A woman who married into a German immigrant family 

* The previously mentioned 102 year old woman born in 1870 who could finally vote in 1920 when she was 50 years old

As a member of the Constellation of Living Memorials we are working to turn Western Heights Cemetery into a place full of life with songbirds and butterfly gardens.  But as a former Theatre major, my personal vision of turning the cemetery into a Living Memorial includes incorporating the Lively Arts.  In addition to historic storytelling, we seek to include outdoor theatre and non-amplified choral music.  With the uneven ground we probably won't be able to host dance troups, however I do want to include something I call Living Art, where individual (probably non-speaking) performers scattered throughout the cemetery use art, costuming, and / or interpretive dance to portray the allegories of Sorrow, Grief, Loneliness, Survival, Healing, Growth, etc.