Most folks around these parts know I am a bit of a history nut and often spend my weekends doing something history related around the South Sound. So it is nice to see that others in the area find it as entertaining as I do. But the trouble is that one such historical activity is getting too popular, and tickets are hard to come by if you are looking for them at the last minute.

 

I’m talking about the Fort Nisqually Magical Candlelight Friday and Saturday, Oct. 3 and 4. Tickets often sell out even with the highly organized tour and scheduling system.

 

The tours provide visitors with a way to learn history by walking back into time and listening in on the conversations and activities of that bygone day courtesy of a small army of re-enactors who volunteer their time and talent to portray laborers, servants and the landed gentry of 150 years ago.

Fort Nisqually, as you probably know, was the first European settlement in Western Washington and was run by the Hudson’s Bay Company of London. Starting in 1833, the fort was the center of a growing fur-trading enterprise that spanned much of the Pacific Northwest. Originally located near the beach of what is now DuPont, the fort was moved a few miles inland in 1843 to better watch over the fort’s growing herd of cattle and crop fields that produced foods that found their way to Russia, Asia and the Pacific Islands.

 

The fort closed in 1869, some 30 years after the United States and England settled on the 49th parallel as the border between America and Canada, making the fort more than 100 miles inside American soil. The fort was left to decay until the complex was salvaged and moved to Point Defiance Park during the Great Depression to not only put locals to work but to generate tourism dollars once the economy returned. The fort, with the original main house and granary restored along with a collection of replica buildings to give visitors a sense of scale, is run by the Metropolitan Parks District of Tacoma and a host of volunteer docent and living historians. 

 

These volunteers have gathered to present the fort as it was in 1855, complete with a blacksmith’s shop, a formal dining room, trading stores, and guard towers.

 

The fort is the destination of some 90,000 visitors a year. Many of them visit the site not just to learn about history but to see how complete the transformation is between the present and the past once they step through the fort’s gate. The living historians spend hundreds of hours researching not only the clothes and times but the topics and language of the day. They often “adopt” a real person from the fort’s past and learn all they can about him or her, including speech patterns, favorite phrases and all of the nuances that bring people alive. Every detail is researched and replicated as best as possible. It is that respect for detail that makes the performances so complete. These re-enactors can talk for hours about the particulars of life in 1855 and the world of fur trading in the Pacific Northwest. 

[Fort Nisqually, Fort Nisqually Candlelight Tours, Oct. 3-4 at dusk, $5-$8, Point Defiance Park, 5400 N. Pearl, Tacoma, 253.591.5339, www.fortnisqually.org]

Also on stage

• Daman: The Seven Creations: An original opera presented by the Seattle Choral Ensemble and the Esoterics as part of the college’s World Stage Series. 
  
  
  
  [KJM Center for the Arts, Sunday, Oct. 5, 2 p.m., $10-$20, South Puget Sound Community College, 2011 Mottman Road S.W., Olympia, 360.596.5501, www.spscc.ctc.edu/CFA]
  
   


• I Hate Hamlet: TV actor Andrew Rally finds himself in the gothic apartment in New York City that was once owned by the legendary actor John Barrymore. He is in town to do a Shakespeare in the Park production of Hamlet, a role Barrymore owned during the time he was warmer than room temperature. The fact that he is dead doesn’t stop the very hammy Hamlet from offering advice to the young actor. 
  
  
  
  [Olympia Little Theater, through Oct. 5, 7:55 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 1:55 p.m. Sunday, $10-$12 available at Yenney Music Co. on Harrison Ave. (360. 943.7500) or www.buyolympia.com/events, 1925 Miller Ave. N.E., Olympia, olympialittletheater.org]
  
   


• Lucky Stiff: Lakewood Playhouse continues its run of the very funny Lucky Stiff, a show about a dead dude who tours the gambling world of Morocco as his last party before he gets planted into the ground. 
  
  
  
  [Lakewood Playhouse, through Oct. 5, 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, $21-$24, 5729 Lakewood Towne Center Blvd. S.W. in the Lakewood Towne Center off exit 125, Lakewood, lakewoodplayhouse.org]
  
   


• Anthony and Cleopatra: Olympia’s Harlequin Productions gets all tunic on the South Sound with its staging of William Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra. The show is one of Shakespeare’s three great tragedies, and it offers up a bit of everything for a hot love triangle that involves politicians and a vixen who bring the world to a crashing end.   
  
  
  
  [State Theater, through Oct., 25, 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, 202 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia, 360.786.0151, www.harlequinproductions.org]