May 13-19, 2004

naked city

Brave New World

what a doll: Back in the 21st century and her day job at the Please Touch Museum, Friese pays homage to her time as a colonist. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

PBS sends a local educator back in time.

Interview by Debra Auspitz

Julia Friese has the ultimate answer to the timeworn question: "What did you do on your summer vacation?" The 26-year-old education and gallery programs coordinator at the Please Touch Museum took a five-month break from Philly and museum life last year (thanks to "very supportive" bosses) to travel incredibly far -- all the way back to 1628. Friese was one of two dozen people selected out of more than 10,000 applicants to take part in PBS’ latest history-lesson-meets-reality-TV experiment, Colonial House (produced by Thirteen/WNET New York and Wall to Wall Television). As with its predecessors, the popular 1900 House, Frontier House and Manor House, Colonial House places a group of 21st-century people, singles and families, in as realistic a historical setting as possible. Allowed only to use tools and information that would have been available at the time, and bound by the social rules and customs of the era, the contestants get a chance to experience the past in a slightly more hands-on way than a visit to Colonial Williamsburg or the Liberty Bell might provide. For Colonial House, Friese and her fellow colonists were taken to a remote spot outside of Machias, Maine, and presented with the barest of shelters, a limited supply of food and the difficult concept that in the 17th century, this group of people would be divided into wealthier leaders and powerless indentured servants. Cue drama. City Paper caught up with Friese at the Please Touch, back in the 21st century.

City Paper: What made you decide to audition for this show in the first place?

Julia Friese: I think that a lot of people have a little fantasy when they're children of traveling in time, and I kind of saw this as an opportunity to take advantage of that, to get the closest thing to traveling in time -- even if it meant that I had to be an indentured servant instead of a princess, which is what you usually pretend to be when you play those kinds of games [laughs]. That was just the price I was willing to pay to do this, this incredible opportunity.

CP: What was your reaction when you found out you had actually been selected to be on the show?

JF: It was a very long process, actually. You had to send in a 30-second video and fill out a very long application, and then they continue to call you back asking for longer videos, and then once or twice a week I'd get phone interview calls, and then finally they brought me to New York to meet with a psychologist -- I guess they had to see if I was mentally stable enough to participate. After I passed that evaluation, then I was offered the gig, and I was just thrilled, I was so excited, it was absolutely a dream come true.

CP: Were you as thrilled when you found out your role in the colony was an indentured servant to the governor?

JF: I was informed about halfway through the interview process that women who are my age who are coming to the New World during that time period, typically if they did not have a husband or family with them, then they would have been placed with a family who would have possibly paid their way over, and therefore they would have to do an indenture to those people. So, I understood that it would be the most historically accurate role for me to have.

CP: The experience looked like it was very hard physically, with a lot of manual labor. And it seems, from one particularly angry scene, that you were not a fan of the goats.

JF: [Laughs] The goats are evil, vile creatures, and if I never have to work with goats again I'll be OK. I grew up in Miami, in a city, and I never had any experience with the farm life. … We all kind of came from fairly metropolitan areas. … It was a major, major adjustment. None of us were accustomed to getting up at the crack of dawn or before and immediately starting to chop wood and milk goats and do hard labor. I was so excited because my muscles were huge!

CP: Besides the physical aspect, did taking part in the series lead to a lot of self-reflection?

JF: We were totally isolated, so there was a lot of thinking time, especially without television at night. … I think that a lot of the experience put our daily lives into perspective, so you know, for example, things that I used to get really bent out of shape about, after having to wake up every morning and your goal was to survive, having to work and getting upset because the copy machine isn't working, it just doesn't seem that drastic.

CP: The cast went through a very real tragedy during filming when one colonist's fiance was killed in a car accident back home. How did you keep up the imaginary game you were playing in light of that?

JF: That was a very difficult time for a lot of us, because I think we were living in a little bit of a bubble the first couple of months we were there. And you block out the fact that there is another world existing outside of your colony. Because that's what you're being told, you're being told you're the first people, the only people here, yadda yadda yadda, so I think [the tragedy] was just this harsh slap in everybody's faces of reality. … It was very difficult for me because I did live with [the family involved] and I had these expectations for how the whole project would play out early on, so all of that was blown out of the water when they left. As I watched them walk out of the colony, Paul, my fellow servant to the household and I kind of found ourselves looking at each other and saying, "What now? Who's our master?"

CP: Speaking of masters, what was it like to not only be a servant in 1628, but a female servant?

JF: All of the men had absolutely no problem developing these huge superiority complexes. Because they were being told that it's totally OK to treat women like crap and to remind us on a fairly regular basis that we are the lowest of the low. It was kind of shocking. I think the women were taken aback by how easily the men fell into that superior role. It was funny because a lot of the wives were like, "OK guys, this is it, you can behave this way now, but once we get back home …"

CP: And you had to do most of the cooking …

JF: It felt a lot like making Thanksgiving dinner every single meal when you're cooking for 12 people breakfast, lunch and dinner.

CP: What was the first thing you did when you were allowed to "return" to the 21st century?

JF: They put us on a bus and they took us from the colony, and they brought us to the local Rite-Aid, which was a riot. Everyone in the Rite-Aid was staring at us, still in our costumes, smelly, dirty, disgusting -- we were a bunch of freaks. … We all bought tons of exfoliating soap products and things like that and went back to the hotel and scrubbed off for about an hour in the shower.

CP: Just how dirty were you?

JF: Oh, it was pretty foul. It's great because you really get used to it very quickly. Literally I was bathing maybe once a week, and by bathing, I'm using that term very loosely, you're wiping yourself off with a cloth that has fresh water on it. … That's one of the reasons that whenever reporters or my friends ask me, "Did anyone hook up on the show, were there any romantic relationships?' I say, "No, we were pretty skank' [laughs].

CP: What would you say you brought back to the 21st century from the 17th?

JF: Well, gosh, I work for a nonprofit museum, so if funding keeps getting cut my wilderness living skills will definitely be utilized. I'll just build myself a shack in the woods.

Colonial House airs May 17, 18, 24 and 25 from 8-10 p.m. on PBS.