Preparing For a Historical Role?
For most actors, that means:
a costume fitting,
a quick accent session,
and a Wikipedia summary.
And then — »Action.«
Why do we keep pretending that’s enough?
Why are actors left with the emotional weight of the past, and nothing solid to stand on?
Actors, if the industry won’t give you better historical role preparation, then build it yourself.
Start with a process that doesn’t flatten history. Instead, start with one that lets you feel its sharp edges.
If you’ve been rushed into roles before, start here. 👇🏻
📝 Start With This: »Why Most Prep Breaks Down Under Pressure«
If you’re silently panicking that you don’t »feel« the historical role yet — this essay will meet you there.
It’s about what happens when the prep system fails you. When no one told you how to build emotional weight into a scene. When everyone else is moving on and you’re still staring at a name on a page, wondering how to care.
It’s not your fault. But it is your responsibility now.
🎭 Actor, What’s Still Missing From Your Prep?
You’ve done some research. Or none at all.
Whether you prep in spreadsheets or panic the night before, this short survey helps you:
- Notice what still feels unclear
- Catch blind spots in your process
- Get a custom suggestion from a historical consultant — if it fits
I’m Dr. Barbara, a historical consultant (more below or here). I collect insights from actors like you to improve how historical roles are prepared—making space for history inside storytelling, one performance at a time. P.S. If you leave your email, I’ll send your answers back—with my annotations:
• Where to begin
• What to explore next
• What historical sources to trust
No pressure. Just support, if it fits.
And the survey? Still wildly useful, even if we never work together. Start it here.
🎓 The Memory Scar. A 6-Day Email Course For Actors
It starts with one real photo from 1944 — and shows you how to build emotional truth from what history left behind.
Most actors start with the scene. This technique starts with what was never said.
📩 »Help! I’ve Been Cast In A Role From The Past«. The 3-Day Challenge
If you have too little or too much material—if you’re overwhelmed or frozen, this is where to start.
Use this challenge to organise what you’ve already found, sort through your materials and see what your research actually needs before you dive in. Let’s identify the gaps, and start mapping out a research plan for yourself. A clear, structured reset before the real work begins.
The Cabinet Of Forgotten Feelings
Whether you’re preparing for a new role or between projects
A growing, curated archive of emotional entry points — all drawn from real, often overlooked historical sources.
Perfect if you want to feel your way into the role before you build it out.
Or use it between projects to keep your instincts sharp and grounded.
Start here if you need something human, haunting, and real enough to move you.
Ready To Go Deeper Into The Role?
Get To Know Your Protagonist (1:1)
When you already know the role—and want to understand what your character carried, feared, or couldn’t say.
You’ve got the name. You’ve got the year. But you still don’t know how to walk into the room as this person. In this 1:1 intensive, I start building a custom research dossier just for you — not for an academic, not for school report, not for a fact-checker — but for you, the actor. The person carrying the weight of this role into the shoot. We’ll cover the first, few aspects of retracing their lives. Let’s find their fears, their tiny daily habits, their contradictions. And we’ll make them feel alive again. No fluff. No filler. Just what you need.
A Custom Research (1:1) — Done-For-You Or Done-With-You
As an actor, producer, director, or screenwriter, your time is too valuable to get stuck digging through archives or second-guessing half-formed sources. I take the weight of historical research off your plate — finding, verifying, and translating real materials into usable insights — so you can focus fully on creating, performing, or leading your project. Whether you want the work done for you, or prefer to collaborate closely, I’m here to lighten your workload — and to support your best work over the long term. 👉 The first step? You tell me the time and setting. All conversations are confidential.
Here’s What Makes It Usable For You
I don’t just uncover history—I explain it in a way that helps you as an actor step into it. So when you’re in costume and the camera rolls, you’re not reciting facts. You’re carrying memory.
Guten Tag, I’m Dr. Barbara from Germany. I was trained as a historian and archaeologist. Tracing people from the past, I’ve travelled across Europe and Japan to visit over 10,000 historical exhibitions, archaeological parks, memorials, and preserved historical homes. If someone needs to be found—a person, a place, a house destroyed in 1944 or rebuilt in 1883—I can find them. Not just in France, Italy, or England, but worldwide, in places like Samoa, Greenland, or Madeira—and especially for 1880s, 1900s, 1920s and Nazi Germany, or the German Democratic Republic (GDR). How? I read what others skip. I translate inventory lists, tax records, or bureaucratic forms into emotional realities: what your character hoped, feared, endured, or concealed.
Also, I see patterns most overlook: narrative fractures, emotional shifts, contradictions that hint at who someone was before they said it out loud. And I pass all of that to you—not as trivia, but as fuel. Because you deserve those details.
For clients from the UK, US, Australia and Europe, I’ve completed more than 130 projects across historical exhibitions, books, and films. For every project, I browse at least 200 books—thanks to an eidetic memory and speedreading skills that let me take in more, faster.
I’m deeply fluent in archival systems across Europe—from the Bundesarchiv to Nazi records, municipal inventories and family record books. 100+ library cards and archive passes give me rapid access to records in places most people can’t reach.
What I don’t yet know, I find out—through my network of over 400 researchers—including people who can borrow you a 1840s uniform, decode 1920s German shorthand or speak 1100s Old English.
It helps that I can decipher handwritten letters from 1200 to the present—including scripts most researchers can’t read. That opens up unpublished sources you’d never think to check. It also helps I’m fluent in both German and English, and can read most European languages, including French, Italian, Medieval Latin, and older variants like Gothic or Kanzleischrift font.
I work with unpublished and often sensitive materials—family archives, survivor testimonies, restricted estate documents—this means I carry a responsibility to handle each fragment with rigour and care. That discretion has earned me trust few others can claim.
I’m known for being able to translate academic or bureaucratic sources into emotionally usable insights.
I don’t believe in emailing you tons of academic jargon and calling it »research.«
Instead, I find the one document your character signed with shaking hands.
I also don’t offer »light prep.«
That’s why I only work 1:1—because what we’re doing is too detailed, and too personal.
Take what I uncover and translate it into choices you can use on set—while writing the backstory, in rehearsal, or in your internal prep.
So if you’re standing at the edge of a script, set in another century—and you’re craving something deeper than what anyone else is offering?
I’ll help you find what they left behind.
And I’ll make sure none of it stays buried.
Notes For Actors Carrying The Past
This work is heavy. It should be.
But you shouldn’t have to carry it alone. Every month, I send a note — sometimes it’s a source. Sometimes it’s a question. Sometimes it’s just a reminder that emotion needs evidence, and you’re not failing if the prep you were handed feels thin. It starts with a photograph no one’s ever published — of a woman who survived something no script could ever describe. Sign up and I’ll send the first note.
All images: CC0, photographer Nicola Perscheid 1910 // Kathleen Ardelle 1921 // Syrie Wellcome via Wellcome Library London // Ziegfeld Girl in black // Lewis Hine.// Germania: A Postcard Collection