Nicholas Surges

Nicholas is in the final year of his Masters in Public History at Carleton University, where he’s wrapping up his course work, completing a practicum internship with Ingenium at the Science and Tech Museum, TA-ing, and working on his MRE (major research essay/project).

His final MA piece is a dramatization of Austria-Hungary’s Mayerling Incident drawn from the memoirs and papers of five women at the heart of the royal murder-suicide: Empress Elisabeth, Archduchess Marie Valerie, Countess Marie Larisch, Crown Princess Stephanie, and Baroness Helene Vetsera. By giving voice to these women’s personal – and often conflicting – accounts of how and why the tragedy happened, he hopes to encourage audiences to reflect on self-fashioning in historical sources and the romantic mythologies that have supplanted the event’s actual circumstances.

How has your Carleton Drama Studies Minor or Concentration informed your professional and/or creative path?

“As a historian, I’m fascinated by cultural representations and how they both shape and are shaped by public discourse. Often, movies or stage plays provide a gateway to historical subject matter that audiences might otherwise be unfamiliar with. Understanding the rules of storytelling help us to better interpret the big ideas in these pieces and to question what was changed for narrative effect.

At its core, Drama Studies is about empathy and storytelling. Understanding its building blocks is directly transferrable to a range of fields: History, Political Science, Communications, Journalism, Social Work, and virtually any other public-facing field. Understanding storytelling is a key component to media literacy. Why is this narrative being presented this way, and how is it trying to sway our sympathies? Ultimately, all stories are political.”

Why Carleton? What specific experiences or opportunities did you benefit from while studying Drama in the Department of English at Carleton?

“I returned to Carleton after already having completed two college programs in Theatre Arts and working in Toronto as an actor/creator. Unfortunately, I didn’t have very much success breaking into the entertainment industry and decided to go back to school to secure a better future.

Ultimately, I settled on History for a BA because I knew that the additional research skills it gave me would be translatable to various sectors, but I chose to take Drama Studies as a minor because wanted to find a way to tailor my degree to my previous experience.

The two complemented each other well: History helped me to better contextualize the scripts we were assigned in Drama Studies, while my Drama Studies classes caused me to reflect on the way public discourse (and, through it, collective memory) are shaped through cultural representations. This formed the cornerstone for several of the papers I worked on throughout my Masters, including one now in peer review about antisemitic subtexts in Weimar cinema and the implications this has for historicizing film.”