Scale 1 inch = 125 ft. Sketch by Richard Britton with a handwritten date of September 13, 1979. Indicates location of loyalist troops and troops led by Sevier, Shelby, Williams, Campbell, McDowell, Winston, Chronicle, Cleveland, Lacey, and Hawthorne. / https://dc.etsu.edu/rare-maps/1123/thumbnail.jpg

Scale 1 inch = 8 km. Drawn by William D. Bowman (July 1968). Shows route from Sycamore Shoals near Elizabethton to Kings Mountain. / https://dc.etsu.edu/rare-maps/1125/thumbnail.jpg

During field experience as a storyteller constructing a performance based on the Battle of Kings Mountain on behalf of the Overmountain Victory Trail Association and the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail, I encountered ethical and philosophical dilemmas. This challenge centered on ethical and spiritual convictions that put me in potential conflict with the task of creating a performance about war. This experience forms the basis of an autoethnographic approach to the art form, revealing the critical role played by personal ethics and a functioning engagement with historiography and narrative theory in producing effective performance stories. Historical performance storytelling has little developed theoretical discourse that takes into account contemporary theories of historiography and interpretation. My experience suggests that interdisciplinary thought on narrative, counternarrative, performance, and historiography should be incorporated by storytellers to aid in the production of ethical and effective historical storytelling performances.