BOUSQUET

Charmaine Porter has played dead dozens of times; so has Edwin Montas.

When a hostile crowd collects before the two Providence teens and starts firing guns at them, Charmaine, 16, and Edwin, 17, fight back. But sometimes they grimace and wince, writhe and fall. Then they lay perfectly still. And when the coast is clear, they rise up to fight another day.

It’s not acting. It’s reenacting. It’s celebrating and sustaining history, and maintaining our collective memory.

It is art and education. It is, according to the R.I. Council on the Humanities, worthy of an award. So one will be given.

The Living History 14th Rhode Island Reenactor Program is this year’s winner of the Tom Roberts Prize for Creative Achievement in the Humanities. The award will be given Monday evening at a reception in Providence, where cartoonist Don Bousquet will receive the organization’s award for lifetime achievement.

The reenactment group, which started in 2001, portrays the 14th Rhode Island Regiment from the Civil War. Usually the group has about a dozen members, all high school students in Providence, most of whom enlisted for the same reason: the lure of travel.

“I had never been out of Rhode Island,” Edwin says. “I had never been on a plane.”

Yes, taking a plane would not be historically accurate to the Civil War. But time is short, and so is the kids’ February school vacation, which the group usually spends in Olustee, Fla., reenacting a Civil War battle.

Four years ago, when Charmaine was a freshman at The Met School, she joined the 14th Rhode Island because a friend did. Then that friend promptly went AWOL. Charmaine wondered what to do.

“I had paid the deposit for the trip already,” she says. “I am into camping.”

But Civil War reenacting is no picnic or weekend in the park, not when the reenactors live as the actual soldiers did — sleeping on the ground and in canvas tents; wearing what they did, wool (“It’s uncomfortable,” Edwin says. “Do you know how hot it is in Florida?”); and eating what they did.

“The salt pork you have to water down so it’s not as salty; otherwise you’d gag,” Charmaine says. “The hardtack is fine as long as you eat it slowly so you won’t break your teeth.”

Welcome to the war, private.

Actually at this point in their regiment careers, Edwin is a first sergeant, and Charmaine is a sergeant major, the highest permissible rank for an African-American during the Civil War.

“I still get mad because the highest I can get is sergeant major,” Edwin says. “Are you kidding me? That’s messed up.”

That’s discrimination. And that’s the way it was. Even though the Union was fighting to free the slaves, it wasn’t fighting for their complete equality.

Just ask Rob Goldman of Providence, the founder of the 14th Rhode Island Reenactor Program, and its first lieutenant.

“I’m white and the founder,” Goldman says. “I could have called myself lieutenant general.”

Goldman got the group going after moving to Rhode Island from Massachusetts, where he was a member of the reenactment group for the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, an all-black Civil War outfit featured in the 1989 movie Glory.

“I loved that movie. I went crazy for it.”

Goldman, who organizes and manages youth groups and is a fundraiser and a grant writer, called the 54th and volunteered his administrative help.

“They said they needed one more white officer. The two guys they had couldn’t always show up.”

So, in 1993, Goldman showed up, and has been showing up ever since, although now in Rhode Island. What makes the Rhode Island group different from the Massachusetts group is the age of its members: teenagers. For the participants, this is educational, and Goldman can give curriculum materials to the schools of its participating members. But Goldman himself doesn’t give any lessons or lectures.

Goldman’s philosophy is “I hear; I forget. I see; I remember. I do; I understand.”

So Goldman makes his regiment members “do” the Civil War, and let the learning — about race, culture and class, about equality and morality — happen naturally.

“You’re not going to hook kids this way with a book.”

It’s interesting to note that most of the participants of the program have been Hispanics, as Edwin is, and many have been females, as Charmaine is.

“Any kids who have the moxie to do this, I want them,” Goldman says. “If there’s a girl who can put up with all the boy stuff, I want someone with that spirit.”

In the reenacting world, things that aren’t historically accurate — flashlights, vinyl tents, etc. — are called “farb,” a term of uncertain origin.

“One day we were all sitting around the camp fire,” Charmaine says. “I said, ‘You know what? I’m farb.’ ”

Technically, as a Hispanic, Edwin would be farb, too. But it doesn’t matter, Goldman says. Charmaine and Edwin are helping themselves by learning and doing, and helping us all by preserving the past.

“It’s important to keep this alive,” Edwin says. “I do this so history won’t repeat itself.”

The regiment marches in parades and participates in civic ceremonies. But by far what keeps the kids involved are the reenactments — in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Virginia and Florida. The 14th Rhode Island never fought in a battle in the Civil War, but its reenactors today know how battles were fought, and gladly reenact them.

“The part where you’re actually firing the guns feels good,” Charmaine says. “It’s a stress reliever. You know you’re not shooting bullets, but you’re pretending you’re killing the enemy. As a reenactor you know your enemy is the Confederates, but you can imagine the enemy being anyone you want.”

When asked who Charmaine imagines her enemy as being, she says “just some random people in my life that I don’t agree with.”

When it comes to Civil War battle tactics, Edwin is still perplexed about why the armies would stand in an open line, completely exposed, directly across from each other.

“That is awful. You’re just saying, ‘Here, shoot me.’ ”

If the Union reenactors are outnumbered, or the battle calls for a Confederate victory, Edwin does, begrudgingly, die.

“Shooting is the fun part. When I’m done with all my cartridges, that’s when I die. Why stand there if you can’t shoot?”

Besides, it’s more comfortable lying on the ground, unless you don’t first look where you land.

“You don’t want to fall on a mound,” Charmaine says. “Florida has a lot of fire ants.”

The last time Edwin was in Olustee, Fla., a reenactment that involves 11,000 combatants, he was out of ammunition, and cleared for landing.

“It wasn’t a puddle,” he says. “But there was mud and water.”

In some reenactments the participants receive a colored cartridge before the battle from the organizer. A red cartridge means at the end you’ll be wounded, a black one means you’ll be dead, and white means you’ll live. Some reenactments leave the individual outcomes to the participants.

“I like being able to decide whether I’m going to live or die,” Charmaine says.

Goldman wasn’t so lucky his last time in Florida. He died, or at least he thought he would.

“I went right down on a cactus. It hurt.”

Fortunately, when the smoke cleared, Goldman got back up, and so did Charmaine and Edwin. The battle was over, but not the war where art is a weapon of education, and history’s still happening.

“This is,” Goldman says, “much more than just reenacting.”

The R.I. Council for the Humanities’ Celebration of the Humanities is Monday, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., at Exchange City, 321 Harborside Blvd., Providence. There’s wine, hors d’oeuvres and entertainment. Tickets, which are sold at the door, are $45, $25 for students. For reservations or more information, call (401) 273-2250.

brourke@projo.com