Zacharias portrays Major James Innes of the Williamsburg Volunteers at Colonial Williamsburg. br><i>Contributed photo by Stephan Zacharias</i>

Stephan Zacharias loves history and loves the stage. The 1998 Pendleton High School graduate has found a way to combine both loves to make a living. He’s a historical interpreter – bringing history to life for thousands of vacationers.

He’s performed as Oregon’s John Day at the High Desert Museum in Bend; as Maj. James Innes, a revolutionary war freedom fighter in Williamsburg, Va.; and as a park ranger at Mt. McKinley Park, which is now known as the Denali National Park and Preserve.

It all started right here. His father, Tim Zacharias, has been a social sciences teacher all of Stephan’s life and passed his love of history on to his son. His love for theater came later, when he was in ninth grade at Pendleton Junior High school and was approached by high school acting teacher John Remington.

“To be perfectly honest, I got into theater because I was conned,” Zacharias said. “Mr. Remington came down from the high school to teach some classes to the ninth graders and he starts going around the school asking a bunch of the freshman males to audition. He swears to us that we won’t have to memorize any lines – that he just needs some guys for some sword-fighting scenes. To me that sounded like a pretty cool gig.”

Dangling a promised sword fight in front of a boy worked. However, his character never carried a sword and, to add insult to injury, had lines to be memorized. By the play’s end, however, Zacharias had the acting bug. He appeared in every play while in high school, acted for College Community Theatre and was on stage at the Coyote Creek Dinner Theatre.

“I think for me, being involved in theater at all came down to the people around me there in Pendleton, with Mr. Remington being the most important of the bunch,” he said. “His passion and love for theater was pretty contagious, even though it took me three years to finally be in a sword fight.”

Zacharias, who also said he learned much from his acting peers, added that high school lessons have helped him excel in his current role playing.

“PHS and Mr. Remington … gave me a solid foundation as a performer and actor,” he said. “Rem taught me the value of working hard for every role, no matter how many lines you have or the amount of stage time you have. Never once in high school did I portray a leading role. I was more of a character actor, which for me has proven to be the most valuable asset over the years.”

Remington said it’s easy to teach young people when, like Zacharias, they want to learn.

“I love Stephan,” Remington said. “The thing I remember most is he was always very eager to do the prep work and script analysis for his character. Stephan was always a natural when it came to character analysis and imaginative work. He has an innate sense of history. He really was always trying to find the character’s earlier life.”

His love for history, firmly established by his father, grew in high school under another teacher.

“My father is my greatest influence in my personal love for history,” he said. “Another big influence for my love of history was my junior year history teacher, Mr. Brian Johnson,” he said. “His teaching style and his love for history, like my father’s, is contagious. These two men have a passion for what they teach, and that passion comes through in a big way.”

Little did he know he’d find a career that satisfied both passions. He was required to complete a performance internship while studying theater at Eastern Oregon University and happened across a request for performers at the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Baker.

“Honestly, I had no real idea what that was,” he said. “Well, that internship pretty much changed the course of my life as I had discovered a field that would enable me to use my passion for both theater and history.”

Zacharias served two stints as an intern and performed at the High Desert Museum in Bend, playing a host of characters, including the Shakespeare-loving mountain man Jim Bridger and Oregon’s legendary John Day. In 2008 he was hired by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. There he dons a powdered wig and plays revolutionary characters. Just to shake up his historical life a bit, he is on sabbatical from Williamsburg, portraying a forest ranger at Denali in Alaska.

Zacharias said those who become historical interpreters are a varied group.

“I work with people who come from all sorts of backgrounds from teachers to construction workers to museum professionals,” he said. “Some have degrees and some don’t. There really isn’t one specific path to the field.” He is a member and certified interpretive guide for the National Association of Interpreters.

While Zacharias has traveled far afield of his Oregon home, his heart remains firmly entrenched in the Beaver State. He treasures the times that friends from home bump into him on the cobbled streets of Colonial Williamsburg as tourists and he frequently finds his thoughts turning away from the roles he know plays to his own history.

“I love Pendleton,” he said. “It really was the perfect place for me to grow up and to this day it is one of the places I miss most, mainly because of the people. I don’t know how or where, but the first time I get an offer to come back, to Central or Eastern Oregon especially, I will be there.”