Ok, so I'm sitting in the morning cast meeting before opening day of faire...

[lovetriangle]

and the head cheeses are talking, blah blah blah when I notice through my lack-of-coffee-haze that the stage backdrop is painted with this weird sort of stonehenge-esque image with a brightly colorful sunset above it... very odd looking.



I turn to my guildmaster and ask, "Hey, what's with the monkey monolith backdrop?"
She turns to me with a straight face and says "Oh that's for the Aztec dancers. They have Taiko drummers this year, too."

My home faire, the very first Renaissance Faire, the faire with the strongest tradition of history and education in Elizabethan England, now has Aztec dancers and Taiko drummers. I was unable to witness the dancers, but the drummers were in navy print kimono straight from the sushi house, usually open enough across the chest to reveal the t-shirt logo of their favorite surf company.

It has now gotten to such an absurd level that all I can do is laugh. I giggle and point at everything my eyes burn not to see. Ye Olde rock climbing wall, "pirates" and musketeers, Robin Hood, faeries and "Fantastikals" that we have been instructed not to see unless we're children or insane. Half the vendors are fed up and conspicuously absent; most of the acts we all know and love have been axed by REC to make room for Aztec dancers, et al.

This year, by refusing to pay my own guild's Nightwatch band, they have finally done away with the LAST group at this faire that does period music, on period instrument, in period clothing. Eliminating this band also eliminated the last period dancing at this faire as well. But it's ok as long as there's room for the guy on electric guitar to play his lute reductions. I want to cry.

The upside of it is that without the Nightwatch we had no scheduled gigs for the day; no maypole, no dancing, and singing when we felt like it. Since my attachment to history has already been beaten out of me, this left me free to wander all day pointing and laughing wherever my eye fell... the overhead power lines, the tops of the semi-trucks visible over the booths, sections of missing vision break so you could see the RV's for security, and the costumes, OH, THE COSTUMES!!! I adhered to Someone's LJ principle of snarkdom and kept my comments gleefully in my head, but I had a marvelous time... you know... inside. :-)

I'm not talking about patrons who made their dresses and looked like the felt marvelous in them - I love them for the effort! I'm talking about PAID performers who look like they've been attacked by an overused copy of the Simplicity Shakespeare in Love pattern. I'm talking about a sea of doublets in that shiny poly-cotton chenille fabric that you NEVER used to see here. I'm talking about a whole murder of Musketeers that couldn't decide which king they served, or on a color scheme. How about "wenches" in bodices with big stomachers in Victorian tapestry - that were MADE by our costume maven! I even spotted a couple of the fabled feathered headdresses that Jen Thompson spotted at Scarborough faire. Oh joy! Oh rapture! I could hardly contain myself! I can't wait to go back!



My last comment on the day is that Rikki Kipple is the Devil.

Comments

[jubilima.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's so, so, sad! I so feel your pain, believe me. I missed the quality of RPFS so much last year when I visited the east coast faires, and it's horrible to think that they're going downhill too. I hate to be snarky on someone else's post, but it just sucks that no one wants to play the renfair game the way I want to play it!

P.S. Who's Rikki Kipple?

[love3angle.livejournal.com]

She is the woman who "owns" us. Her hubby bought us for her plaything and we are his write-off and her hobby.

I keep telling my beleaguered compatriots that rich women get bored and we won't be hers forever. They don't believe me.

[sewphisticate.livejournal.com]

>>My last comment on the day is that Rikki Kipple is the Devil.

Oh, such tales I could tell you. You have no idea...
But yes, you are correct.

[love3angle.livejournal.com]

Boy, you got out atthe right time, girl!
I must hear all... coffee?

[gilded-garb.livejournal.com]

*shakes head* All I can say is that I'm kind of glad Northern became all independent - it's not authentic by any stretch but at least there are no Aztec dancers and Broon and Moonie sometimes pretend to be period. ;o)

That being said though, I'm kind of disenchanted with the whole faire experience in general...it's just not as much fun anymore.

[love3angle.livejournal.com]

I've never really minded the sort of vaudeville entertainment (all the fakespeare, the jokes the jugglers tell, etc), and vendors like leather roses. I am fully aware that we don't get a playground if the public doesn't want to pay for it, and actual period entertainment would probably only entertain, well, us.

But still, there used to be actors in the streets. There used to be musicians that played and looked like they were Elizabethans. There used to be music and dancing and art everywhere you looked. Now there are booths which are hit and miss - beautiful jewelry or handcrafted wooden boxes next to leather victorian corsets and face painting. Half the old food vendors are gone, including the chocolatier. The only groups even TRYING to put anything theatrically appropriate out there are the environmental groups, and Rikki keeps adding groups like pirates & Musketeers.

She is the devil.

[demode.livejournal.com]

I hate REC.

[love3angle.livejournal.com]

Sing it, sistah!

[colleency.livejournal.com]

Wow. We stopped doing faire because I was allergic to the Glen Helen site, and I kept getting sick all the time.

That is so sad. Shawn talked about visiting the new site, but...I don't think so.

[love3angle.livejournal.com]

Well, it's funny, I never know how I'm going to react until I get there. So very many of my old vendor friends are gone and everywhere I look I see churros and nachos. But it's gotten so bad this year that I just can't be upset anymore. I had a marvelous day because I finally felt I was at someplace like Long Beach faire and my expectations weren't bothering me.

What I want is for every attendee to fill out one of their questionnaires and tell them what they miss. Because they are so sick of hearing it from us it's just background noise. The paying public is another story.

[ainead.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this helps in any way at all but this is my experience of Ren/ Medieval fairs in my corner of Australia.

The fairs for the public have always been that kind of tacky mix of hot-dogs, cheap and glittery fantasy figurines for sale amongst the modern hippy/alternative clothing vendors with medieval music blaring over the PA system to cover the noise of the exhaust fans of the food vendors.

We (being Brisbane reenactors and other historical clothing enthusiasts) go to the fair but it's more to be on show than to enjoy any kind of historical feel... because that's just sorely lacking.

If we want to capture that feel we hold our own events. Sometimes just a feast or ball, sometimes it is camping for a weekend or a whole week. At these events we have the right medieval food, the scent of woodsmoke and the sound of a hurdy-gurdy droning across the field. Not a single aztec dancer in sight (though someone did build a mini stonehenge out of a pile of spare hay bales). It's just perfect.

I don't know if you are part of some kind of group that could create a new event like that, even if it starts very small. I don't know if you'd want to .... but the last big event I went to was organised by a group of 5 people and held on a friend's outback property and it was just spellbinding.

[pinque.livejournal.com]

And we just don't have them in New Zealand unless it's part of some other festival. Oh actually I think there is on at Otara/Onehunga once a year. For a weekend.

As there is no dedicated space, it's likely to be a field or near a community hall... so no ambiance at all;) Complete with glittery fairies and dragon eggs (unless they stopped making those cute wee clay eggs you break open to find a baby dragon inside.)

I'd quite like to go to a US Ren Faire just once.