February 12,2017 – Arizona Renaissance Faire

Intent of this trip was to follow the experiences life presents.   Yesterday I did just that.  After visiting Phoenix I was headed east on 60 to get a little further down the road and to find a place to camp for the night when I encountered highway signs warning drivers about congestion due to the Arizona Renaissance Festival, which apparently just opened yesterday.   Instead of staying on route I followed the traffic and went to the Ren. Faire.

For any readers, (and I am suspect that there are any) who do not know me well, I grew up at a Renaissance Faire.  The one in the Agoura hills was the first place I escaped to establish my tween independence, and it was the first place I started acting and preforming in front of an audience.  My students periodically ask me why I’m periodically humorous and pushing the boundaries of good taste in my lectures, and the answer, at its deepest routes, is the renaissance faire.

I had always heard of the Arizona faire but never been.  There is a circuit of larger fairs spaced out throughout the year.  Arizona starts early, giving the performers and vendors opportunity to participate in the other large fairs during the summer and fall.  It was strange buying the ticket and entering the gates.  For all my years, I have never paid for an entrance to a fair before.  I have always been a performer, or in my earliest days a gatecrashing urchin who was adopted by kind hearted hobbyhorse dancers.  I felt a bit like an anthropologist.   Dressed in motorcycle gear, and too old to flirt without appearing the lecher, I wandered the stalls.  

My rational mind was doing analysis, and comparing this faire to the ones put on in California.  They have the same set up but the booths are more permanent here allowing for more fantastical architecture.   The stages are set up the same, but most of the stage performers are juggling acts, or audience manipulators.  Not a lot of plays or historical context.  Not as many hay bales.  They had benches for audience members to sit on.  Renaissance is a vague notion but very well done here as the faire focused on the entertainment value.  You could ride an elephant, or see mermaids in roadside attraction type stalls.  Less community groups or guilds doing amateur type theater events or happenings in the streets.  For me parades were the gateway drug to stage performance when I was young.  Having survived a few years doing professional Shakespeare the shouting from hay bales was proper training grounds.  

Now I’m just some old fart, not in costume observing.  It did do my heart good to see the same elements of youth and opportunity here.  Young kids playing make believe.  Goths dressing up to engage while looking disinterested, fine musical performances, jousts, and whip shows.  Where else can a sword swallower make a living now a days?  Ringling Brothers has closed?  In my younger days what drew me to the fair was not just the performance itself but also the community.  Performers camped out on site and after the gates closed is when the fun really began.  Many creative people living in closeness with common purpose and joy to share.  Sounds kind of hippy dippy, but I think that’s some of what I like about working at a community college.  And I think that’s what the world needs right now some community and common purpose that is positive and creative.  Now if only the after hours communal camping were only part of the ticket, because I still needed a place to stay for the night…