Challenges XXVI
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Lunch & Feast * Directions & Site Info * Lodging * Post Revel * Staff
Lunch & Feast * Directions & Site Info * Lodging * Post Revel * Staff
*Schedule is in EASTERN Time*
It is our wish to create a "Bardic Safe Zone"
- A friendly place to stretch yourself, and try new things.
If you've never performed before, now's your chance. If you are new to bardic and performing arts, recently returning, or perhaps an experienced performer with new material, (etc.);
No Matter What - You'll be hard pressed to find a friendlier and more supportive audience!
We are always delighted to see lots of first time, returning performers, and 'masters of the craft'.
Read more about the challenges and the general rules & courtesy guidelines below!
About Bardic Madness Challenges
The overall purpose of the challenges is to encourage participants' entry, creativity, and artistic growth.
Challengers are not competitions!
Click to read more about our challenges! (*See More - Collapsible list!*)
Challenges are designed to encourage you to try your hand at something new, to stretch yourself, to enjoy, and celebrate the creative spirit.
Challenges are not competitions - everyone who takes part can consider themselves a winner.
Challenges are also not contests - You win by entering and striving to do & give your own personal best!Read the guidelines for the challenges carefully. They are sometimes sneakily designed to help one develop specific areas. Try to follow them as closely as you can, but stretching into unexpected directions is good too.
Your response to the various challenges may be in many different forms. Song and story are often presented; however poetry, prose, script, and options from any/all of the performing and movement arts can also express an idea or tell a tale. Any can be used to answer a given challenge (though perhaps not all at the same time ;).)
As you finish performing, check in with the patron of the challenge, and audience, for tokens being distributed along with applause and other compliments.
Individuals are welcome and encouraged to give recognition to those performers whom they especially enjoy with applause, and small tokens of appreciation as inclined. And to be a Patron for challenge(s) that appeal to you.
Challenge Patrons
Would you like to be a Patron? Contact Provost Hilla Stormbringer at hilla@bardicproject.org
Click here for the information page on being a Patron, and the list of challenges needing Patrons
Challenge General Rules & Courtesy Guidelines
Please stay within time recommendations to support the maximum number of entries through the day, keep content 'Family Friendly' and give courtesy to fellow performers & the listening audience.
Click here to read the full guidelines! (*See More, Collapsible list!*)
In order to allow the largest number of people to participate, each person may enter a maximum of one piece in each challenge and a maximum of four challenges, including the concert. (**At the end of a challenge, sometimes time is available and extra performers are called; this does not count towards the four.)
Use your best courtesy to keep your challenge entries limited to 3-5 minutes or less for Poems and Songs; 5-7 minutes or less for stories. =Including= any introduction and/or set up & clearing of performance area.
Credit where credit is due- please announce the title and author/composer(s) of the work being performed. And the works something has been derived from/filked/parodied, etc.
Duets/Trios/Ensembles of 2,3 or more performing together can appear together in up to 4 challenges, including the concert.
Individuals who participate in both group and solo performances are asked to use your best courtesy selecting other challenges.
Please Keep Content 'Family Friendly'. **Think closer to "Apples to Apples" not "Cards Against Humanity".**
We expect to have minors (and John Inchingham) present, or watching the YouTube playlist in the future & Inchingham is much too young for that sort of thing.
Performances that push too far on this may be stopped live and/or not included in the YouTube playlists.
If you are wondering if a particular performance work falls outside this, please contact Hilla Stormbringer or Lorelei Skye before the event or before the fyt where the challenge entry happens. Current Rule of thumb, if it is more blatant compared to the song, "Donald Where's Your Trousers?" - It is Entirely Right Out. (Period.)
Challenge & Concert Sign Up Sheets
Click to read more about the event's sign-up sheet process (*See More, Collapsible list!*)
Sign-up for all challenges and the concert happens on the day of Bardic Madness.
Sign-up sheets for the 1st and 2nd fyt, and descriptions for 3rd & 4th fyts, will be spread out on a table between 9(ish)-10am.
We will open sign up for the Concert, 3rd, and 4th fyts during the lunch period.Please start with selecting up to 4 challenges from all the fyts, including the concert.
You can also select an additional 2 challenges to be added the 'day of' IF there is time on the day of Bardic Madness. (*#’s 10 and up on the sign up sheets, with NO guarantees there will be time for these.)
Any 'day of' additional participants as time allows, signed up ahead of time or added at the time of the challenge, do not count towards a participants initial 4 challenges.
Midsummer Eve,
Edward Robert Hughes - (1908c) Wikimedia
Challenges
Many challenges are non-specific and say "perform a work/piece/something of..." etc.
"Works" includes something found, created, or original of your choice
in song, story, poem, prose, with instruments, script, improv,
...and/or anything else that's a performing or movement art!
**Continued from 2023** Bard Scribe Illuminator Challenge entrants are encouraged to create ahead of the event, visit challenge for more information! (4th fyt, 3rd challenge).
First Fyt
1.1 ~
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1.2 ~
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1.3 ~
Second Fyt
2.1 ~
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2.2 ~
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2.3 ~
Third Fyt
3.1 ~
...............
3.2 ~
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3.3 ~
Concert
There will be a concert the day of the event.
Click Here for more information
Concert sign-up sheet is on the same table as the other challenges,
and will be available in the afternoon.
Fourth Fyt & Feast - "Or say, sweet love, what thou
desirest to eat."
?? *2024 Note: For at least one more year- due to the various changes COVID may continue to bring, during the 4th fyt/feast we will not be doing any challenges with singing, or wind and brass instruments, while also eating.** (This fully aligns with the previous existing Middle Kingdom requirements, which were active when we started planning for 2022. And keeps us compliant in the case any of these are brought back.)
4.1 ~ Pass the Tale, In Real Time & Impromptu *does not count towards 4 challenge total*
All those who wish to participate will be part of cooperatively creating a short impromptu tale from beginning to end. To begin the tale - The patron may come up with a story theme or title, or call for one from the audience. Next, will "conduct" participants by choosing whose turn it is to continue the tale. Finally, deciding when it is time to end the story. Sometimes, the patron may call on someone to provide a moral or lesson learned in the story.
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4.2 ~ Toasting & Boasting or "Lord, What Foods These Morsels Be!"
Feast time is traditionally when we raise our glasses high to honor the crown and other deserving individuals.
Speak your toast (or boast) extemporaneously, eloquently, succinctly, and magniloquently, upon the person, theme, or subject matter selected. Forsoothliness is encouraged!
On the sign-up sheets, some lines have a specific toast subject to prepare to give when signing up for the challenge. The ones with blank will draw their random subject (a dish on tonights feast menu) at feast out of a pitcher.
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4.3 ~ Bard Scribe Illumination: Now With Creative Options!
Compose the text, write in calligraphy, and illuminate the page. This may be done individually or as a team, example: different people write the text, scribe the letters, and/or create the illumination. See your options for subject matter below. Read the finished product and amaze those around you at feast!
* Three options to choose from!
* Instead of a "day of" challenge (doing all the work for this challenge at the event), take all the time you have from now until the day-of when you present your works at the event!
Option 1: Create a Scroll Blank to donate to the Group/Kingdom of your choice.
Option 2:
?Option 3:
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4.4 ~ Poetry Form Challenge:
Ending the feast with one of the favorite Bardic Madness Challenges we look forward to every year- The Poetrt Challenge!
Instructions: The form of
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4.5 ~ The Maybe Mysterious Mighty Meta (Fyt)!
IF TIME - All Depends on how close it is to 8:PM and/or dessert! As we close out the feast, (or perhaps during a post-revel round) this is the time we may invite performers who signed up on lines '10 and up' of today's challenges- starting with those who have not performed at all yet, and working our way through to those who have performed their 4 entries of the day.