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Saint Brigid's Guild Handbook

Introduction

or

“Hi-diddly-dee, the peasant life's for me!”

At the end of the show at the Washington Renaissance Fantasy Faire in 2003, one of the Privateers dropped character to thank the audience for being there because “…without you, we’d just be a bunch of wierdos playing dress-up in a hayfield.”

While my feelings are mixed on his decision to break the suspension of disbelief by dropping character, I feel that he voiced a fundamental – and often overlooked – facet of what we do: We are there to recreate the time period in such a manner as to be entertaining to the patrons. It is that last bit that often gets forgotten.

I have a certain amount of respect for reenactment groups like the SCA, unlike some of my ren-faire peers who see them as rivals or worse. In fact, some wonderful scholarship is happening under the auspices of the Society. The SCA - and other organizations like it - must be viewed with an eye to the fact that their results vary due to the simple fact that they are an open-membership organization. Their broad guidelines and wide definitions of ‘period’ create an inevitable divide between the truly committed and the aggressively casual members. This creates an environment where the serious reenactor in perfect period linen and wool sits beside a fellow Society member in a tunic made from his mom’s sheets. It is a dichotomy of character that works for them – on the whole. My respect for the organization aside, I draw a very definite line between acting at faire and reenacting with an organization like the SCA.

Organizations such as the SCA exist to recreate history for themselves as individuals within certain broad guidelines set down by the Society. They're teaching history, but the curriculum is widely varied. In the typical SCA court, Vikings vie for elbowroom with Tudor gentlewomen. And that’s fine because for the Vikings, it might be the tenth century while the person next to them is just as content pretending they are in the sixteenth. And because they are not putting on a show for an audience, it works out just fine.

At faire, our guidelines are much more strictly delineated, and our time period (thankfully) more constrained to a specific period. Can you imagine trying to hammer a cohesive show out of the disparate elements of a SCA court? It’s enough to give H.G. Wells nightmares! The suspension of disbelief might be possible for the individual reenactor, but it would be well nigh impossible for an audience. Either the Viking warrior or the Tudor gentle would have to go. For our purposes, it was the Viking. Don’t feel too sorry for old Olaf, though; there are plenty of places where he can pillage happily without bothering those of us in the sixteenth century.

Part of narrowing the timeline is to create a more cohesive presentation, a show that has an overarching theme. But in order to pull this off, we need to examine things that the SCA can safely ignore, which is to say… acting lessons. (After a fashion, anyway.) In later articles I will go into depth on the differences between stage acting and what we call “Interactive Street Theater” as well as give tips on creating gigs for your character and some seeds for gigs anyone can undertake regardless of their role in the village. For now it is enough for you to understand the difference between the results that the SCA is striving for and what we are striving for as actors at a renaissance faire.

SCA (and the like): Satisfaction is derived by the individual & their cohorts through a personal suspension of disbelief within the character they are portraying. In general, every reasonable effort is made to achieve period accuracy and the interplay takes place regardless of the opinions of anyone watching.

Renaissance Faire: A show that is put on for an audience, who derive satisfaction from having their belief suspended by a group of actors portraying characters and actively seeking to include them in this illusion of the late renaissance. Sometimes requires dramatic decisions to be made that fulfill expectations even if they vary from actual history.

Both approaches can – and are – termed “historical reenactment” and both can be highly educational and rewarding pursuits for both the reenactor and anyone observing them, but only the actor at the renaissance faire actively seeks out strangers to draw into their bubble of reality.

Interactive is the key word to keep in mind. Renaissance faires exist on the edge of a knife between a theme park and the hard-core reenactment societies. It is an easy road to fall off of and many renaissance faires have slipped too far in one direction or the other. Many are therefore either foundering in a corporate morass and losing their heart (in my not-so-humble opinion) or are dying because they are being put on as a fete for the actors, not an interactive experience for the patrons.

Coincidentally, both varieties of faire seem to suffer from the same illness... a lack of villagers in thier village. This may sound odd, but as you walk through the grounds of a faire, that doesn’t quite feel right you can bet that the problem lies in the peasant-to-noble ration being tipped too far in one direction. Most of the renaissance faires that have retained their “Street Cred” (for want of a better term) have large and robust groups devoted to bringing the actual village itself to life.

It’s a common enough problem, people tend to see the pretty dresses and the tall boots and swaggering swordsmen and say “That’s the role for me!” And before you know it, all of the peasants have caught a bad case of noble. Never mind the fact that most of the people actually having fun at the faire are dressed in rags by comparison!

Not that there aren’t good things about being noble at faire, I've done it myself. For those with a mind to make merry, however, often the constraints of those roles can be just as tight as the collar of your starched ruff. Renaissance faires are – by necessity – in the summertime, (that’s the only time we can get patrons to show up outside of the sunbelt). That means it’s hot. The 16th Century, on the other hand, was a time when there was a minor ice age in effect, and the clothing styles reflect this. Nobles must wear a lot of layers to look correct for our period. Most of their time is spent watching longingly while the wenches and peasant lads taking turns in the dunk tank. Dedicated nobles suffer for their art, and more power to them. We peasants are just as content to wear less and be more comfortable. Now you know what we mean when we say 'It’s cool to be a villager'... literally.

I realize that there is more to being a noble than a costume and there are rewards beyond mere heat exhaustion. Faires wouldn’t be faires without a healthy dose of pretty people in the mix. The main point of this is that not everyone needs to have a title and a pretty outfit in order to enjoy this pastime. In fact, it would not be feasible to have it so. The most fun to be had at faire is in the dunking booths and mud pits of the shire. And, really, the most “realistic” manner in which to undertake the recreation of the 16th century is to have a cohesive and lively population of villagers to be flesh-out the show.

You will, no doubt, note that I put the word “realistic” in quotes in that last paragraph. The reason for that is that the characters you will create using the steps outlined in the articles on the following pages will not be 100% period perfect. I suppose with a little extra work it is certainly easy enough to make them so if you choose to (more on that later) but that's up to you.

Our mission is to put on a show, to create a fun setting that’s as realistic as we can make it without scaring away our audience. A 100% real 16th century village devoid of theatrical elements would be of interest only to historians. Not to mention the fact that it would be ugly, smelly and disease-ridden. We’re here to celebrate the high-points of our period, to bring to light the finer aspects of the 16th century, when our modern world began to take shape not to dwell on social inequities, or the lack of sanitation.

Is it realistic? To a certain extent, yes, it is and yet it cannot be. Most faires today employ the fairy and fantasy elements to a such a degree that the overall performance bears more resemblance to the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien than it does to anything that would be recognizable to a denizen of 16th century Europe. This is due to the popularity of both the fantasy literary genre and the films based on those books, and the drawing power that they hold when it comes to attracting crowds to the faire. It is a fact that the actor who is not portraying a fantasy character has to come to terms with (more on that in the acting section).

The inclusion of fantasy elements is unavoidable if we want the large crowds to come, however and we will do our best to put on the best show, with the highest level of realism possible while maintaining 21st century sanitation standards and remaining within the bounds of safety.

Our guild handbook will take you through the steps necessary to begin your run as an actor at the renaissance faire. We will help you create a character you are comfortable playing, assist you in learning to interact with patrons and ultimately attain a good level of comfort with your character. While this has been written with the novice in mind, the contents might be useful to anyone at any level of faire experience. I have done much of the labor of character research for you and condensed it into a digestible form. Even if you do not follow the steps I have laid out for character creation to the letter, at the very least it should spark some healthy debate about the nature of what we are doing, which is always a good thing.

Now... let's play faire!

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