BALANCING NEED of FUNCTION with DEMANDS of PERIOD

Avoid using modern material, or if you must, hide the
obvious signs of the 21st century

Another delicate balance when creating a Faire is how to include modern conveniences in an environment that promises to transport you to a time before these even existed. Blacktop parking lots are fine but once you pass through the entry gates of the Faire you don’t necessarily want to see asphalt or concrete again until you exit. This can be hard if you need to include wheelchair ramps, or foundations for your permanent structures, so it rests upon you to hide as best you can these little modern anachronisms. The same is true of lighting fixtures. As a modern audience we are willing to forgive recessed lighting if the tradeoff is that we can actually see the wares for sale in an otherwise dark space. Still, it is important to hide electrical conduit, and avoid modern light fixtures anywhere the public can see. Goose neck lamps light jewelry nicely, but they also yank your audience to a post-Edison era, which is opposed to the reason they came here in the first place. More subtle but just as off putting is the visible use of modern construction materials, like metal joist brackets and the tell-tale punctured appearance of pressure treated lumber. These may just be too convenient to not use, but it rests on your shoulders to hide these modern artifacts from your audience as best as possible. Concrete floors are the way to go for permanent structures, but covering them with wood or stamping them with faux stonework will do a better job of obscuring the fact that Home Depot had anything to do with your Tudor half timbered building.

BLOCKING the VIEW of the 21st Century

Probably the biggest creative challenge for any Faire is successfully hiding your guests’ view of the outside world. It is no mistake that Walt Disney built a visual berm around Disneyland to keep his visitors from seeing the urban sprawl that is Anaheim California laying just beyond the steam trains and jungle elephants. Finding a Faire site that does not look out on suburban neighborhoods, Fairground buildings, or a sea of parked cars is tough, but high on your to-do list if your period illusion is to be successful. Walls of burlap fence can help, as do booths as a visual block, but great care needs to be taken to make sure that no glimpse of chrome or billboards are visible while you watch a joust, eat a turkey leg, or enjoy a comic re-interpretation of Hamlet. In the end your biggest expense, especially for those first Faires, will be spent on hiding the inevitable view of the “real world”.

ANACHRONISMS

Only a slight anachronism can completely throw off the illusion you are trying to create. In the 21st century it is getting harder and harder to remove our various gadgets from our hands and faces, and unfortunately Elizabethan England did not have such sophisticated devices for connecting to their social networks. More then ever before it is going to be especially hard to keep yourself in the 16th century while you work. This holds true for plastic coolers, bins, and other containers. Burlap might hide a laptop but it can’t conceal that blank stare that comes along with surfing the web or playing games, so better to just leave them all in the car. Faire really is a time to enjoy life without these distractions and nothing pops the illusion bubble like have a glimpse of a blue plastic drink cooler or a Big Gulp cup, so take care and keep these items well hidden. In the case of dimly lighted places or night time events, “that little glow” of a cel phone being checked, or used to Tweet what we just had for dinner, is a anachronistic history bubble popper, so I recommend you leave such devices off and away from your person during Faire operating hours.

YOU ARE A PLAYER TOO

One opportunity that can be missed by those concessionaires that need to make a profit at the Faire, is that they are just as much an entertainer as the actors that populate the stages and streets. This does not mean you have to establish a full-fledged character, just a willingness to play with your customers a little. Patrons are often shy and don’t necessarily all want to be drug into a public drama, but a little old English flattery, a few “milady’s” and “good sir’s” go a long way. Playing with your customers does not have to be full contact, but you do have an opportunity to add to the collective atmosphere by helping surround them with “the show”. This is especially true when a known hero or villain, pageant or parade goes by, to cheer, jeer, or basically add to the period noise that is enveloping your guests. Playing along will only add to the illusion, and helps draw you into the daily pulse of the ongoing Faire.

CLUSTER RATHER THAN SPREAD OUT

It is also tempting to spread your themeing out over as much of your Faire as possible. It is a basic design rule that smaller clusters of odd numbered items have more appeal then individual objects evenly distributed over a large area. If you are building a stage, booth, or ale stand, cluster your objects in and around it, rather then sprinkling them as solitary props all over the Faire. This will create focal points for your theme, and is less apt to have your Faire items appear lonely and unrelated to their environments.


MEETING the EXPECTATIONS of YOUR GUEST

Whether your audience plans to drink beer and eat a turkey leg, or come completely dressed in period clothing, all of your guests have come here to PLAY. Your job as the promoter or a participant is to bring the event up to the level of the expectations of that audience. Now, there is every possibility that your customers wouldn’t know a Celt from a Roman, or believe that King Arthur and Queen Elizabeth were contemporaries, and that shouldn’t matter. Your job is to know these things and bring that knowledge to them, though the way you dress, speak, behave, and build your booth. Your guests may have never heard of the Spanish Armada, but having it talked about among participants like it was local news will put your audience right in the middle of history. We aren’t forcing history on our audience; we are subtly bathing them in it. Where we fail is when we go to all the trouble to wear the correct clothing, speak the correct dialect, and do it in sight of the guest’s parked cars.

GAINING INSPIRATION from ARTWORK of the TIME PERIOD

Pieter Breugel the Elder  1525-1569

Dutch Renaissance Painter

When in doubt of what are appropriate colors to wear, or environments to reproduce, it is always helpful to reference the artwork of the times. Remember that apart from chronicling the times they lived in, artists like Bruegel were also painting in the colors that were available to his contemporaries. There were no vinyl signs in the 1600’s, Helvetica has a typeface wouldn’t arrive for 400 years, and neon colors were non-existent. Earth tones were the Technicolor of their day, and no matter how much you like purple, only royalty could afford to wear it.

FOCUS MONEY on DETAILS - GROW THEME OVER TIME

When you have an entire Faire site to theme it is tempting to try and spread your budget thinly over the entire event. Although that is one approach, another way to think of your Faire is like a Christmas tree. Each year we bring out that box of old ornaments and decorate our tree, and each year we add one or two more ornaments to the collection. Over the years your box of ornaments has grown, and with it the memories as each piece is re-hung.  Your Faire is no different, if you invest in just a few well designed, thoughtful pieces of décor, graphics, or one new environment, your event will grow is size, complexity, and depth over the years. The secret is to make each year’s addition count. Use materials that will last, are easy to store between Faires, and have the most potential of being reused, and not always in the same place. Also instill some kind of Story into each piece. The more depth and history the item, environment, banner, or graphic contains, the deeper the experience of seeing it has for both you and your returning guests.

FAKING HISTORY

When we go to see a theater performance, we quietly agree to leave our daily lives behind and “believe” that what we are seeing on stage is real. The curtain opens, it is day, it closes and reopens and it is night ten years later. We see flats painted like architecture and nature and we can believe that in the context of the story we are witnessing unfold that these things are real. One of the reasons we can do this is because the actors on stage believe they are real for us. They are in a house, on a country road, in a space ship, all because they say they are. We are no longer in a building downtown, only yards from our parked car, we are inside the universe created by the artists that are puting on this play. A Renaissance Faire is no different. The success of your guests experience depends on how much YOU believe it is real, and how willing you are to avoid references to that world they left behind. A Renaissance Faire is a “pop-up” city that does its very best to surround its audience in the illusion of another time. All participants are actors in this unique setting and their willingness to play along will encourage their customers to play with them. This isn’t real history, it is pretend theatrical history, but the more your participants know about the events and realities of the time they are portraying, the easier it will be for them to broadcast that to their audience.

WORKSHOPS

Not all Faires do this, but I would argue that it was the “secret sauce” that made the Renaissance Pleasure Faires such a success over so many decades. Workshops are most often offered during the weekends prior to opening. This is a time when many crafts and concessions owners are present erecting their booths, and performers rehearsing their acts. These workshops are mandatory, but can be a fun way to get your head into the time period you are agreeing to participate in. These are often short, cover such things as a quick history lesson, basic steps in country dance, and a few rules for how to speak convincingly with a “Basic Faire Accent” or BFA. As you can imagine with the energy and effort everyone is going through to get their piece of the event up and ready, taking time to take a few workshops can receive a fair bit of push back, but I believe that these little refresher courses really do add up to a much better event. If nothing more it reassure that cowboy leather craftsman that merely saying “Good day good sir” and “May I help you mistress” are often enough to get by. It also makes it easier to relate to the events unfolding around you if you know whom the players are and what their roles are in the time period. At one time my wife and I booed a participant we thought was dressed as a Spaniard (the bad guys), only to later find out he was actually Sir Walter Raleigh (not a bad guy). Blush.

CHAPTER 5: BASIC DESIGN RULES

Renaissance Faires can be complex and overwhelming events to undertake, but as far as the design is concerned a lot of what makes for a successful event depends on just a few rules.

AGREEMENT

This may sound simple, but the most important part of any good Faire is the shared agreement betweens it’s many participants. Your Faire is many things… entertainment, food, crafts, but ultimately it is a vehicle for transporting its audience into a realm of fantasy. For the few hours they are visiting, they can leave the 21st century in their parked cars and soak up this pretend world with as few reminders of their daily lives to interrupt their experience.  Having all of your participants promise, willingly, to support this illusion is key to its success. If all of your participants are willing to play this role, so your audience will be.

Each Faire determines the dress code of their event

GOING TRADITIONAL vs ANYTHING GOES

Since the roots of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire were firmly planted in the desire for historical recreation, the choices of what people wear, sell, the music they played, and the way they spoke were equally planted in a specific era of history. Although there were concessions to this rule, on the hole the desire was to recreate a place in time with all the demands that puts upon its participants. This hasn’t been true of all the Faires across the country as each defines their level of faithfulness to history. For some the broad brush of “The Renaissance” includes fairytale princesses, mythical beasts, and the occasional Star Trek away team. There is no right or wrong way to define your own event, and in the case of audiences’ expectations, if characters from computer games and Vikings are within the bounds of the Story being told by the promoter of the event, then all the more power to them. For this book I am sticking with a more historical example, partially because I am most familiar with it, and also the stricter rules of a more historical event tend to make it easier to get everyone participating on the “same page”, and dispels the argument that Dr. Who’s Tardis is not necessarily appropriate for this particular event.