GETTING THE ACTION ABOVE THE GUESTS

Once you have broken beyond the 8 foot mark, the next obvious opportunity it to get a few people up there to help draw attention to your booth and wares. Although a structure that allows for the safe weight of a person can be more expensive, having a barker elevated above the heads of guests can add a dynamic quality to your booth that is more likely to draw customers to you. This is true of booth workers and performers sitting in the trunks of trees. Banter from over our head is just not something we often encounter in our modern lives, so take advantage of surprising your audience by making them look up for a change.

CREATIVE MERCHANDISE DISPLAYS

There are practical considerations to make when creating a display for your work. Potters need sturdy shelves, expensive jewelry needs to be in a case, and fine breakables should be out of the easy reach of children. Displays also need to be something that can be easily broken down and carted home after a Faire has ended. All this being true, there is an opportunity to think outside of the conventional crafts fair display when presenting your work at a Renaissance Faire. Using organic elements like twigs and branches can create unconventional but attractive displays. Without wanting to over power your work, think of it like a flower arrangement, where your product represents each bloom. Find ways to tell the story of how your art is made. A metalworker could display a few items on an anvil, or surrounded by blacksmithing tools. A woodworker could cover the floor of his booth with wood shavings, and weaver could display baskets filled with wool in all stages from sheep to yarn. Anything you can do to your environment that speaks to the process taken to create your products will better help your customers relate to what they are looking at and eventually purchasing.

It must be added that the original Renaissance Pleasure Faire was based with the goal to recreate history, and their early booths demonstrated how their wares were crafted. It is worth considering including a work area within your booth that would allow you to work on building more merchandise for your shop. This allows your customers to better understand the workmanship that goes into each piece, creating additional interest and entertainment, and a way to keep you busy during the Faire. One thing you can do that Walmart never can is demonstrate the love and attention that goes into everything you make.

Food merchants have a harder time displaying their products, purely because the health department frowns on the presenting of uncovered food. With this in mind, food vendors have an opportunity to suggest how the food is being made. Although just behind the plywood wall and screen a booth worker may be stirring a stainless steel pot over a gas burners, but this shouldn’t stop the owner from displaying an oversized cast iron pot in a large brick hearth with the menu items painted on its side. Also creating banners and signs that depict period people eating your food, for example Henry the Eights holding a turkey leg, or a court jester juggling meat pasties is a way to suggest to the public that to eat your food is to consume a bit of history itself. The reality of running a food booth is that the experience in the kitchen is very different then that on the street, but that shouldn’t stop you from telling a story, one that takes its audience deeper into the role playing that drew them to the Faire in the first place.

Chapter Nine

BUILDING A CART

If you like, you could always consider foregoing a traditional booth and create a cart. This is especially good if you have small items, or your larger booth has smaller products you can also sell in a satellite location. The biggest advantage to a cart is not only the smaller booth fees, but you are mobile and can rationalize moving if your first location isn’t working for you. Carts can pepper a Faire and have the advantage of being out in front of your customers and not tucked in a corner somewhere with little hope of moving. Some carts are even mobile enough to move constantly, always going where the people are.

This is very nice if you wish to park yourself at the exit when the Faire is ending, or near the stage when a big scheduled event is imminent. Carts can come in all sizes and even include places for you to sit within them. The following sketches* will give you some ideas of what a cart might be, and maybe inspire you to dream up something unique to you and your products.

* Work in progress, sketches coming.

STURDY BOX CONSTRUCTION

If you are lucky enough to be able to leave a booth up during the off-season, or can cart in heavier lumber, this sturdy box construction suggest a rustic quality without attempting to fake the look of timber or wattle and daub. Tall center poles act as a support for a very large banner, which acts as an embroidered graphic or shop sign.

CANVAS ROOF & HARD WALLS

This example depicts a rough sawn lumber structure with a canvas roof and faux timber back wall and railing. This give the appearance of being a stall rather then a building and it might be appropriate to build your counter space on stacked hay bales. Wood is period, so using it liberally is always great, just make sure you hide any lumber stamps or telltale marks that suggest your booth might actually have originated from Home Depot.

FABRIC TOURNAMENT BANNERS AS A MOTIF

Like the previous examples, this booth design uses rough poles as the basis of its construction and drapes banners and over-sized pennants as the roof, walls, and railing. This is a nice effect and works especially nicely when the booth is anywhere near the Horse Tournament area or stables.

FABRIC WALLS

Fabric Walls

 

This booth is constructed like the Twigs & Branches design but includes a patchwork peaked roof and back wall. This design also suggests the use of twigs and brambles as a method for displaying small hanging objects. The counter is sturdy and draped in a simple cloth. The counter could include a “lock box” that would allow you to keep valuables safe when you are away between event days.

CHAPTER EIGHT

BOOTH BUILDING EXAMPLES

The following are some illustrated example of how materials might be used to create your own Faire booth. These are all based on a 8 foot by 8 foot booth space and are only meant to suggest techniques you could use in designing and building your own unique booth. These are also far from the limits of what is possible, so feel free to play and come up with something that will set you and your wares apart from those around you, and yet fit within the overall theme of the event.

Twigs & Branches

This booth is constructed using only large branches, twigs, and poles. The booth is very open with only fabric for a roof and as a view block on the lower rail. Banners and flags decorate the booth as well as a string of colored rags tied along the front edge. This is the sort of booth a traveling crafts person would build and does not include a back space or place to lock away their products. This is a very portable design, but will require you to rope it together each time you do an event. I have seen crafts people arrive with nothing more then a pickup filled with poles and branches and miraculously erect a fantastic booth from scratch. I have to admit that I am not that brave, but I have seen it done to great effect.

RAG ROLLING

Now that you understand the fine art of Timber Frame construction, the next subject is how to simulate a convincing, mottled Daub surface. The easiest method for this is by using a paint technique called Rag Rolling.

When painting plywood to look like a plaster or mud surface, it is important to hide any details that might suggest that you are actually using plywood. Lower grade plywood often includes knot holes, or long running grooves or grains that are typical in this material. Before painting, be sure to fill these holes and cracks with Spackle or wood putty to hide these obvious elements that could ruin the illusion you are trying to create.

Once you have covered your plywood with a base coat, pour out a little of the base color and add a slightly darker color to it. This darker color should only be a very slight tint, almost indistinguishable from the base color. Avoid making this too great a contrasting value since it will draw attention to itself. Then, taking a cotton rag (avoid using terry cloth or a bath towel, an old cotton sheet works best) and bunch it up into a loose roll. Lightly rolling the rag roll in the slightly darker paint, then gingerly apply it to the base color by rolling the rag along its surface. Try to do this in a loose and “organic” way, avoiding symmetrical lines or stripes. Crossing the path of your rag rolling will also hide any obvious lines that might appear as to continue to mottle the surface texture.

If for some reason your end result is too busy, usually something that happens when too dark a color is applied to the base, feel free to apply another coat of watered down base color over the top. There is no wrong way to do this, but it will take some trial and error to discover a look that you like the best.

FABRIC as a CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL

The cheapest building material by far for creating your booth or building is Fabric. Unless you are located in a particularly windy area (you don’t want your booth to become a kite), fabric is relatively inexpensive, is easily transported, and does a fabulous job of defining the walls of a structure, hiding areas of your booth you don’t want people to see or go into, and is great for roofs, awnings, and shade while still allowing light to get into your booth. Many Faires insist that all fabric used in booth construction be certified fireproof before the event opens. This can be accomplished by using pre-fireproofed material, having your fabric fireproofed and certified prior to construction, or some Faires will fireproof your booth for you, for a fee. If you are worried about being around toxic chemicals be sure to research what is being used to fireproof anything in your booth so that you are more educated about what is and is not safe.

No matter what you do to them, bed sheets look like bed sheets

When having to create booth walls, roofs, or awnings of fabric it is tempting to use something cheap and readily available, the obvious choice is to resort to used bed sheets. Although I have seen these used on countless booths, I have to say there is just something about them that cries out “BED SHEETS”! It may be the lightweight material, the color, or perhaps the types of patterns that customarily appear on them, but bed sheets actually defeat the look of a sturdy Faire booth and broadcast a lack of quality that will only cheapen the appearance of your wares.

TRUST ME, "NO ONE PAINTED ROCKS ON PLYWOOD in the RENAISSANCE"

One temptation when designing a Faire structure of any kind is to use stone as a major architectural detail for booths, stages and other structures. True, stones are a basic building material of any period represented by a Renaissance Faire, but unless the building is permanent, stones are hard to transport. The obvious conclusion is to try depict them by painting them on something.  This can give a theatrical effect that could work as part of a set piece in a play on one of the Faire stages, but for use on a booth it only succeeds in confirming that the structure is fake.  When in doubt about the use of stones in a temporary booth, the answer is, don’t. One acceptation to this rule is the use of bricks; another frequently used building material of the period. Although hand painted bricks look as artificial as hand painted stone, there are convincing lightweight faux bricks available that work rather nicely. The challenge with these brick panels is avoiding overly bright or comically colored faux brinks, in favored of the more weathered and highly textured varieties. Even then, it doesn’t hurt to add even more aging to the surface with a wash of watered down brown paint and finishing it off with handfuls of rubbed in dirt. Some of the best brick panels I have seen come from many a winter between Faires stored out in the elements. Faux brinks might actually be the only part of your booth or building that will actually get better with age.

SUPPORT BUILDINGS

As the creator of the Faire, you will find the need to supply many structures who’s purpose is not always relevant to the theme of your event. Offices, a Pass House, security, and bathrooms are just a few of the structures you may find yourself building on top of the large, and more thematically important stages and main gate. When ever possible these buildings can be placed out of the sight of your paying customers, but when that is not possible they will need some themeing to help hide them from the rest of your event. Rented construction trailers are a good place to start and they can be draped in burlap, covered with simple plywood panels depicting murals, or faux period walls. In the case of public toilet, and very specifically portable commodes, it is important to fence them off from sight from within the Faire. Our 21st century willingness to suspend our belief when it comes to using a modern toilet makes it unnecessary to theme each one, but no guests wants to herald the Queen of England as she passes a bank of port-a-potty’s.

SHADE STRUCTURES

Since we are discussing important structures that are the necessary evils of any event, we need to talk about shade. It is hard to find a Faire site or event venue that includes all of the attributes we might want, and although the site might have a good location, great parking, and enough land, often existing shade trees are sacrificed for the other three. Your booth vendors will be constructing enough shade for themselves, and potentially their immediate customers, but most of your customers will be out in the sun if there aren’t enough trees for them to congregate under. I have been to many Faires that are located in flat open fields where customers wearing period appropriate, but weather inappropriate, costumes are roasting in the sun.

If this is the case with your Faire, then you will need to take on the expense of building that shade yourself. The “easiest” solution is to construct shad structures. These can consist of telephone style poles driven into the ground and a large tarp, or more period appropriate dyed burlap can be raised like a circus tent over the audience. This is most important in spaces like theater seating, but in the case of areas where people are likely to congregate, like near food booths, shade structures are a must. Shade can be easily rationalized as not always important, but trust me when I tell you that visitors will choose to not return to an event where they have been overheated and miserable.

ALE STANDS

Often Faire promoters will choose to be one sole provider of beverages for their event. This is a smart move, and whether you chose to offer alcohol or must non-alcoholic drinks, you will become the provider of a much sought after commodity. Locating Ale Stands throughout your event, especially near food vendors, will insure a lucrative income for your event, one that can’t always be achieved with admission prices alone. Ale Stands should be designed with as much counter space as possible to allow for as many customers to be served at a time. Your Ale Stand will be popular, and you don’t want long lines to suggest your guests reconsider their thirst. Ale Stands can also be a centerpiece of festive frivolity, noise, and boisterous revelry. Including a large bell that is rung whenever someone tips is a great way to add ambience, and encourage additional tipping by those waiting to be served.

If Your Design Depends on Someone Else Doing Something to Make it Work, You Have Already Failed

This is a design principle that I have found to be universal, no matter the size of the project. If you design something that will not work without the efforts of another, then you can guarantee that it will never work. My experience with this design principle occurred as part of a request to solve a design problem inadvertently built into the Northern Renaissance Faire site.

The Main Stage for the Faire site was located in a perfect natural earthen bowl, which made for a wonderful theatrical experience, but the entrance to the area was easy to miss as you walked by. We would periodically hear complaints that guests could not find the stage to see the main Queen’s show, so we knew we needed to build something that would draw attention to the entrance. While at Disney a budget for a project might be 100 million dollars, at the Faire my per-Faire expense account was usually closer to $3000. I was asked to build a barker’s platform, or a small tower that I was promised a paid actor would stand upon all day and call passersby to the stage. This project ate nearly my entire budget and it generated a huge, heavy, but OSA safe platform for an actor to climb and stand upon. The morning of the first day of Faire I wandered past the stage and saw that the tower was completely missing! After hunting around I discovered that the ice delivery truck crew had dragged the tower (no small feat) and tossed it back stage. The tower was in their way, so, they moved it. After much scolding the tower was replaced, and as far as I can remember I never once saw an actor stand upon it and do anything. I did however see that a participant was stationed at the base of it all day to keep drunken guests from climbing it and falling off on their heads. Although built with all the best intentions, the design and purpose failed due to that lack of the actor to make it work as designed.

RAG ROPE

Assuming you can tie things to or suspend thing from a nearby tree (not all sites will allow this), think of ways to festoon this natural element, like a Christmas tree, with your products, décor, or just fanciful baubles. One very effective decoration is the use of “Rag Rope”. This consists of a natural looking hemp rope with brightly colored torn rags tided and hanging from it in intervals of 1 foot or so. Alternating the colors creates a festive effect that can be draped in and among the branches or be suspended between your booth a the tree. Similarly, multi-colored pennants work well, although they can look a little like a modern day used car lot if they look too new, so use with caution. Also prayer flats are very nice, but only use if there is some reason your wares have some close connection to Tibet, otherwise avoid using them. An international district or world marketplace area of the Faire could be enhanced by the use of prayer flags, as would many eastern mystics booths, but few other places are appropriate. Another variation of the Rag Rope are Rag Hoops… like the rope, “Rag Hoops” are just like they sound, a round wooden hoop, roughly the size of a Hoola-Hoop, with colorful rags tied at intervals, also suspended from tree branches look fantastic and greatly enhance the overall look of a Faire.

WAY FINDING & NOMENCLATURE

These are fancy ways of saying, “Clever ways to keep people from getting lost”. Signage that informs your audience where they are, and how they can relate to an area, is vital to the success of your Faire. Signs are your way of tell people where they can go to find what, but it is also a way to tell them how they can “play” in each area.  A sign that points to Gypsy Camp is one way, but if the sign looks like gypsies actually made it, then this does even more to communicating what might be experienced once you arrive there. It is also all too easy to get too “cute” with the names of places, or mislead your audience’s expectations. Calling a place “Faerie Princess Wood” is fine, but there bloody well better be Faeries and a Princess when you arrive. The language of the Renaissance is probably the richest in history, so take the opportunity to find clever ways to name things, but be careful, calling something “Potter’s Way” might suggest ceramic artists reside there, but calling it “Potter’s Field” could mean something else entirely.

EVERY PROP TELLS a STORY

Whether building a booth or an entire Faire you will be a wash in props to help fill out your themed environments. As you go through the expense of creating signs, objects, carts, and furniture for various areas of the event, it helps to apply a Story to it. This can be as simple as who owned it, what it was used (is being used for), and how it relates to other people and objects. This may seem alike a trifle and little worthy of the effort, but objects can have a life of their own and giving them a past helps you better judge where they will go in years to come. Just a bench doesn’t have the same weight as it being Fallstaff’s bench. Having just a cart is not as interesting as it being the “slave cart”, “wench cart” or “dung cart”. Names suggest purpose and in the larger improv environment of a large theatrical event like a Faire, being asked to pick up your mother in-law in the “dung cart” has much more potential then just a regular old cart.

WHERE'S the WIENIE?

This is a phrase stolen from Walt Disney himself. The “wienie” refers to any theme park architecture or element that helps draw the attention or interest of the visiting guests to move from one area to another. Like a carrot on a stick to encourage a horse to move forward, the wienie is a way to entice your audience to continue moving through a space. The Disneyland castle is the perfect example of a “wienie”. Guests visiting Main Street USA are compelled to move down the street by the promise of the castle that lays at the end of it. This technique works equally well within the layout of a Renaissance Faire.

A quick example… while working on the Northern California Renaissance Faire site I noticed a large Greenman figure tucked in among the trees near the front of the Faire. The figure stood over 16 feet tall and was all but invisible surrounded by the dense forest. I requested that the Greenman be moved from this location to a more prominent area under a huge oak tree at the end of a main walkway. I was cautioned that the Greenman and his location were sacred and that much ruin would fall upon me if it were to be found moved. I decided he was majestic enough to warrant relocation and promised to take the full brunt of the ill will, if there was to be any. As the Fair opened the Greenman began to evolve as little ribbons and offerings began to appear at his feet, up his arms, and inside his wooden ribcage. Rather then criticism I received countless message of praise for having finally given the Greenman a location worthy of his stature in both the Faire and hearts of it participants. What I had really done was moved a Story rich monument to a place where others could layer their Story upon him. There is nothing I could have done that would have brought more value to have much loved figure, and I created a powerful centerpiece or “wienie” to boot.

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”.

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.

BUILDING HISTORY OUT of PLYWOOD, BURLAP & HAY BALES

The basic building blocks of any Faire

Renaissance Faires are THEATRE set in the woods. Your goal is to transport your audience back in time but often with only a small budget and the reality that most, if not all of your structures will need to be temporary. There are few Faires that have the luxury of a permanent site where they can leave their main structures up all year round. This means that every building will need to be transported in, erected, and then removed at the end of the event. One thing that you can say about the building materials in Elizabethan England was that they were anything but portable. Half-timber buildings with thatched roofs and stone foundations don’t transport well, and trying to fake these can be tricky if not done artfully. As large-scale outdoor theatre, you are basically creating an enormous stage set, but you are asking your audience to suspend their belief just enough to imagine that these structures are “real”. Your guests will arrive wanting to “play along” but their imaginations are only just so elastic and can be snapped by the sight of too many anachronistic elements and details. Your goal as the designer of the Faire is to balance these budgetary, safety, and building codes, within the period illusion you are trying to sustain. In the end, your allies will most often be plywood, burlap & hay bales. All of which can be configured to represent almost all of the environments you are trying to create.