FAIRE BUILDINGS

As the owner, creator, and promoter of your Faire, you are also responsible for creating the framework that you will be populating with the booths of those participants that will constitute the bulk of your event. The success or failure of your Faire will rest on your ability to create the thematic structures that will set the tone, and inspire the quality of the structures and graphics that will make up the rest of your Faire. At a minimum you will be building a front entrance, ticket booths, stages, information booths, and ale stands (if you choose). Every one of these structures will be looked at as examples of the quality you expect from your participants. If you scrimp on the appearance of these buildings then you only have yourself to blame if the rest of your event is shabby or half-heartedly constructed. This means that your structures will need to be ‘period’, well constructed, and display the very best graphics you can afford. Inspiring by example is the rule for all great Faires, and this should be foremost in your thinking as you build your event. The good news is that all other themed structures can come later, with each year adding to your growing store of buildings, graphics, and booths.

In the following pages you will find descriptions of the structures you will be designing and building, and their importance to the overall success of your Faire. Many of these buildings can come over time, but their role and influence are describe in detail.

PHOTO OPPORTUNITIES

Time was that a photo taken while on vacation ended up in a drawer, but today we live in the world of Facebook and Flickr, and more often then not images taken in the morning are posted all over the internet by that evening. The ability for people to find, share, comment on, and repurpose images taken inside your event has never been better, and let’s face it, people love getting their pictures taking in front of stuff! This means free advertising for you, and if the stuff they are taking pictures of themselves in front of has your event’s logo on it, all the better. Whenever you build any large prop or structure for your Faire, think about how your guests might interact with it. Better yet, think of how they might take a picture of themselves next to, on top of, or inside of it. This is free advertising for you, and added experience for your guests. It doesn’t get better that. So if photos of people sitting in the Queen’s sedan chair (when she is not using it), or single handed killing George’s Dragon show up on the Internet or YouTube, this is great for you and your event.

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.

GRAPHICS & SIGNAGE

 If you think of your Faire layout as a Christmas Tree, your graphic and signage are the ornaments you hang around it each year. While craft booths and stages will fill out the body of your event, the hanging signs and graphics will set the mood and help your guests navigate through your event. Signs, whether painted on canvas or plywood, are a growing investment in the look and feel of your Faire as it grows bigger each year. Signs are easy enough to store during the off-season, and easy to hang and remove before and after the event. The more rustic your signs the better, and the hand painted variety will do much more to transport your guests then anything printed at Kinkos. The 21st century offers us the tempting possibility that we could design our signage in the computer and just blow it up, the drawback is that this frequently is exactly what it will look like. Giant glossy banner do little to transport guests into the 16th century and will ultimately erode the illusion you are trying to achieve with all of your other efforts. It is much better to invest in a few hand-painted, beautiful signs each year and slowly add to your collection, then to cover your event with the equivalent of Budweiser banners.

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.