Hey all,
I have been attending the Renaissance Faire for most of my life. Dressing up, avoiding lusty actors and watching bawdy plays have been a standard yearly adventure for me. For those not familiar, Renaissance Faires are places where people of varying dedications to accuracy dress up in clothing of various measures of modesty to have a lot of fun with silly accents and characters. Some, myself included, have gotten really interested in accuracy–not plastic fibers, no cotton and certainly no velvet (haven’t you ever heard of sumptuary laws?). And while this historical knowledge did not particularly come in handy with my Madrigal concert last weekend something more important did: I knew how to act accurately to a period in a large crowd of people not in period costume. I knew the jokes (what is that devilish contraption? one should ask of photographers) and what forms of gossip should be spread (though Queen Catherine of Arragon sits on the King’s right, who do you think sits on his left? One should ask). It was so much fun!
And that doesn’t even start with what we sang!
We sang a lot of lovely pieces, one of the silliest of which was “Fum Fum” by Robert Shaw and Alice Parker. Good times!
Inspirational Quote:
… when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
