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My wife and I had decided to quit the old troupe where we had been
performing sword fights for the previous 2 years.
We were clear that when we left we were taking:
The fights we had choreographed
The stage acts we had written
The games we had developed for faires
The troupe website we had paid for, created and maintained for the previous
2 years
The practice area where the troupe had practiced the previous winter

The person who had prompted our resignation wrote a rebuttal to our
resignation that was very strange. He talked about all the things he
thought we wanted from that troupe and got almost none of them right. I
just showed how very far apart we were on everything. And, I have never
regretted my decision to leave all that behind.
I do occasionally wonder at his reaction. After all he predicted “the
troupe will still go on quite well and strong despite what people fear”.
It did two more shows and folded.

My wife had just made about $500 off some art work commission she had done.
So, as she puts it, “we started our own troupe with $500 and a grudge. The
$500 is long gone…”

On July 10th, I registered the name www.phoenixswords.com
Eminem had just released his song “Without me” and I thought it very
fitting.
A Star Trek fan since the original show, I asked my wife to come up with a
logo similar to the Romulan on used in the Next Generation. (The phoenix
she came up with has been dubbed “ Merlin
” his evil twin that only exists in our minds is “Merbert”. We have a lot
of conversations about what Merbert would say in replies to people. But,
Merlin usually prevails.)

Not being a big fan of the charter of the group that came before us, I came
up with a charter
that was only 7 rules long instead of 30+ pages.

We had honestly thought that our problems with the troupe were our own and
the 35 or so members would go on with the old troupe. We’d start our own
little band with the two of us and few others that wanted to go with us.

morgan_lafaye saw my wife sketching new logos and without
knowing more said “I want in!” A few others did similar, so we thought
we’d have about half a dozen people.

Although we booked a couple of shows in August, we decided to keep the
revelation of our new troupe until September first. The old troupe had a
big show at the end of August. We had agreed to remain through that show
and we didn’t want to be seen as distracting from it.

We did our best to make that last show a good one. My wife kept saying
“best Lion’s show ever”. While she did work very hard on the show, that
also contained the “never this good without us” aspect of it as well.

We did that final show. It went well.
Afterwards 30 of the 35 members of the old troupe decided to come over to
Phoenix Swords.
I had expected 6.

That caused problems of its own. But, we had our own group. It had shows
already booked. We had material to perform and folks who wanted to see it.

Since then we have done 263 performances at 115 different physical
locations. Of those 69.58% are folks who have hired us for more than one
show. That’s a pretty good record for customer repeats.

We’ve traveled 97,968 miles based on a zero point of where my wife and I
live. If we had done that pirate faire in Florida last month we could have
pushed over the 100k mark. But, given there was record rain those two
days, I think I’ll be happy with it as it is.
The average location is: Avg Lat 39.99312 Avg Long -75.1308
That’s in Philadelphia, so we drove past it on the way home from our last
job.

The break down by region is:
New England 178
South 42
North East (Not NE) 40
Mid west 3
Canada 1

The breakdown of types of shows is:
Type total
Ren Faire 146
Private 45
Other Fair 38
Business 17
School 12
Church 5

It has rained on 63 of our shows or 24% of them. That might not sound bad.
But, from November 2002 to September 2003 there were 7 shows in the rain,
one show in the sun, then 8 more shows in the rain. And, that one show
where it didn’t rain was an indoor puppet show, so I’m not sure it really
counts.
Since then it has been far more dry.

Counting our many “guest stars” we have had 73 different people perform
with us at those shows. Technically I list 22 folks as members right now,
but there are half a dozen or so I’m going to be trimming off pretty soon.
Folks can stay on the member list if they do at least one show a year with
us. But, some have slipped past that, or will by the September 1st
official anniversary.

It’s been pretty hectic at times. But, it has been a whole lot of fun.
I’m a bit worried by the fact we have very few jobs scheduled for the
second half of the year, but hope things will turn around and more will pop
up.

We’ve got a good bunch of members who have done great work with and for us.
As long as that’s true, even a few shows a year will be worth it.