Things about the weekend

[fbhjr]

The show we did this last weekend is one of our favorites for a lot of
reasons.

We’ve been doing this faire since 2003. We did skip a couple of years in
the middle, but have done 9 of the last 11 faires they’ve held.

Anton, who runs the faire, has performed with our group at several of the
southern shows. So, he is practically one of our group as it is.

They have a community theater do all of their main casts and characters.
So, the performance of their main story of the day is at a higher level
than many of the faires I’ve seen. (Including much bigger faires.)

It is a faire/festival for the LARP they run. And, if people want to
participate, they are given something to do. So, when they did their group
photo on Sunday there were 75 or more people in it who were all doing
different things at the faire. For a small faire, that is a huge
workforce. And, they are all pretty enthusiastic about it.

Their fight group has a member who used to do professional wrestling. So,
they have a lot of really cool hand to hand moves, throws, etc. We think
their fights are really cool.
We have a lot of stage combat experience and historical background in
swords. So, they think our fights are really cool.
So, there is a lot of positive reinforcement when the two groups get
together.
“You guys looked great!” “So did you!”
I think both groups go away thinking:
“They were impressed with that? We really screwed it up today…”

We had one woman come up to us and tell us she had seen us perform at the
Higgins Armory and that was one of the reasons she got into stage combat.
It’s been 8 years since I did a Higgins show. But, she said it was 10
years ago she saw us, so that’s about right.

It is held at a glass museum/glass artist’s community. Sword fighting in a
glass museum never gets old. (OK, we do it outside, not in the actual
museum. But, still!)

The site has ducks, geese and turtles swimming the lake next to where we do
our shows.

The hotel adjoins the site so we can walk to the show in less than 5
minutes. The hotel includes a hot breakfast with a night staying there.
Unlike many hotels where the breakfast is a sad plastic wrapped muffin,
this place has eggs, sausage, waffles, cereal, juice and other drinks.

The director of the museum comes by to see us every year and is always very
complimentary to us. Anton tells us that we are the “historical content”
for the faire that has pirates, faries, witches and other fantasy
creatures. The museum wants “historical content”, so they like to see us
there.


But, there are some bad things too:
The best of years it is murderously hot. The minimum is 30C/86F, and often
even hotter. That’s hot for sword fighting in costumes. (The record for
that show is 95F/35C.)
And it is always very humid, so you really feel the heat.
This year was only the average, but still felt really warm.

The weather is frequently bad. It often rains. One year we had tornado
warnings. Several years it has been so bad that Anton has just had us pack
up and go home early.

There was something in our hotel room that really set off my allergies. I
have no idea what. The room smelled funny to me when I first came in, but
that soon stopped as my whole head stuffed up almost immediately. This
made sleeping difficult. Something also got to my wife and made her sick.
Don’t know if was the room or the food, but neither one of us got as much
rest as we’d like.

It is hard to get to the faire for us. Google and all the other map
programs tell us it is a 5 hour drive. Our usual time is 7 hours.
Sometimes it is traffic, sometimes construction, sometimes storms,
sometimes we never find out why. But, it is always a problem.
This time going down the road we were on came to a complete stop for almost
an hour.
Coming back yesterday we had an hour slow down in central New Jersey, and
then found the traffic going into NYC stopped. Sadly we found this out
after passing the alternate route.
The express lane into NYC had a listed time of more than an hour to go the
last 10 miles. The local lade with all the exits listed 30 minutes for 10
miles.
We did local. That’s good as the line in the express was miles long and
I’m sure it would have taken a lot more than an hour.
Since we left at 5:30 we got home at about 12:30.
Just the way it is.

Because it is a glass museum, they put broken glass into their pavement to
make it sparkle. OK, it can look cool in the right light. But, it is
terribly dangerous unless you have really good shoes.

The flip side to actors playing the roles is that you get actor problems.
The person playing the queen dropped out 2 weeks before the show. The
“bandit leader” had a talk with me about how we ran him off stage wasn’t
the right way. (The nobles were supposed to send him off while I
threatened him from behind them. Not, my threatening him directly.) There
was a problem because John and I wanted to enter the fight field where the
fence was low. But, that would mean the actors couldn’t say their lines
center stage…

A group of reenactors (I’m not saying who, but their first two initials are
SC and the third is a vowel) decided folks didn’t look ready for the next
act to go on, so kept doing their thing for 10 minutes into the next act.
All the folks for the next act were standing there. The musicians were
playing their intro music. The actors were at the entrance of the stage
glaring at them. How it didn’t look ready for the next act was unclear.
It only makes sense if they had no idea what the act after them was or what
it looked like. Strange that this happened on day 2. (Although in a good
thing for us, when those folks looked at the crowd and asked “what do you
want to see next?” the kid behind me shouted “real sword fighting with real
swords!” and pointed at me and John.)

But, the good outweighs the bad by a considerable margin and I’m very glad
they keep having us come down to do the show.

Comments

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

“what do you want to see next?” the kid behind me shouted “real sword fighting with real
swords!” and pointed at me and John.)

Instant Justification of suffering hours of stupid traffic ;D

[postingwhore.livejournal.com]

The express lane into NYC had a listed time of more than an hour to go the
last 10 miles. The local lade with all the exits listed 30 minutes for 10
miles.
We did local. That’s good as the line in the express was miles long and
I’m sure it would have taken a lot more than an hour.
Why don't people just take the local lane then...O_O

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

People do not always pay attention to the signs.
If they are used to going on the express lane, many people will do that out of habit.