Notes on the show

[fbhjr]

Other than getting there and back (see my other posts) this is one of our favorite shows. We’ve been doing it almost every year since 2003, know the folks there fairly well and like the location.

The location is an old glass factory that has been turned into a museum. They still make glass there and have a large artist community. It is a fairly upscale kind of place where the gift shops have items that go up to $18,000. I don’t know if anyone buys them. But, there are a lot of items in the $2500-$8,000 range. I don’t think there would be so many if no one bought them.

This seems a bit at odds with a faire run by a Live Action Role Playing game. They dress up as pirates, monsters, fairies and such and hit each other with padded weapons.
Nothing wrong with that. It’s just you don’t often see it mixed with high end artistic communities very often.

I guess, from what the organizer tells us, the cross roads of these two things is our group, Phoenix Swords.
We participate in the LARP acts they do in costume and all that.
But, we also do historical shows that are very similar to what you can get in museums.
(Let’s face it, 3 of the 4 of us this weekend used to do museum shows on sword fighting together at the Higgins museum before it closed. Most of our historical show is based on the historical shows we wrote and presented at the museum 10+ years ago.)
So, the organizer points to us and says “Look, we have educational value at this event. Go watch their show!”

And, every single year we have someone who does come over and looks at our show for educational content.
For the first several years it was the director of the museum. This year she didn’t stop by. I guess after seeing us four years in a row she was satisfied.

Now it is to the point that when I drove our car into the museum yard to drop off our stuff, the groundskeepers wave to me and say hello.

But, at our last show there was this older guy, who just stared intently at us the whole time. I was really starting to wonder why he was staring at us so hard. Had we said something that offended him? Did he think he knew us and disliked us? Was it the fact it was too hot for me to wear my fancy hat?
I had no idea.
After the show, he came straight up to me.

“Have you been doing this for a long time?” he asked.
“Phoenix Swords has been around for twelve years,” I told him. “This particular historical show you just watched actually has grown out of a historical demo that three of us here used to give at a museum in Massachusetts.”
“Your show is really well researched and excellent,” he said. “It is the highlight of this entire event.”

Wow. I never expected a compliment like that.
But, I’m happy we got it!

And, at the end of the day, the faire organizer paid us 25% more than he had promised.
So, maybe the guy had gone and told him that.
(The organizer is a friend of ours and always tries to give us a bit extra. So, it probably just means the crowds were good on Sunday.)

We also got a lot of good comments when we were doing our shows. Throwing spears and putting people in bags seemed to get good responses. But, they would, wouldn’t they?

We also had a long talk with the leaders of the LARP groups fight performance team. One of their leaders used to be a professional wrestler, so has a lot of experience at making hand to hand fights look good. But, they have very little in the way of historical sword experience. So, they show us cool hand to hand stuff, and we show them cool sword stuff, and both sides go away happy.

Other than the actual process of getting there and back, it was an excellent show.
I just wish it wasn’t so hard to get there and back.

Comments

[palusbuteo.livejournal.com]

I saw you starting to talk to that fellow and something compelled me to walk up and see what he had to say/ask.
So, I too was pleasantly surprised he had such high comments about our show.

[hindustar.livejournal.com]

That is an awesome compliment to get. =)

[ravena-kade.livejournal.com]

Huzzah for such a great compliment.

[manue7a.livejournal.com]

yay, sometimes staring people are actually really nice :)