And We Shall March

Zombie Sightings And Airbender And Worldcup And Hollywood Fringe And Frieda Paras-Jones And General Getting Back To Life Sort Of Rambling

Now that we're on the other side of the terrifying/thrilling/exhausting/absolutely fucking amazing first-ever Hollywood Fringe Festival, we're slowly getting back to normal operations around here. I'm starting with the vast pile of I Cannot Deal With Any Email Unrelated To Fringe Until This Is Over, quickly followed by catching up on the RSS reader thingy and news outlets unrelated to World Cup.

I'll have more to say about Fringe next week, mostly about other people, probably. Konstantine! Laura! David! Shelby! Jacquetta! Khalil! ComedySportz! ABBIE SANGRIA!

At this moment dunno how I can talk about Moi experience without getting all gushy, and truthfully I'm still processing it all. These post-Fringe days have been emotionally similar to post-CCI days, which was very much a surprise, considering. So I'll talk about other people first, and by the time I get to Moi perhaps I can be more Informational Objective about that entry and not all happythrilledgratefulteary. But Goonan's going to get the overly-long gushy version. So far, Goonan doesn't seem to mind when I drop a 3K email on her. God how I love that woman.

Small HFF Preview: You know those slashy G.I. Joe conversations you have? Like you do? Let me tell you, there's NOTHING to prepare you for standing onstage about to talk slashy G.I. Joe stuff, only to look down and see sitting in the front row the man who voiced the G.I. Joe you're talking slashy about. O.M.G.

Onward.

Throughout all this, Frieda Paras-Jones died. Not fair. At all. The first of her three memorials was Wednesday night, and it was beautiful. Yes, this is a woman whose impact was so broad that three memorial services will barely contain it all. To my regret (and my cowardly fault) I never became a friend of hers because I was too scared to put myself before her to accept or reject me as a potential friend. But I admired her fiercely and learned from her in a gut-punch way. I kinda need to share that gut-punch story - when she told me I disappointed her and she was absolutely right - so will do so within the next couple of weeks. Right now my heart is with Guy & Carlos & Roxanne and all those at Southern, Northern and Bristol who knew her Truly. I knew her as an icon. They knew her as a person. My god that they have to go through this loss.

Meanwhile.

This amazing roundup of zombie-related items was in my reader thingy. Go forth to the homeport of PZ Meyrs and click on all of the links! ZOMBIES.

I'm very glad to read reports that Hollywood's whitewashed Airbender is actually a piece of shit. Good. I'm even happier that none of my close friends have so far wavered from their decision to abstain. For four of them this is really super hard to do, but they grocked to the Big Picture principle and rolled out. I'm glad that they're not missing a good movie, at least.

M. Night? I've seen all your movies, save this newest one. I am one of the very few people who saw Praying With Anger in an actual movie theater 18 years ago; that movie made me file away your name in my head for future tracking. I loved Unbreakable and The Sixth Sense, thought Signs was a hoot, felt I've sat through films far worse than The Village & The Lady In Water, both of which at least entertained a bit.

But Airbender? Fuck you onto seven generations for your complicity in this abominable whitewash, your pathetic attempts to O Lawd What We Gon Do Now jig dance around it in media interviews I will not link to, and your general cowardice. Fuck you and your entire production team and studio. It's 2010. STOP WHITEWASHING. JUST STOP.

You'll make some money on Airbender because most white people do not care about the big picture and will go see it anyway. So it goes. So it has always gone. But you need to make more than "some money" on this I think. You need to make lots. If you have taken excellent pan-Asian source material, put it through the whitewash wringer and turned it into LCD crap of middling interest to the broader non-fan audience? You'll be lucky to earn out your multimillion base expenses. Which of course means you've lost (until the dvds roll out, anyway). Good. And fuck you.

And so.

World Cup World Cup World Cup! The only sport I care about! Gorgeous men from all over Earth playing The Beautiful Game. We're in the kill-round stage now. I have two brackets - the fun one and the real one. In the real one, so far I have only been wrong about one game. This entry auto-posts one hour before My Boys From Brasil take on the Netherlands at WTF Time in the obscenely early morning. I'll be on the couch wearing one of my (four) Brasil shirts, with a giant mug of coffee and even more faith that Brasil will move from the quarterfinals to the semis.

So! From this site I give you my Brasil team member name!

Renaissance Faire! Irwindale! Opens This Weekend And Runs Weekends Through May 14!

Where has my head been? O wait, don't answer that.

Faire opens tomorrow! Not next week, TOMORROW! Go! You will have so much fun being entertained by over 1,000 people (98% of them volunteers) who have worked their butts off throughout the year to get ready to entertain you. There will be new things to see! There will be boobs and shapely man calves clad in tights! There will be gorgeous costumes! There will be the Queen of England! There will be one of my favorite customers, The King Of Spain, I'm sure! There will be food & drink & dance & song & mostly handcrafted merchandise!

OBAMA WOULD WANT YOU TO DO YOUR PART FOR THE ECONOMY BY GOING TO RENAISSANCE FAIRE IN IRWINDALE AND SPENDING MONEY. NO REALLY. HE WOULD. HE'S CLOSE PERSONAL FRIENDS WITH THE CURRENT QUEEN OF ENGLAND, YOU KNOW.

My heart breaks to say this, but I will not be there this run due to commitments elsewhere. That's okay though because my peeps will be out in force at St. Electus,*** and St. Ives and all sorts of other people whose website locations I don't know. I will be there in spirit and also watching on the internet(s) via the fabulous photography of Richard Lowe, who will probably be all over it every weekend taking pictures.

For tons more faire entries (sans last year and obviously this one), click the tag below.

Why yes, my black ass *loves* running around faire screaming Leviticus at patrons, or trying to kill the Easter Bunny, or mud wrestling with the Irish women, or chasing the belly dancers or trying to come up with ways to break the Court. Problem with that? Fuck you.

I will be back to Faire eventually, and I will have *all* of the Blackamoor Decrees in hand on lovely scrolls. ALL OF THEM. And I/Sister Crucible will be going after a certain someone in the Italian Court with them, yes indeed...

Three photos seen here copyright Richard G. Lowe. Or they will be once Typepad stops acting up and lets me post the two pictures it won't let me. Grrr. Will try uploading again later this weekend.

Renaissance Pleasure Faire of Southern California! Cheaper than Disney, with more breasts!

*** The St. Electus site has been a source of much consternation for those who care about it. Finally the ... individual ... who owned the site allowed it to lapse (as predicted) and another concerned party was awesome enough to send an alert, allowing the domain to be rescued before before some porn site grabbed it. It will be up, fully functional and chock full of goodness by next faire season. Barnabas, thank you. Let's just say what you did was quite a Manly Act.

A Faire Day Of Goal Attempts Temporarily Delayed

Starting with my second year at show, I picked a personal goal to reach during the run. This ranged from can I come up with something that would make the rest of them actually show up *and* on time? to can I stand in one spot, preach for at least 3 minutes and get any of the roaming audience to stop and listen?*** to can I find more ways to provide an opening for significant interaction for those who often don't have a chance to work the streets?***  And of course threading through all of that, trying to entertain the audience aka the people who pay to walk through the gate, is of prime importance.

In general, success has varied, particularly last year when I was really pushing it. Not being an actual actor, and thus largely without a clue, my approach is pretty much to guess, to feel my way through and to try to find/take clues from watching the strong actors on cast, who never seem scared to me. I would like to be within striking distance of how good those people are...dunno how long its going to take to get there. Mostly when I'm on the streets I'm scared. Then again, that's one of the reasons I started doing show.

This year's personal goal was to begin adding authenticity to the shtick.  In general The Elect does a lot of shtick, probably because it's fun, we're excellent at it, it's an easy 'get' and there's a tendency to fall back on What Has Worked In Yonder Days, which can lead to stagnation.  The authenticity stuff is a different type of difficult; as such it was the next obvious personal challenge.

So I picked two things and spent from the end of last year's run to now memorizing them:

• A section of the Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God sermon, written & delivered by Jonathan Edwards, arguably the most rhetorically powerful of the Puritan preachers.  It is a beautifully terrifying sermon of run-on sentences. It also goes on for pages and pages and pages, perhaps because these people had a lot of time on their hands, which is why I chose a slice. Depending on how fast I speak, it takes about 12 minutes to get through it all.
  

• One of the Meditations by Edward Taylor, who was both poet and Puritan. I chose this guy's work because unlike Edwards, whose default position was external castigation in great detail, Taylor's work feels more internal to me, more questioning, personal, a little softer. I thought the two make a nice balance and demonstrate the (slight) range of Puritan thought and approach.

I think Taylor's piece is better for individual interaction, where Edwards' sermon rocks better from the mountaintop. This gives me two different levels of stuff to work with.
Those of you In The Know realize immediately that the dates and locations of these two don't quite fit, but I figured that's okay. One thing they tell us a lot is we are presenting a page, not a textbook. The mission of the entire cast is to give the audience an Entertaining Taste of what was, not a dull dissertation. These two are great examples of what Was.  I can't guess how many of the audience would pick up on the source material, but on cast there's maybe a handful of people who would instantly recognize Edwards or Taylor upon hearing them, so it doesn't matter if these two are slightly out of range. If I could figure out how to deliver it correctly *everyone* would get a sense that these were Authentic Godly Words from the past and we'd have that little bit dropped into the whole of the show. That would be a good thing.

(I also picked a third thing to hold in reserve - the poem "A True-Born Englishman: A Satyr" by Daniel Dafoe. It has nothing to do with Puritanism directly, but does very much reflect a Truth of those times of ignored/forgotten by modern people. I abandoned that one for a few reasons, but plan to pick it up again next year.)

For me, deciding to attempt to slide in a bit of Puritan authentic among the shtick is scary because it involves memorizing, attempting to actually act and trying to actually act outside of a controlled environment.  It would be easier to attempt this on a controlled stage, but it would be *better* to figure out a way to pull it off in the streets (and not just because I don't like standing on a stage). Among the many nifty things about community theater, which, fundamentally, is the landscape of faire, is that one doesn't need an order from above to decide to do something and try it. (If it doesn't work, Above will let you know.) I think one of the reasons faires work is because all of those many tons of individual-for-the-most-part-unpaid-volunteer-performers each decide to work/research/craft/practice/experience and bring forth their personal best to fit into the whole without a specific micromanaged directive from Above to do so. There's much wiggle room involved and not insignificant amounts of trust. This is a wonderful thing.

So! My plan was to, whenever I could during the day, just roll with Edwards or Taylor. Be it in the form of a prayer walk, something I started doing last year, on Sundays only using the  1611, or hijacking an empty spot and launching into it for as long as possible.  I wasn't going to give up the prayer walk mainly because I love what the Foolies did whenever they happened upon me on a prayer walk,  nor was I going to give up doing shtick stuff that I so very much enjoy, or anything else  doing. I was just going to add these new elements to the personal pile.

Anywho, when deep in Feeling Sorry For Myself that all that work had come to nothing due to circumstances beyond my control, The Nice One  pointed out that really all it comes down to is I can't make the attempt Now. I'll have to wait until next year but in the meantime I can add *another* slice of Edwards' sermon and maybe by then bring it up to 1/2 hour of material. (And also maybe by then I can get so where I don't start giggling in the middle of it and forget where I was in the Testifying.) Clearly he's insane, but he's also right.  And it got me thinking that there are still sets to build.

There is do or do not. If you can't do now, you can do later - and possibly better. If you can't do what you want to do for yourself at this moment, then you can do what little you can now to help the other people get ready to roll so *they* can Do. That's what faire is.

Which is all an unnecessarily lengthy way of saying that while I won't be running around at Renaissance Pleasure Faire of Southern California in Irwindale his year, with 1000+ people in the cast my not being there will make no practical difference. There are all sorts of awesome new things on deck for show this time out. The former Brewmaster was kind enough to give me a stellar preview of his part in this incredible show-wide gig the entire cast is going to do every performance day, and I was like woah this is good shit! I've seen a few of the new Oojam costumes, and they are so beautiful that group will be even more gorgeous than they already are. I got a glimpse of the SeaDog mistress outfit and character & burst into laughter. They've also added a Walsingham this year. I'm so bummed I can't be there to treat that character like A Puritan Rock Star. In general I wish I could be there to see it all this newness come together. I can't, but you can! Go! Check it out!

*** When I pulled off a successful attempt at this last year after commandeering a hay bale in the middle of a street, part of me was like DAMMIT! No cast members to witness! But then the guy playing the Tax Collector, who is an old-school Puritan, happened by and he saw what was going on and I was like YES! Don't think ego isn't involved in some way in what we do... For context, I tried doing this every single day of the run last year, but it only worked to my satisfaction twice. I think I know what went wrong in the failed attempts and planned to tweak the approach during the 2008 run.

*** Then there's the Crips v. Bloods gig that seemed like a good idea at the time but, as it was explained to me from Above, was All Sorts Of Absolutely Wrong. The less we speak upon that, the better. ha! Though I recognize my error I REGRET NOTHING! Well, except maybe for not cluing into the Wrong bit early enough to change track so that it would work..BUT I'LL NEVER ADMIT THAT!!!

   

What Hath Imtiaz Habib Wrought? or FRIENDS ARE THE BESTEST THINGS IN THE UNIVERSE

Yeah, I know. My jaw is still on floor. ! OMIGOD ! Also? !!!!MUPPET DANCE!!!! I'll be saying thank you for this for YEARS decades UNTO SEVEN GENERATIONS.

Background here.  Related article.

!!!!MUPPET DANCE!!!!

Best Exchange Of The Day

Me (hopeful): What about this!
The Czarina: No.
Me: What about this as trim!
The Czarina: I'm concerned you'll look like an extremely busy couch.
Me: What about -
The Czarina (folding and manipulating): Even if you use the less extreme sections, it still looks like Vegas.
Me: Yes! That's the point!
The Czarina: No.

Heh.

Metro Museum of Art Costume Institute / Timeline of Women's Jackets / Holding

Here.

And also here.

RESCU Foundation Benefit Auction Now Through Sept. 10

The RESCU Foundation is a nonprofit that provides assistance to faire performers and family members dealing with the economic fallout from medical emergencies. (It's not the sort of job that comes with health insurance.) This week the organization is hosting its first eBay auction to raise moolah for future needs. Among items offered:

• A 50th anniversary Wizard of Oz jacket
• A Nightmare Before Christmas clock
• Several feathery hat mask thingies
• Some pretty jewelery

And other stuff. For a good cause! Full list of items here.

Renaissance Faire Irwindale 2007: First Two Weekends!

I'm having a blast so far at this year's Renaissance Faire of Southern California. Last year? Overly-long descriptions of (nearly) every weekend. This year? Highlights! Which means whatever comes to mind as I type (at 1:45 a.m.), which means not nearly everything I witnessed/participated in/or was highly amused by during these first two weekends.

Will probably still be overly-long, though..

***

The Kill The Easter Rabbit gig ended with a spontaneous musical involving the Puritans, the SeaDogs, the whores, Ives and the Bunny. It. Was. Awesome.  I shall remember those minutes for the rest of my life, swear to Jesu. Also wonderful was one of the genius kids from Ives, who happened to have a crossbow, joining in for the last bit of stalking. He worked it as if he were terrified, shaking, dropping his crossbow and jumping out of his skin whenever something looked weird. It was a hoot! Then the punk completely abandoned me when the Queen got involved.

***
Constable: Our spy returns!
BGF: What did the giant monster bunny give you?
<Child, tiny, adorable pinchable cheeks, huge eyes, holds out a lemon drop>
Constable: Wondrous! Give us the candy and we'll give you this rock!
<Child, looks at Constable as if he is crazy>
BGF: It's a great rock! We'll give you two!
Constable: Two rocks for one piece of candy! That's a great deal!
<Child flees.>

The rock thing was the Constable's idea. We were going to clear the shire of rocks while getting all of the candy for ourselves! He also picked up a fallen branch and we 'hid' behind it as we tracked the bunny for a little while. Made me laugh. Luckily I had that shield to hide behind while giggling. Far as I'm concerned, he completely redeemed himself for not stopping me last year.
***
BGF: Jack Sparrow!!!!
My Victim: Owww!
BGF: Hahahahahahahaha!
MV: I'm not even playing.
BGF: You are now!
***
In this photo, where my peeps from the Elect are rolling strong, the Irish girl on the left, wearing green? Delightful young lady who is a hell of a lot of fun on the streets. I like it when someone who doesn't know her lets her get them into a headlock and, too late, they realize their Very Grave Mistake. She's like the Big Red Brain ... ARMS OF STEEL.
***
Over at the whorehouse was a most fabulous gig. A customer would ask to take a picture. Everyone on the porch would start screaming A PORTRAIT! A PORTRAIT! and drag/encourage customers who happened to be around onto the porch. At one point they had to have had at least 70 people up there! Every time they did it, The Bagpiper, who was wearing her Dutch peasants that day, would fling up her arms, run across the courtyard and toss herself into the picture with glee. This could be one of those things where you had to be there, but every single time she did it, it was hilarious. They repeated this over and again because the crowd always changes. Some of the stage acts were involved, along with a good chunk of the principle characters. It was a blast.
***
The sconing group at FoF has *really* stepped it up. They have PROPS. Nice props! They are being clever! They are making me laugh! I think that's all I'll say for now, and give them their own post toward the end of the run.
***
The Turk: I am NOT a Turk!!!!
BGF: What did he say? I don't speak Turkish.
The Turk: I'm Irish! I hate the Turks! They've stolen our jobs! They've -
<I wander off, chasing down a pirate, laughing inside as he continues ranting>

The Turk is the hubby of the Big Red Brain. During workshops he said something to me about the DC adaptation of Neverwhere that, when combined with what Bob Who Needs A Codename said, has gotten me thinking. Which means we may come back to the Neverwhere adaptation down the road.
***
Hey! Stop stealing Emily's gig!!! 

That's so insider, only a few of us know why it's funny.
***
One must be extremely careful in selecting customer children to "help" catch the bunny, because some of them will take off like a shot - rope in hand, bloodlust in their eyes - and you will barely have time to shout a warning to the guardians, let alone catch the kid yourself so you can get in the way before it's too late. Only now do I realize that the wise thing would have been to stop doing that, but doing so would have conflicted with item #3 on my Personal Performance Goal list. Plus, it was highly amusing to me to see how different kids reacted to being ask to spy or hunt.
***
Random Child: I HATE YOU! <kicks, parents take picture>
BGF: Ow.
Another Random Child: Yeah! <kicks. twice. this one got me upside my head>
BGF: Ow.

Lesson? If the kids seem aggressive, DO NOT FALL ON THE GROUND. They can get a bunch of kicks in before you manage to get up and run.
***
My favorite family returned, and they were in costume! I met them my very first year performing, when the father picked me up, threw me over his shoulder and started walking toward the gate, while his wife followed taking pictures. Their daughter was with them this time, and man has she grown. SOON THEY WILL BE ONE OF US. Costuming is a sign! They are nice people. He has this awesome tankard with three handles. I should try to hook them up with FoF, the universal gateway drug for faire. Hmm. I need to have a chat with Lady Sutherland and Lady North.
***
Oojam: We're not gypsies!
The Elect: What did they say? We don't speak Gypsy.
***
Pirates can be the coolest people ever. I owe cupcakes to the one who lets me beat him up and to the one who gave me a handful of dubloons to pass out to kids. Also, the King of Spain  has a gorgeous sister also all decked out in a stunning outfit. Additionally, I have learned that Ives is even more prepared for the apocalypse than I had realized. On top of that, I need to remember to take my Bible when out with Sister Addlebrain, on the off chance that she breaks into her Sister Mannish parody and cracks me up. I wish I could remember the exact words our visiting Sister O'Really The Second said to this customer that almost made me fall over laughing...
***
Jedipino: Whose is this?
BGF: It's a T2, so it's certainly not mine.
Jedipino: Ooooo! Thread snobbery? Thread snobbery?!
***
I want to talk about the group gig with my peeps that I am most happy about because I didn't think it was going to work. But it will have to wait until I find a picture. Also, that one deserve its own post. They fucking rocked that out, and that gig was created in part based on Lessons Learned for the huge torch gig we did last year. It's an educational moment! So it gets its own post. Eventually.
***
 Second weekend, I'm over at the Italians screaming at them. A little girl with a red garland of flowers in her hair walks up to me. I don't notice her at first because she's tiny, and when I felt a patting on my leg I assumed it was one of the Fantasticals letting me know they were there and not to step on them. I look down, she gives me the cutest smile and hands me candy. I take it and ask if it's for me. She nods, still grinning. I go down on one knee so I'm not towering over her and ask if it's really, really for me? She nods, still grinning. I ask her if she's my friend, and she nods. I start sobbing I'VE NEVER HAD A FRIEND BEFORE and she starts giggling, then she hugs me and pats me on my arm. I get up, walk off sobbing and screaming at everyone that I have a friend now, my very own friend! She waves as I leave. The kid never said a word. Throughout she only smiled, nodded and giggled. Thing is, I have *no idea* who this kid is. This was a customer...I didn't recognize her or the adults she was with. It was so sweet! Maybe she saw all the other kids beating me up the weekend before and felt sorry.

Yes, I ate the candy once I got home. I kept the wrapper, though. Put it on the ST Shelf.
***
Speaking of returning customers, two 3-Ps (Pretty, Pretty, Princesses) whom we taught last year how to respond to a reverence, were back. They did the head high/hand out/ree-cover thing perfectly! They remembered! That made me feel good. Whenever I see little girls dressed up like royalty, I treat them like royalty. Same with the little boys dressed up like knights. If a kid dressed like royalty bows at you, we like to make a big deal out of how they don't have to bow to anyone here. WE bow to THEM. Which means you have to teach them what to do if someone bows at them. It's so cute the way their eyes light up when they are made to understand that at faire, they are the special ones.

When I say 'we' here, I mean it not in the royal sense. I mean any participant I draw in to help. That tends to be the Yeomen because we spot these little girls as they come in the gate first thing in the morning, but sometimes it's the Tinker and any of the folks in Ives, various booth workers who are hawking in the street, the Gentlemen Adventurers, the Foolies and Misrule girls, and a few times nobles have helped by bowing to these little 3-Ps.

I mention this because here at BGF Central I talk about Me, Moiself and also I. But it takes everybody to pull off this show, and one of the reasons this show rocks is because everyone throws in however they can.
***
I still can't believe that adolescent boy I sent up to the Queen turned out to be a girl! That kid and her two friends set me up! But man did it turn out to be funny.
***
Random Child: YOU'RE MEAN! THE BUNNY IS NICE!! YOU'RE NOT. <hits with stick. seriously hits with stick. like a baseball bat hits with stick. think about tripping the kid, but then realize parents are nearby, filming.>
BGF: Ow.
***
A really cool red & black leather rose was delivered from my Random Unnamed Benefactor. Yay! I've put it on my baseball hat. Once I finish my Victorian opera coat (which should be sometime in the fall) I'm going to pin it on the front as decoration. A Random Unnamed Benefactor is like a Secret Santa. You don't find out who it is until show is over.
***
To be honest, everything I have so far attempted has not completely worked. Some of it, particularly one of the items on my list of personal performance goals for this year, has SPECTACULARLY failed. I've tried it four times so far, it only worked once. But! No growth without risk, so I'm going to keep working on it. I might do a full report on what happened with the various personal goal items after show ends. Then again, I might not. We'll see.

All photos in this post, such as the one below, are copyright Richard G. Lowe.

Renaissance Faire Irwindale: Pretty! Pretty! PRINCESS!

I'll get around to highlights of the first two weekends later this week, but right now let's return to one of the posts I was going to do leading up to show, before the plague descended (again.) I wanted to show off my outfits! Since quilts are mostly straight lines, there was much worry around here last year when I began these costumes last year. Curves! Tabby things! Interfacing! ACK. But with the guidance of author & costumer Mary Wine, things worked out fairly well. There are all sorts of rookie errors in each of the outfits but you can't tell unless you get really close. Even then you'd probably have to be an Outfitter yourself to spot them. The REP big gun for costuming spotted those errors in less than 30 seconds, but gave me a pass on them anyway, probably because these were my first big attempt. I'll work on fixing that stuff for next year's outfits.

Thanks to Richard the Ninja Photographer, there are pictures! These photos are copyright Richard G. Lowe. (Anybody associated with any faire anywhere should go to his site and make with the PayPal clicky.)

First! Starry Starry Night, which is my favorite. Click on images to make them bigger.

 

This one is composed of gabardine, linen, and cotton vintage Mom cloth from the 70s. The vintage Mom cloth is lining the sleeves; it's black, textured and in any other context but faire would be absolutely hideous. I keep forgetting to ask Mom what on earth she used that cloth for.. If she used it to make an outfit for me when I was a kid, I've completely blocked that memory.  This is also the one I was worried about making past approval, but both the Ives and REP costume czars gave it the thumbs up! And El Homo liked the cloth enough to have some of it put on the sleeves for his robe. Yay! Too bad I only have scraps of it left, otherwise I'd make him a collar out of it, too.

The over skirt for this one weighs just under five pounds, I think. Heavy, but the cloth moves with such flowy grace lord help me every time I stomp past a mirror. So far its holding up...it's cartridge pleated with a four-strand thread and there's a heavy coat hook hidden just below the lacing.

Next, the one I call Dark Moon Night.

 

(Note to self...relocate ziplock baggie of snacks to one of the front pouches, which never fly open upon crashing to the ground and nobody will see it. Idiot. Spotting a ziplock bag kind of ruins the 'back in time' vibe, you know? It's the DETAILS!! Details are what matter. Actually it might be a good idea to ditch that box all together, now that I'm thinking about it. One day I'm going to forget I've got it on, take a fall and land on it. That won't be pretty...)

Anywho, This one is made of linen and gabardine, just in reverse. It also has a forepart made of the Starry Starry Night cloth but I haven't found any good front shots. Once I do I'll update this entry. Notice how the sleeve lining is SSN? So pretty! This one has turned out to be sort of tough. During a brawl one of the sleeves ripped a little bit at the inside shoulder, and when I got home after opening weekend I noticed that the upper layer of the pleats was popping out. I had assumed that because this cloth is so much lighter that I didn't need to attach them with the multi-strands. Wrong! I restitched while at the 24-hour drug dealer laundry.

No pictures yet of the outfit I call War, probably because I haven't worn it yet. That one is straight up black, a lightweight wool/cotton blend and mid-weight cotton, minimal decorations and designed specifically for two extremely messy gigs we sometimes do toward the end of the run.  It's a suit designed for combat!

All of the outfits have braided trim made of brushed fake suede which I am completely in love with (to the point where I got some in brown and rust for use in the mudcloth skirts and a couple of quilts). All also have extra-poofy sleeves, a suggestion of Mary. They're exaggerated so when I'm running around they kind of look like ridiculous wings flapping around. I also made them a little longer than they would normally be in order to get a drape effect when I've got them buttoned.

What else? Bumroll beneath made of denim and poly fill. Though I have the cloth for partlets I decided not to tackle that garment this year, mainly due to time and fear of box pleating. I'll try making shirts next year.

I love these first outfits. To me, when this beautiful cloth is covered with hay and dirt, it's just funnier.

Okay, that's enough Outfitting Egoboo for now.

Countdown to Renaissance Faire Irwindale 2007: "Preparation, Preparation, Preparation"

The copyright notice didn't transfer over when I made this poster. The image in this post is copyright Richard G. Lowe of Renaissancefaire.net. I love this picture!

So! The Renaissance Pleasure Faire, running weekends April 7 through May 20 up at the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area in Irwindale! 45 years! Woo and all that. I never realized I could possibly do improv until four years ago during The Second Worst Year of My Life, when I went to faire as usual planning to do little more than eat, walk around and look at everything, eat some more, drink, and shop. Due primarily to Lady & Lord North of Friends of Faire, whom I knew  only through the previous day job and watching them over the years,  that was the year I decided to cross the line between attendee and participant. (I talked about this a bit at the old site, but because Blogger and Google Blogger are ass, I spiked that site and can't link to those entries. Thus, the summary.) Because I had no clue at the time what was truly involved in becoming a participant, I found myself hunting down The Elect the next year thinking I could volunteer as a PA or something, only to end up enrolled on cast, much to my shock. Guess it's okay to admit that two weeks before opening that first year (2005), I was still considering backing out. On the vast list of things I'm grateful friends talked me out of, running away in fear is one of them.

Set building and performer training for show begins about a month before opening day. Various crews descend upon a piece of blank land and build a town from scratch, which is pretty awesome to witness. A vast majority of these people building the set are volunteers, as are the instructors who handle our training. Some of them are professional actors, others are people with a passion for history who share what they've researched over the years with the rest of us. Just as one of the reasons I love being involved with CCI is due to the massive levels of awsome of the people who comprise the staff? Same thing with faire.

The training workshops  all massively useful, but this year two in particular stood out for me and I wished both had been offered when I first started this whole faire thing.

The first was about dealing with the Queen. Eventually in this overly long ramble here, I explain why I avoid direct contact with the Queen. (Short version in case you don't want to clicky - I don't know what to do, I'm not a strong enough of a performer to stand to her, I tend to be covered in filth and don't want to be smashed by the head of costuming by getting filth on the Queen's Highly Expensive Outfit. So unless someone physically drags me in front of her, I tend to restrict to interacting with the Queen from a distance, via proxy.)

This class was taught by The Queen and the guy who plays Southhampton. Last year we Puritans had an encounter with Southhampton that was a hoot, but happened so early in the morning that no audience members had gotten back to that part of the set there to see it. Throughout I kept wondering why we couldn't break him. I got my answer at this class! This guy has been doing faire for 20-something years, since he was seven-years-old, and he has spent his entire time as part of the queen's court. When he said that during his class, a lightbulb went off. We'll *never* break this guy, though of course we must continue to try. <cackle>

The Queen's class was pretty much designed to tell people like me why we should not be afraid to attempt interaction with her. One interesting bit was realizing that I was not the only person worried about approaching her. They laid out the boundaries, gave us a few ideas of the types of things we could do, and explained in detail  how the people of the Elizabethan era reacted to the Queen showing up in their town. The two of them ran the class like a stand-up act and it was great! It was entertaining as well as informative, especially the section about 'ambush theater' which is a negative thing I had never thought about before. Because of this class, this year I'm going to change one thing I do during progress with the audience and try to turn something that's kind of ambushy into something a wee bit more positive that better fits into the overall vibe the directors are going for. What I have in mind is actually something I did when Brother Sheckle and I went to Escondido, where we wanted to be somewhat polite because we were visitors at a show that had no tradition of Puritans so we toned it down. I don't know if it's going to work, mainly because the audience at our show is huge and due to inexperience I lack the skill of others on cast who can slice a group of people out of horde and get them to listen and obey, but it's worth a try. We'll see what happens.

I think improv is a lot like writing. The only way to improve is to challenge yourself and risk failure. The difference is when you fail, you do so in front of a whole bunch of witnesses, 98% of them with cameras. Rejection is easier over the transom. It's a bitch when the rejectors are two feet away, staring in puzzlement and pointing cameras at you.

The other class was about staging for the street. The guy who did this one had a little wipe-board and shelf attached to a tree! The first thing I thought when I sat down was Ah! A fellow Type A. I'm in good hands. He drew diagrams, talked about phenomenally useful things dealing with how your voice carries depending on what is around you. Because I'm not an actor, most of what he said was brand new information to me and I wish I had learned all this back when I first started with show. I think this class should become a permanent fixture for workshops. (For the record, it may already be, but I don't remember seeing it on the schedule during the previous two years.) I'm going to try to apply what I learned in this class to the steets, if for no other reason than it would be a good thing to show up at work on Monday with a functional voice.  I tend to blow out my voice every weekend and don't get it back until middle of the week or so.

This guy also had AMAZING hair. The only other time I have ever seen hair that ooo was when Mr. Shutterbug and me did a story about a horse out at the LA County Fair with a mane and tail so beautiful it had its own cosmetic contract. (We called it Danzing's Horse, becuse it was almost as big as a Budweiser horse, it was glossy jet black, and it looked like the sort of animal a deathmetal guy would ride around on.) Anywho, at one point the instructor took his hair out of his ponytail and let it flow, and I wasn't the only one to go O My God. But I was the only one to say PLEASE don't put your hair back into a ponytail! He did so anyway, using a term I had never heard before - Hair Porn. He didn't want Hair Porn to distract from his class!

Another class was cool in part because it let me cheer from friends of mine. This class explained to us the need to become familiar with all of the elements of our show, everything from the stage acts to what's offered in the food court. That's not as obvious a message as an 'outsider' would think it to be, but I'm not going to get into the reasons why here. Let's just say I'm glad she said it, this class gave me something to think about, and I'm glad I was tipped off by several folks to take it.

This class was taught by one of the big bosses. During it, she talked about how a simple thing can be turned into a highly entertaining street gig, using two of the Irish as an example because she happened to see them do their yarn thing. It was all I could do not to jump up and scream OMIGOD I know them and they're GREAT! That's them on the left at the very early stages of this particular gig. Alas, one of them might not be at show this year and I don't know if any of the other women in their group will attempt to replicate this gig, but I hope someone does because it is drop dead funny. When I got home I sent them an email to let them know good things were said about them.

Okay, that's enough about workshops. Title of this post was swiped from Sexy Beast,  the fantabulous neo-noir movie with Ray Winstone, Ben Kingsley and Ian McShane, because pulling off Renaissance Faire is *all* about preparation. If you've never seen this movie, rent it.

Tomorrow - Pretty! Pretty! Princess!