You are about to enter a world unlike one you’ve ever seen or imagined. A world filled with sights, sounds and scents you’ve only read about in books. Welcome to my world and join me on the other side of the burlap.
Thousands of people stream through the gates of the Renaissance Faire every weekend and we do our best to give each and every one of them at least one outstanding memory that they’ll talk about for years. We know we’ve truly hit that mark when they come back, and now and then, we enchant them so thoroughly that they join our family. Almost all of us are unpaid volunteers, doing it because we want to, yet we’re professionals - we’ve adopted the craft of portraying a mid-sixteenth century village using a wide array of set-building techniques and performing immersive theatre-in-the-round to all who come inside. Needless to say, this is not necessarily something that we can turn on and off like a light, and to some extent, we live as we portray.
The burlap stands tall and surrounds everything. In our parlance, it’s called view-block, and it does just that, preventing people from seeing what’s on the other side. For the most part, that’s a good thing. We don’t want the image we project to be spoiled by people being able to see the cars in the parking lot, or the big propane tanks behind the turkey leg booth. It also silently enforces an us-vs-them boundary.
One of my favorite times of day is before the gates open, and I’m walking along the path, watching everyone get their booths in order, getting dressed, practicing their instruments, or shaking off the bottle of scotch that they had last night. The morning light is coming out and mists are rising as the land warms up. The air is fresh and clean. On Saturday mornings, we are fresh and clean. On Sunday morning, a good many of us have not had the best opportunity to bathe. There are showers available, but… they’re Faire showers. They’re about as far away from most of the camps as possible, and the last time I looked at the numbers and added up the 50 gallon water heater, four shower stalls and hundreds of people, it didn’t look too promising.
In those early morning hours, my nose is picking out the scents of people cooking their breakfast and oddly enough, ready and waiting for a rare scent - a freshly scrubbed and pumped-out privy. So fresh that you can actually smell the cinnamon air freshener. By 10:30, you would not have any idea that there had been an attempt to make the privies smell nice - being the first to sully a privy is a small honor.
Even earlier than that, I’ll be drifting between sleep and wake, hearing soft voices patter about in the cook tent. Ping… Ping… Ping… Ping… Ping… No, it’s not a clock, but someone who’s cracked thousands of eggs in their life, single-handedly opening dozens of eggs into a large metal bowl. I drift back to sleep, thinking of eggs. At seven: <i>BWRROWWRRRrrrrrrrrrrrr</i> The big generator is started, acting as an alarm clock for the entire camp. Oooh! Brrr! COLD! The sun’s not crested over the ridge yet, so it’s still darkish and cold. I throw on pants, boots, shirt and jacket and stumble out of the trailer. <i>ziiiip! zzzzzzippppp!</i> all around as tentflaps are opening up. My body can only comprehend one word now, and it’s COFFEE!
After two tankards of coffee and some breakfast, it’s time to get dressed. By the time I’ve got my garb on, there’s a lacing party in progress as corsets, bum rolls and bodices are being laced up from one end of camp to another. As a merchant-class man, I only need some help to tie the ribbons at the ends of my sleeves, but the ladies portraying Nobles need a lot of help to get dressed.
After the last patron has gone home, we have a saying: “The beer is in the pickup truck,” best said with an exaggerated Southern drawl. We’ve been on our feet for the past nine hours, running madly around, breathing in five pounds of dust and sweating in 95-degrees-in-the-shade weather while wearing fifteen pounds of wool and we’re tired. I snap the lock shut on the membership building and once we’re on the other side of the burlap, we’re unlacing and loosening as we shuffle back off to camp. There may not actually be a pickup truck, and we may be a “dry” (wink-wink, nudge-nudge) camp, but you’ll still hear pop-tops popping, ice clinking, and spirits pouring and lifting.
Dinner is being prepared, and once we’ve all had our fill and the dishes are cleaned up, coffee is made for the next morning. Two years ago, we scored an amazing donation - a pair of commercial coffee brewers, and at about nine, we fire them up and brew ten pots of coffee that’s stored overnight in vacuum pots that keep it warm. There’s too many of us in camp to not have coffee ready in the morning, and even with the ten pots pre-made, we always need to brew another few pots in the morning.
For the young at heart and young of body, there’s always a party or two happening back in the Faire site. But most of us are fast asleep at ten, and that generator will come on at seven to shake us out of bed so we can get dressed and emerge from the other side of the burlap.
I’ve never been to a Ren Faire. It sounds like sump’n I should go see. I guess I’d need to dress up though, cause seems to me that’d be part of the fun. Course I’d have to figure out a costume. Why is everything so difficult!
