Subject: KCRF MMIII Acts III, IV, & V
From: Butterfly Bill <butterflybill@grapevine.net>
Newsgroups: alt.fairs.renaissance
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2003 19:31:01 -0500
On Saturday morning of the third weekend of the Kansas City Renaissance Festival, I was sitting in my van getting ready to turn the key when raindrops started to appear on the windshield. I thought for a minute about the first day of the season when I had gone in spite of rain and it had turned out to be a real drag that I left at 12:30, and about the many more Faire days to come, and decided not to go. It was a good decision, because the rain continued without letup all day. Then next Sunday brought a perfect sunny day with the temperatures in the 70s, but the ground still very muddy and hardly any straw spread about. The following weekend conditions were reversed; Saturday was perfect, then Sunday I heard thunder at 5 in the morning, and it was still raining lightly by 8 in the morning. I decided not to go that day, and this time the decision was not so good; it stayed cloudy all day but no more wet stuff came down.
The first of these Sundays I followed thru on all the permissions I had gained the previous weekend. I brought my lap harp and joined the band of two fiddles, two recorders, and guitar (Bruce the Bruce) that plays for the Peasant Dancers at the maypole. At their first set, Bruce said to me, "Melissa...Casey..." while pointing each of these people out (silently alluding to my previous KCRF post), then repeated a few times to make sure I got it right. [Bruce replied to this post that I still hadn't gotten it right. Her name is Michelle] I fetched in my instrument and joined on their second. I was a bit nervous at first, but I persisted thru it. It actually helped a bit that I didn't know half the tunes that they played; I had to just improvise some accompaniment patterns - and in so doing really concentrate on the music as it was happening and not think about the impression I might be making on others at the time. Then the Bruce helped me out with a comment, "You're keeping up rather well". The next set, Melissa turned to me and said while looking at the harp, "That's pretty." After that I pretty much settled down. The next day I was there (Sat. of the next weekend) Melissa offered to make me copies of the music, and said "sure" when I asked if I could park my harp in "the cubby hole", a small storage shed behind the maypole field, between sets - and after that started to feel accepted.
I started to really appreciate the technique of both Melody Scott and Becky Warner, two teenagers playing recorder. Sometimes before playing a piece they would quietly practice it at twice the performing tempo, and that performing tempo was frequently at what I would estimate to be at least 135 beats per minute for a jig. Once I was moved to ask Bruce if we had just played "The Freeway to Lisdoonvarna." But even these two raised their hands when I asked, "Does anybody else here find Haste to the Wedding to be incredibly difficult?", which reassured me. (The skip of a ninth in the first measure is hard to aim, as well as the sixth in the seventh.) A fulfilling moment came late on the second Sunday when I observed myself able to keep up with the melody on "Swallowtail Jig". I wound up being there at the maypole all 5 of their sets each day.
Bruce sent me some URLs to some pages on the KCRF performer's site, one of which (http://cobrahq.com/kcrfperformers/Timeline.htm) explains the "alternate history" timeline that results in there being a Queen Eleanor and a King Richard IV. It seems that Elizabeth went off to France to marry the king there after his first wife mysteriously disappeared and was presumed dead. But that wife was discovered later in a convent suffering from amnesia, and the marriage to Elizabeth was annulled and she returned to England. Meanwhile, a gypsy gave King Edward a potion that enabled him to live until 1575, marry the gypsy's cousin, who was elevated to nobility by the King, and have a son, Richard, who married Leonora Boleyn, who changed her name upon coronation to Eleanor. Now it's 1595, and King Richard is trying to get his own son, the eldest of nine children, married off.
Bruce also gave me http://cobrahq.com/kcrfperformers/2003_Info/Scenario.htm, which shows the script for the scenario, which enabled me to recognize a scene that takes place at 10:30 in the courtyard just inside of the front gate - with patrons in mundanes walking casually thru it - that I wouldn't have recognized otherwise. The scenario repeats the familiar Cinderella story, with a ball where Cindy runs off and leaves her shoe, and the Prince spends the early afternoon going around stopping patrons and trying the shoe on their feet. In this bit, full of improvisation, the guy playing him, Scott Smith, really shined in being able to schmooze the ladies and leave them delightedly embarrassed. He was the standout actor in the cast to me this year.
The contents of both of these web pages should have been printed up on paper and made available to the patrons, as well as http://cobrahq.com/kcrfperformers/, which list the names of the performers along with pictures. I often can't tell who's who just from the bare list of names in the program they now pass out. If they made available a special program with pictures of all the performers alongside the names for a few bucks, they would find a buyer at least in me.
One considerable improvement I observed this year was the two herald trumpeters that announce the King. The last two years they missed numerous notes, but this year they really came together after the first weekend. There was the same elderly man with a white beard playing second, but a first whom I don't think I had seen before. Once I was close enough to hear that person speak, and realized that she is a woman. One deterioration this year was the cleanliness of the Royal Privies. There trash and scode accumulated thru the weekends to suggest that they were not being maintained since a Friday cleaning. Apparently last year's "cracker jack cleanup crew" has departed.
The fifth weekend was clear and sunny both days, and Sunday it was cool enough with a north wind to make me regret not having brought my cloak. It was Scottish weekend, but it didn't seem as special this year, owing to there having been Scottish bagpipe acts there every weekend this season. The only difference to this weekend was the presence of three pipe acts instead of only two, and the Clanna Eirann dancers, a local amateur but very good group. Tartanic seemed to be repeating the same act every time, with the conga line and the parts where the drummer dances a parody of John Travolta while the pipes play the opening to In a Gadda da Vida, and he mimes a light saber to the Star Wars theme. This still gets a big response to people seeing them for the first time, but a wee bit old to people like me who've seen them before. Scotland Rising was also doing a lot of anachronistic clowny stuff too, and made me long for The Rogues again, who still do a lot of the traditional stuff with a classical musician's respect.
I again spent half the time of both days at the maypole. One time The Notorious Madame Red brought several of her wenches around to take part in the maypole dance, and unfortunately nobody else seemed to notice this causing the Bruce to make what I thought was one of the best remarks of the faire, "Is this now a September pole?"
I continued on a path that now seems preordained from the first time I garbed up and bought a season pass. I have liked to dance, and still do occasionally, but I have to accept that my age won't let me be an all-day performer at that. I also like to make the music, and that I still have the stamina and strength for. It 's now appearing inevitable that I would finally wind up a performing musician at the Faire. Late Sunday afternoon I came across Lady Nancy, who remarked to me in her Irish faire accent, "Butterfly Bill, I hae not seen you much these last two days." I told her how I had been at the maypole a lot, and that "I was slowly becoming a musician." "She immediately replied, "Ye mean ye haven't been one already?" I sheepishly replied, "Well, yeah, I guess more obviously."
I can now say more about how I want to do it. There has always been the option of joining the Gypsies on the drum, but I like doing jigs and reels more, and I don't want to abandon my gender-bending wench outfits for baggy Roma pants. My main axe will be the harp, but I want to play in a group. I don't want to be like the several other harpists (or hammered dulcimerists) I have seen by the side of the path performing all by themselves mostly to passers-by passing by. I feel more confident when surrounded by others, and I like the extra energy of interaction.
I know wanting to be in a group leads me into all the potential interpersonal conflicts and turnovers that arise so easily in bands. I have noticed that there are a lot of husband-and-wife teams with third and fourth players that frequently change (or even two couples and the daughter of one of them, like Tartan). Groups like Minstrosity and the Pyrates Royale are more like fortunate exceptions. A way around this is to play with a band associated with the Faire itself, like the Peasant Dancers' musicians at KCRF - but then some other dilemmas arise.
Again, my other main act is simply to be appearing in chemise, flowery bodice and beard - and letting people like Notty von Cleavage (of Commedia Sans Arte) say, " I loved to see the shock wave pass over the audience as you arrived anywhere." It's what I get the most smiles of approval for, and it just wouldn't be the same if nobody ever asked me if I lost the bet. The costuming guidelines of some faires like GSLRF Wentzville say explicitly no crossdressing, and I would probably have to be asking other faires to give me especial dispensations if I tried to join their regular casts. And remaining a playtron leaves me the luxury of not having to come when the weather is foul - but it doesn't let me go backstage and perhaps be able to interact with performers when they don't have to remain in character, be able to hold out my mug when the water bearer comes around, and otherwise get to know the other performers more intimately.
So it might be a rocky road like the one to Dublin, but when there is a will there usually emerges a way when one looks long enough. I like the scenery that I'm encountering on it.
Two more weekends coming...
-Butterfly Bill
"Greetings, milady...or is it milord?...or..um...."
"So did you lose the bet?"..."No, I won it, he bet me I wouldn't"
Ren Geek with pewter computer imputer
Solarus Juvenilius Pastritis of Sarcastica. He who Grouches
while Biting the Wax Tadpole.
"possunt vincere nothi solum si facetias tuas a te tollunt"
more faire reviews like this one are at
http://www.grapevine.net/~butterflybill/RbStories.htm#renfair
some of my computer music can be heard at
http://www.mp3.com/ButterflyBill