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It was raining in Lawrence when I left on Friday morning, the eve of the third weekend of the Oklahoma Renaissance Faire, and it rained all the way down to Tulsa and then started to dissipate as I pulled onto the Muskogee Turnpike around noon. The motel TV predicted sunny weather for Saturday, but it dawned overcast and stayed so, with only a few peeks of sun, until closing cannon. It never got above 80, and it was perfect for the velvet princess dress. The following day was sunny, humid, and unseasonably hot, getting into the upper 80s, but strong south winds of sometimes over 20 mph made light sweating very efficient. The following, and last, weekend was two more days of the same. I wore cotton chemises pulled low beneath the thermostat zone in the back of my neck.

Entering the gateyard Saturday morning, I looked a few things over that I had described in my first review two weeks ago and noticed some errors that I had made. In the gateyard there are two wooden sheds facing each other halfway to the turnstile gate, one for selling tickets, and the other for will calls. There is one tent canopy with a tall center pole with tables just to the left after you enter thru the tower gate. Later on inside the gates I noted that Burn's stage had not hay bales, but benches of pressure treated boards, and a trellis awning above the audience area.

And more about the pirate ship. It is the scene of what was called in the program a "Stunt Show", and in it pirates battle a dragon and his minions. There is a wooden fortress facing the ship from the right maybe ten yards way, and there is a tightwire stretching from it to a mast on the ship, supporting a trapeeze dangling from pulley wheels, which one of the cast members grabs in his hands as he rolls down to the ship. There is also other rigging on the ship that people ride on in the same way.

There are platforms on the mast, and one high in front of the fortress, and you see actors falling down off them. I looked behind the fence that one of them had disappeared behind, and saw four thick mattresses piled on top of each other, and some people next to them straightening them out after each fall. The gun ports in the hull open, and cannons emerge to discharge booms of black powder. A green paper maché dragon head looks down on the ship from behind the fortress walls, and snorts steam and talks in an electronically altered voice.

And more about the chessboard. There are not one but two structures behind the berms where grass grows up onto the roof, and also a large area of picnic tables with a trellis canopy over them. There was lots of fighting with swords in both hand and twirling around and ducking. There were a few others fighting Little John style with staffs. But many times both would wind up losing their weapons and would wind up wrestling, and one would win by pinning the other as someone on the sidelines pounded out a 1-2-3.

I mentioned last time the woman who triumphed when her opponent's face got pressed into her décolletage and he swooned. The king of her opposing side followed this in a Scottish accent with, "Hey, no fair using weapons of mass distraction." There were many other victories gained thru some kind of subterfuge of sexual insecurities. There were numerous kicks and kneeings in crotches, and there were two cases of a man yielding when his opponent with a sword was threatening his family jewels. There is a man who appears on the board clasping a cloak around himself, then his chess king demands that he remove it, which he does to reveal a flannel kilt in an aqua and yellow plaid over a set of puffy bloomers with ruffles at the ankles.

One fight between two women turns into a junior high girl fight with them grabbing each others hair and tearing clothes off. A skirt is removed to reveal short bloomers on one, and each has a sleeve torn off (to have been sewn back on the next day). In a later fight between two men, one says to the other, "You fight like a girl", and the other responds by grabbing his hair, which makes him yield and run off the board screaming. There is another exchange between a man and a woman where skirts and a waistcoat bottom are removed, but the man has on underneath green and yellow tights in bicycle short length with a leather codpiece decorated with silver rivets. His opponent asks, "Now what is that", and he responds, "It's my cookie box". The climax of the match results in the visiting Spanish prince, who is the chess king and who loses, having to don "the tartan", and he has the green and yellow skirt wrapped around him and the aqua and yellow kilt draped over him as a sash.

One especially memorable exchange is a young man pleading with his opponent not to use any weapons, "Somebody might get hurt (and it might be me)". He suggests Rock-Paper-Scissors. His opponent is an oriental man with long hair who could play Genghis Khan and talks in a Chinese accent. After demonstrating with each other that you can still get hurt playing R-P-S, the white man suggests spoons. He comes back with a pair of big wooden salad spoons, and the oriental man pulls a big pair of chopsticks out of an equally big paper sheath, then goest thru the motions of breaking them apart and rubbing them to get off the splinters.

And some other memorable performers. I have mentioned in reviews of previous years John Auld as His Majesty, King Henry VIII. He is a natural for the master role (and I have to say a bit miscast in the buffoon role he plays in Commedia Sans Arte), but he is still able to interact with patrons in a friendly while still awe inspiring manner. On that date which I hope is far far away when he passes on, OKRF is gonna have to go Elizabethan, because his doublet will be about impossible for another to fill. And Lisa Pronovost as Her Majesty, Margaret, the Dowager Queen of Scotland (and not his wife, as I said last time, but sister) also deserves most honorable mention. Her strident authoritarian voice I am convinced I could hear across a freeway. She can bring the whole crowd to silence as fast as Aunt Eller shooting off her gun in "Oklahoma!".

And there is a third actor whom I especially noticed, a boy in his mid teens in a peasant shirt and pants whose stage name was Matthew Perryman. He played the village buffoon and engaged in slapstick maneuvers and pratfalls that sometimes had the rest of us fearing for his safety. He threw himself fully into his acting, and he could jam a routine on about any premise.

And I also wish to mention the Gray family. The father played the Lord Mayor, and his wife and family accompanied him most of the places he went. They all wore matching green outfits with black and white trim. With only one exception they are all a real family in mundane life, and Gray is their real last name. And all of their names start with T: Timothy and Tiffany the mother and father, and kids Tazer, Taneth, Tamber, Taleria, and Tyman. (Mary Anderson is the name of the other.) They went around together in a green flock, sometimes gathered together on the Burns Stage or in the lanes and sang as a group, and sometimes joined me and Karen Troeh with our harps and contributed all their voices.

The eldest and youngest of the siblings were the teenage sister, and another girl who could have been a model for a princess toy commercial. The eldest of the three boys was junior high age, and the other two were elementary age, and all 3 had some of the longest sandy blonde hair that I have seen on any boys. (I wondered at first if there were some crossdressing girls among them.) All had turned up noses and Howdy Doody freckles on their faces. And they were able to do wooing gestures toward the ladies with no reluctance or embarrassment.

The whole family was sitting in the audience at the last set of Tullamore in Hidden Grove Sunday of the third weekend, and at one point the youngest boy took the hand of Mary, the hammered dulcimer player, and executed a smooth hand kiss complete with eye contact. The next older wasn't about to be outshone, so he hooked his forearm around hers and did an even more stareful one. Mary was about melting on completion of this. Then a few people went up and congratulated the mother with handshakes and pats on the back. I found it remarkable that such a large family could do so much together with so much enthusiasm and so little rebellion from any of the kids.

Myself, I played the harp some more, mostly at the maypole with The Bedlam Bards and Queen's Gambit, whom many other musicians also joined along with me. But the times I did get to play made me want more. And sometimes I felt frustrated. Both mornings of the last weekend I came upon Boru's Ghost playing at a picnic table next to the chapel, unpacked my harp and started to get in the groove with them for two or three tunes, then had the session cut short by Tartanic starting up their bagpipes about 30 yards away. Sunday morning, when this happened again, Audrey, the pennywhistle player, proposed that the band have a jam session in Hidden Grove between two of their sets there.

I showed up at the agreed upon time, and saw Llewellyn and his lady there, and thought they had also come for that, but then Llew got up on the stage, set up a music stand, hung a banner from it, then proceeded to play four tunes, all of which I was hearing for the first time. It became obvious that they were taking advantage of the vacant and unscheduled stage to put on a set. Audrey said to me, "Looks like our plans got derailed". I was sure that Llew did it in complete ignorance of our other plans, so I couldn't rightfully blame him, but I was still frustrated, and as the psychology textbook says, the first reaction to frustration is anger, one that I had no real place to direct to.

I wish a jam tent like the one that Calliope House hosted at this year's Norman Faire would become a permanent institution at all faires. It would be a place where new talent could get both practice and discovery.

And now for some of the things that could be improved: One afternoon I went into the privy near the Red Ram stage and found an elderly man in a motorized wheel chair facing the door to the single stall in the back. I asked if he was waiting on it, got a shy mumbling answer, then finally figured out that he needed help getting back outside. The door opened inward, and had a metal suitcase style handle on it. The bottom scraped on the floor as you opened it and it required pushing effort to get it all the way open. There was no room for him to turn his chair around in the space barely wide enough for him between the wall and the sinks. I held the door all the way open as he slowly backed out. I also over heard another conversation, "None of those stalls are designed for WOMEN. There were a few people dressing and undressing in the space out front." Apparently they are not farthingale friendly.

The presence of the flushies (and the sinks where you can refill your water jug without having to pay 2 dollars) is wonderful, but it looks like their original design was hasty. They all need to be larger, especially right next to the jousting field, and especially on the ladies' side. I seldom had to stand in a line, but I noticed a lot of them by the other door. (Restrooms are NOT a place for sexual equality.)

One morning I bought a program from the lady selling them at the tower gate. Minstrosity was playing a few feet away, and upon seeing the program in my hand remarked to me that they had not been included on the "Musicians" page. "Tullamore" had also been listed as "Tallamore", and Boru's Ghost was missing its apostrophe. After Bruce the Bruce (listed separately from Queen's Gambit) and before Bedlam Bards came six names that I still couldn't connect with faces after four weeks, and who didn't appear in the Royal Schedule. And in the schedule I always had to stop and try to figure out if the times in the column at the left meant the line above or the line below. Minstrosity was only playing 15 minute gigs according to it. There were other typographical errors elsewhere in the program.

I found one food place that offered fried pies with some vegetables in them, but mostly there were few meals that someone not on the Atkins diet would want to have. A vegetarian would have to pack a bag lunch. I couldn't find anything that was salt free, except for stuff that was loaded with sugar which my doctor doesn't want me to have either. A hippie natural foods place or even a just a salad bar there would be SO nice.

But mostly I didn't dwell on the shortcomings. I had my usual immersion in the jig and reel utopia that the radios in the background at the restaurants and stores leave me so jonesing for that I will drive two hundred miles to get a dose. One morning out in the parking lot I had a conversation with the man playing Don Ryan, one of the king's German guards. I asked him what kind of entity owned this faire, and he said that it was an individual, who was very emotionally involved with faire and understood its spirit. Most of the money made by the Castle comes from their sale of fireworks before the Fourth of July, enough to even subsidize the faire when it needs it. (There is also a four weekend long Halloween haunted house fair every October.) He doesn't have to grub for money like some others who get all their income from the Renaissance faire. Here is a place where the vendors and performers don't all hate the owner, as I have observed in some other places. This faire has a despot who is benevolent and really wants to let his performers shine.

I went to all the pub sings in the Big Ass Tent except for the last Saturday. The one on Sunday of the third weekend was the liveliest with the most audience participation. The Bilge Pumps had little trouble being heard above the din, and thruout the faire they were the most able to work up the crowd. I totally spaced out that there was a ceilidh in the castle at 7 in evening of the last Saturday, but I was so tired then that I could barely get out of my bed at the motel to take a leak, and the Live Journals of several of the musicians complained about numerous respiratory ailments that day.

The faire ended with me passing thru the gauntlet, all the performers assembled in two facing lines in the gateyard, and you had to walk between them to leave, and I hugged my way down it. There is now a strong possibility that I may be moving to somewhere near Muskogee, where I might could get involved as a volunteer thruout the year. This faire is a rising star that looks well worth hitching to.

-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://members.isp.com/farfallabill@isp.com/RbStories.htm#renfair
some of my computer music can be heard at
   http://music.download.com/butterflybill
my Live Journal page is
   http://www.livejournal.com/users/butterflybill/
e-mail me using
   butterflybill at livejournal dot com

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