Where the troops believe in a life of freedom - And this is all about free speech

Renaissance Festival: Weekend 1

This weekend the show went on - as it must. Or something like that.

I've felt unprepared for this year and until the show was only hours away I was still not in Festival mode - then suddenly it all clicked and started feeling familiar and all the madness and hassle that goes into it made perfect sense again.
I found myself racing the sunrise out to site as usual, going through all the familiar patterns and OCD routines of getting into makeup and costume just after dawn and the rush to get ready and worrying about the fact that my body doesn't handle the abuse I put it through like it used to all goes away and turns into impatiently waiting for the cannon to go off so I can turn it loose on the audience and hit them with both barrels of weird energy.

Saturday was all about shaking the rust off, finding that thing that I do which I can't even imagine until I'm in that stupid hat making those stupid noises and it all comes back just fine.
Hit the street in the morning to welcome back our audience and hit the old grooves and found a couple new things before finding time to hit Mark with some projectiles until I snapped one juggling club in half and broke another open.
Time came for us to take the stage in the afternoon and we hit some old grooves, missed several and realized that just finding the old bits agrees with our show about as much as heatstroke does.
We worked through it but it felt like work and woke both of us up to the fact that our show is all about spending 30 minutes enjoying throwing wrenches in the works to see what happens, not putting on a smooth show.

The evening cannon went off to close a really great opening day and I limped back to get out of costume, found a cold glass of Guinness waiting for me in the usual spot and even the fact that my body was a wreck fit in to how right it all felt.

I'm not one of those people that go to the extreme, strange and maybe crazy end of things and thinks that I really belong in the Renaissance and was born in the wrong time period or something like that but, as a show, the Festival is one of those rare places that I feel like I fit as a performer and really belong as a cast member. I know the fact that in only occupies 150 short hours every year tends to give it a lot of emotional weight while it's on but it is one of things I couldn't imagine not doing.

I drank my Guinness and realized I hadn't once left the grounds all day so I had totally forgotten to get a pass until security was sweeping the grounds - found some familiar faces on Safety Services and they told me to sit tight (I'm never going to pull the 'I've been here for 18 years I shouldn't need a pass' bullshit - I would rather get kicked out and have to drive home. seriously) and that they wouldn't be hassling people for passes this weekend. After the sweep was over we grabbed some dinner, got hassled for passes. Everything worked out.

Sunday was a whole different day.
Having no clubs as props (I almost never juggle but they make fucking great props since people will stop and ask me to juggle. It doesn't get much easier than that.) made me realize I'd been doing a lot of the same bits and coasting in a lot of ways. My groove had become a nice rut and having that taken away was the best way to start the year.
The second day could hardly have been more different in terms of interaction, energy and the moments that came out of it were a nice wake up call for me to remember to keep pushing to do things new and different.

I ran into some of my favorite familiar faces - many of them small children.
If anyone needs a reason to get out in the hot sun in layers of costume on two messed up legs and act like an idiot until you want to fall down and pass out I highly recommend having a child you played with a full year ago come give you a big hug and tell you with teary eyes that she missed you all year. Applause and laughs are rewarding as a performer and all but those things make you feel good about becoming a performer in the first place and there's nothing to compare it to.

Another thing that defies comparison is the panicky feeling of a small (but not small enough in this case) chunk of plastic that produces squeaking noises get lodged in your throat because you decided to go barge through a music show and dance.
For the first time since I had the bright idea of stealing a page from Michael Rudolph I inhaled/swallowed my noisemaker and for a few terrifying seconds I couldn't breathe or communicate with anyone what was happening. I was pretty sure I was going to be fine but wasn't sure it was going to be pretty so I made a quick trip offstage to either get it to go up or down.

It went down.

I have plenty of extras and went on with my day but I don't recommend the experience to anyone for any reason. We had a good laugh about it and I hope it's the last time but I kinda doubt it.

Showtime for George and I was also a 180 degree shift - we came out to have a good time and didn't let 'trying to hit bits we had last year' get in the way of having some fun, messing with each other in front of the audience and generally having a good time and hoping they laughed along with us. I think we were pretty successful even if the parents in the front row looked a little leary about the number of times we said 'porn' in front of their kids or nobody appreciated my mime version of the end of Hard Boiled mixed with Princess Bride and Hamlet. Read that sentence again if you're ever wondering how weird our "work" at Festival can be.

The rest of the day was spent somewhere between needing to get rest for the sake of health and needing to stay on stage for the sake of not wanting to miss a second of the fun. The cannon went off, the crowd slowly made their way out and we're a little bit closer to the end. Or at least the middle.


Lots of time was spent on weighty emotional moments around the death of a longtime Festival performer this weekend and I was talking to a longtime veteran of the shows and he pointed out that many of our cast are getting to that point - and there's no retirement plan for old hippies in this show. Why would there be?

Retirement is something for people that can't wait to be done doing whatever it is they're doing with their time - not for people that have found something they want to do the rest of their lives.

It was an interesting take on things, especially in context of the loss of a guy that performed right up until the end and was getting ready to do it again when he passed away suddenly. There was never that time at the end of his life that he wasn't able to do the shows he wanted to do.
Good for him.

I think that's all.
See you in the arena