MDRF in the News
Every year our fine faire shows up in the news all over the place. You can read some of the article here.
From the Baltimor Business Journal 10.23.2000
From What's Up? Annapolis 7.2005
From Inside Annapolis 10.2005
From The Capital 8.8.2006
From Chesapeake Life 9/10.2006
From Chesapeake Life 9/10.2006
Village People
Grab a mug of mead, enter the sixteenth century, and meet some of the players who bring the Maryland Renaissance Festival to life.
McLean Robbins, Photography by Scott Suchman
It started thirty years ago, near Symphony Woods at Columbia’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. It wasn’t a huge event, just a makeshift stage, a few artisans demonstrating traditional crafts, and a handful of people wandering around in outfits that hadn’t been popular for five hundred years. The day’s entertainment was provided by performers—New Vaudevillians, they came to be called—men and women who practiced the ancient arts of comedy, song, and, more often than not, a combination of the two. (Penn and Teller were among the earliest entertainers at the Maryland Festival, though, they didn’t perform together.) Today, the Maryland Renaissance Festival draws more than 300,000 people—and performers—from around the world to Revel Grove, a permanent village in Crownsville, Md., which springs to life every September and October. There are kings and queens, of course. And knights and wenches and magicians. And more than a handful of common folk walking around in elaborate costumes, drinking mead from pewter mugs, bowing and scraping to the royals passing by. Each year has its own storyline from the thirty-year reign of Henry VIII. Actors research the roles they’re playing and begin rehearsals eight weeks before the festival begins. (This year’s fair depicts Henry’s life in 1539, one of just a few years when the king wasn’t married to one of his six wives.)
To help celebrate the festival’s thirtieth anniversary, CL went behind the scenes and returned with this series of portraits—and a strange hankering for a cup of grog and a fat turkey leg.
King Henry VIII
Fred Nelson, Odenton, Md.
“When I first got the role, I knew what any standard schoolboy knows about Henry: He was a famous English king, he was a big fat guy, and he walked around with a turkey leg all day. Each year, we act out a different year in the history of Henry VIII. And because his history is so rich, there is something going on every year that our writers can work with.
We’re trained every year on the language that we use, RenSpeak. It’s basically a British accent peppered with words and phrases that were commonly used in 1530s England. It takes a while to get back in the habit of speaking that way, and it’s just as difficult to break it when the season is over.
There are certain fans we lovingly call Playtrons. They’re patrons who come to play. They come dressed in costumes and love it when the king and court walk by. They bow and scrape along with everybody else. I was out with a friend a couple of weeks ago in a small town. We passed a college student, who was sitting on a stoop, and he stood at attention and hollered, ‘My liege!’ I went up to him and said, ‘Stop that! Not for another couple of months!’
Sometimes the Playtrons will show up in costumes other than period clothing. There was the day that a guy came dressed as a giant penguin and walked around scaring everybody. The best was the three or four fully costumed Klingons. I went up to them and said, ‘Qapla.’ They completely loved the fact that Henry VIII spoke Klingon. It’s the only Klingon word I could remember. It seemed to work, because they got real animated, and I had my pictures taken with them: Henry and the Klingons.
At the end of the day, when we disappear backstage, cast members will invariably scream out the phrase, ‘The beer is in the pickup truck!’ We’ve discovered it’s the one phrase that’s absolutely impossible to say with a British accent. We say that to break ourselves of the habit of speaking in a mock British accent all day. It’s a big, huge, wildly wacky family."—Anne Howard
Sir Nicholas, Jouster
Roy Cox, Westmoreland, Tenn.
“I’ve been working at the festival since 1983 and have been a pro- fessional jouster for twenty-seven years. I’m named after King Henry VIII’s champion jouster.
I’m in charge of the entire jousting company: fourteen horses, twelve jousters, and twelve ground crew. We do four hour-and-a-half shows per day. A circus performer taught me how to joust twenty-one years ago, and a retired cavalry officer taught me how to ride when I was six. I teach two jousting camps at my sixty-six-acre training facility in Tennessee in the off-season. My wife and I are on the road ten months out of the year traveling to festivals; I joust, and she makes and sells chain-mail jewelry.
It’s about twenty degrees hotter inside the armor than it is outside. It’s physically demanding to wear it; I work out a lot. And it’s very difficult to see out of the helmet. If you want to know what it’s like, take your hands and put them three inches from your face. Then separate your middle and ring finger about 5/16 of an inch and jump up and down.
I make my own armor and also make it for other professional jousters. It takes me about two to three months to make a suit. I do more jousting in a year than the knights did in a lifetime; they’d maybe do it about a hundred times.
Bumps, bruises, cuts, and minor breaks do not count as injuries when you joust, because you need to keep going. I’ve broken all but seven bones in my body: three in each ear and the one in the larynx. I broke my neck the same day that Christopher Reeve broke his. The only reason I didn’t get badly hurt was because I had on my gorget, a metal neck collar. Unbeknownst to most people, jousting has been around in some form or other since the sixth century. I’m sure that in a previous life I was jousting."—KESSLER BURNETT
Emrys Fleet, Ratcatcher
Jim Greene, Dryden, N.Y.
“The ratcatcher is kind of a nasty lowlife. I have a green booger coming out of my nose, blood coming out of my ear. I’m dirty, nasty; my teeth are blacked out.
Emrys is the Welsh word for light. Emrys Fleet is the double meaning of lighthearted and quick of wit. And as a ratcatcher, you need to be light on your feet to keep up with the rats. I’m in a comedy stage show, but I also really love the improvisational part, walking through the lanes and interacting with people. I started working at Renaissance fairs in 1980 in Florida and discovered that you could make a living doing that. I was hired by Disney to perform at Epcot. I worked for ten years in the Indiana Jones stunt show as comic relief. I performed five shows a day, 2,500 people per show. That means over the course of a year, I entertained 6 million people. When your job is to make people laugh, that’s a nice thing to do in the world.
I use props in the show. I have Pesky—he’s my little rat, and he does tricks. I also keep an old mink that I got at a thrift store, and he’s Wilbur, the Dancing Weasel. I like to think I’m clever, too. It’s worked for so many years, something must be right. My kids grew up knowing sword-swallowers and jugglers and real creative and interesting people. I like to think my kids are proud of me. When they go to school on what’s-your-dad-do-for-work-day, they probably mumble, ‘Ratcatcher.’ My kids had rats as pets. Rats actually make delightful pets. They’re smart, fun, and they sit on your shoulder—and they’re clean. I don’t choose to use live animals in my show.
Whenever you have a group of intelligent, crazy people, things get a little wacky. But after twenty-six years and ten bazillion shows, things kind of blend together. Every day, every moment, is a joy. To me, if I’m not laughing, something’s wrong."—A.H.
Mrs. Pugh, Village Laundress
Debs Szymkowiak, Annapolis
“Playing an ugly character is oddly satisfying. Men will flirt outrageously with Mrs. Pugh. There’s sort of a delighted horror in interacting with this woman, because she’s so yucky, but, at the same time, she’s really quite appealing, because she’s very friendly. She’s outgoing, and she’s got a sense of humor.
All I have to do is walk up, announce my name, and say that I’m a laundress and the audience gets the giggles just looking at me, and I don’t have to say another word. They’re gone, puddles of giggles, thinking about this thing being a laundress. Little children go, ‘Mommy, that lady’s got bugs on her!’ I came up with a sweet backstory in my own head, so now Mrs. Pugh talks about her husband, Hugh Pugh, [in a Cockney accent]: She ‘loves him from the warts on his head to the muck on his boots.’
The year when Anne Boleyn was crowned, we had a big coronation. Now what is Mrs. Pugh going to give a queen? So I got a little tiny bottle and I filled it with what was, theoretically, horse urine (old-fashioned bleach). I really used cider vinegar, but it looked good. Of course Mrs. Pugh is illiterate, but still gave a very flowery presentation: ‘…I hereby bequeath unto you a small vial of my very best bleach—collected this morning from the Viscount’s valiant white stallion.’ The queen’s eyebrows raised, and she said, ‘Oh, yes, it is a very fine bleach indeed. As a matter of fact, it is the only bottle of horse urine I’ve been given this coronation ceremony, and I shall value it the more highly.’"—A.H
Stupina Michele Schultz
Glen Burnie, Md.
“My character, Stupina, is a part of the tradition of Commedia dell’Arte,an Italian style of theater started during the Renaissance. They were the people who would do the pre-show before the medicine salesmen would do their pitches to get you to buy their—cough, cough—’medicine,’ which was usually booze in a bottle. They’d often perform in masks and most of the shows were improvised. It was kind of like ‘Punch and Judy.’
When I play Stupina, she’s somewhat like a puppy dog and a three-year-old. She’s very, very affectionate. She’s sort of stupefied or amazed by everything. She sings a lot. She’s been known to sit in the dirt and sing about sitting in the dirt at the top of her lungs. She’s got that playful energy that a three-year-old has.
You will either get people so fascinated by her and understand the concept right away, or people look at the scary face and run screaming.
I’m always amused because the other character I play is in a corset with lots of cleavage, and I’ll walk by and people will flirt with me. And then I’ll walk by as Stupina, and they’ll say to me, ‘Wow, you’re really ugly.’ It’s an interesting psychology, because I’ll look at them and say, ‘I just learned something about you. And the pretty character is never going to speak to you again.’"—Joe Sugarman
Lady Kytson, Village Noble
Paula Peterka, Crownsville, Md.
“I’m a ham. I’ve been on stage since I was three, but I started with the California Renaissance festival the summer after college. Four years later, at another festival, I met Larry, my husband, who was also a performer. I’ve been here since 1992. We play nobles in the village, the well-dressed ones that usually surround the king on the reviewing stand at the jousts (we’re filthy rich, and sponsor one of the jousters).
I also do different living history shows, like “Dress for Excess.” I start out in my Renaissance “underwear,” then I proceed to dress, explaining about each piece of clothing, what it’s called, how it’s made, and why it’s worn.
I also do a cooking show—Julia Child meets the Renaissance—with other members of my household. Besides working in the computer department for the IRS, I’m also a Mary Kay consultant. It’s not that much different teaching people about make-up than it is to teach them about sixteenth-century cooking.
When we stroll around the village, people stop and ask about our daily lives. The number one question I get asked is ‘Where’s the privy?’ and number two is ‘Are you hot in that?’ My answer is ‘I shall be hot were I naked as I were born, so I might as well be fashionable.’
I think of what we’re doing as education through entertainment.
If I get people to laugh, they remember more. It’s kind of an awesome responsibility. People have come to see you; you’re the attraction. We don’t have roller-coasters.
One of the very first years I was performing, I was sitting down and resting my face on my hand and someone took a photo. And I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, I’m someone’s vacation.’’
From the Baltimor Business Journal 10.23.2000
Reliving the Renaissance
Arundel fair looks to 16th century for modern day profits
Michele Berk
Staff Writer
Most people wandering the grounds of the Maryland Renaissance Festival munching on giant turkey legs and rooting for their favorite jouster hardly consider what goes on behind the scenes.
Jules Smith, the man who brings the festival to an Anne Arundel County farm field each year, imagines that to the average visitor -- even those who get in the spirit by donning the clothes of Elizabethan England -- think it's just another annual festival.
Smith said that could not be farther from the truth.
The nine-weekend event -- a hearty mix of Old World pageantry, food and arts and crafts -- has become a serious family business that is constantly trying to find ways to increase revenue while keeping customers and employees happy.
"It started in the hippie era, and it's been a phenomenal task to raise it above that," said Smith, general manager of the Maryland Renaissance Festival (http://www.rennfest.com). "It's not a communal thing anymore. It's a monumental business."
When Smith took his seat as head of the Festival in 1986, the attraction was drawing 60,000 people and posting $800,000 in revenue over six weeks. About 230,000 visitors will have passed through the gates of the 24-year-old Crownsville attraction when it closes another season on Oct. 22, bringing the company $5.5 million in revenues. He declined to disclose net income.
Smith's strategy has been to keep the festival fresh at the same time giving the customers what they expect -- jugglers, fire eaters, jousters and bards. He said by regularly changing the entertainment, he has been able to boost the Maryland festival from a small operation that attracted a select audience into one that spans 85 acres in Crownsville.
"I don't want to be Disneyland," Smith said. "I want to fill another niche."
But shaping the festival into what it is today was no easy feat.
Smith took over the top position at somewhat of a pivotal time for the attraction. His father, one of a group of investors that owns the festival company, started the Maryland show in 1977, and it had been a makeshift operation that set up each year on land near Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia.
When Smith applied for the general manager job in January 1986, the Festival was $1.2 million in debt and had just moved to its Crownsville location.
His first order of business was to organize a payment plan to eliminate debt and get the festival running in the black. Then he took advantage of the Crownsville location to create a permanent structure. While the old location required setting up and tearing down the 16th century village each year, the new location allowed the festival's booths, stages and props to stay in place year round.
Now during the off-season, Smith and his staff of eight full-time employees, including his father and three brothers, can concentrate on building new props, games and signs and trying out new ideas.
"I'm kind of like the farmer," Smith said. "I work all year and harvest for 19 days."
Besides the physical appearance, Smith also boosted the food program. "We had what I would term cafeteria food," he said.
At his new, permanent location, Smith built kitchens of the caliber of commercial restaurants. Then he began offering his food stand managers an 8 percent cut of the profits as a way to motivate them.
Through a consignment ticket program that Smith created, companies are given tickets at a discounted price to sell to their employees. At the end of the season, the company pays for the ones it used and returns any unused tickets. This year, the festival had 168 clients who utilized the consignment program.
Smith also refocused his advertising approach. Where the festival had previously been geared to a target audience, Smith began advertising to a broader audience. By 1991, attendance had climbed to 120,000 visitors. But Smith wasn't content.
Five years ago, he opened a show in Canada, just west of Toronto. Though still relatively young and trying to grow, that show has been up 27 percent, Smith said.
Smith is looking into opening a great hall in Maryland where off-season events such as weddings, Halloween parties, May fairs and Mardi Gras celebrations can be held.
Nearly every major city in the United States, and even some in other countries, has a Renaissance Festival. Since few Marylanders visit other festivals, Smith doesn't consider them his competition, but he does like to see how his show compares. He's visited many other shows and said his consignment ticket program and the food program are unique.
Smith said his show is one of the best in the country. But not everyone agrees.
George Coulam, who owns the Texas Renaissance Festival near Houston, said Smith and many others around the country are too businesslike in their approach to running the festival.
The Texas festival, a 26-year-old operation that attracted 325,000 people last year, is focused on the artistic aspects of the Renaissance, Coulam said.
"These guys are businesspeople, not artists," he said. "I'm an artist. He makes more money but I have more fun."
But Jeffrey Seigel, producer of the Arizona and North Carolina Renaissance Festivals, said the Maryland Renaissance Festival and the Smiths have a very good reputation among the shows in the circuit.
"I think the fact that it has better attendance than most of the shows and a good reputation, he's in the upper echelon of shows in the country," Seigel said.
Because the Arizona show runs in February and March when most shows are in the off-season, Seigel said he is able to attract some of the best performers and entertainers from across the country. But it's difficult to get those same performers to his North Carolina show because it overlaps with the Maryland show and that's where the entertainers go.
"I'm fortunate to work with some really quality people, and they say good things about the Maryland show," Seigel said. "If they didn't like the Maryland show they'd give it up and come work for me [in North Carolina]."
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From What's Up? Annapolis 7.2005
Renaissance Talent For the 21st Century
by Kimberly Raspa
It arrives every year, like a birthday or an anniversary, except the celebration lasts for nine weeks and includes hundreds of other people. Performers migrate from all over the world and set up camp for The Maryland Renaissance Festival, a journey to the 16th century that brings Shakespearean themes and royalty to life with historic figures, eclectic musical performances, and historically-based theater acts, laid within a 25-acre, wooded haven called Revel Grove in Crownsville.
Hundreds of performers send in their resumes every year: jugglers, sword-swallowers, actors, musicians, comedians, and magicians, just to name a few. So whom do they have to impress to be a part of the festival? That's easy: the festival's behind-the-scenes artistic director of 19 years, Carolyn Spedden.
"I evaluate every year what we're doing, if we need to make any changes, what we're lacking, what we need to bring in, that sort of thing," Spedden said. "People send in their submissions all year and then I make decisions on that and then it's pretty much cast."
Spedden began her journey with the Renaissance Festival as an actor in 1984, the last year it was based in Colombia, Maryland. A recent college graduate and budding actress, she entered the renaissance world with a theater degree, started writing plays, formed a comedy group called Shakespeare's Skum and a group for high schoolers called, The Young Actors' Ensemble Acting Conservatory. Naturally she gravitated toward directing and administrative duties associated with the festival. "I've been artistic director for at least 15 years; I've been writing here and various other places for 18, 19 years," she said.
Spedden has penned quite a collection of scripts for the festival's theater performances. She's created at least five original scripts for the royal court, sometimes even directing them. Each year she sets the time period for the festival, following the events of Henry VIII's life. Last year's theme, "The Year of Three Queens," highlighted three of Henry's wives (in just five months, one died, one was beheaded and one was newly married). This year, Spedden chose the year 1537, emphasizing Henry VIII's relationship with his first daughter, Princess Mary.
"I prefer doing my own projects," she said. "If I write it, I'm usually either directing or acting in it or doing something for it. I do bring in other people as well; you don't always want one voice doing it. That's part of the fun of the job, creating the storyline to figure out what year in history you're going to do."
Every year, the hiring process falls into Spedden's care.
"I do make people jump through a fair amount of hoops for the admission process," Spedden said. "This year I had four dozen musical acts come in and 50 submissions for stage acts."
Veteran performers, like sword swallower Johnny Fox and musical group Consort Anon, will have 25 years on their résumés this fall. Arnold resident Mary Ann Jung, well known as character Queen Anne Boleyn, will enter her 26th year, and Michele Schultz, a street act and stage performer, will round up a decade of entertaining.
"I absolutely adore it," Schultz said. She plays Columbina, a character from 1400's Italian theater with her marionette sidekick Stupina. "I love making people laugh, I love watching their faces light up. It's watching adults' eyes get as big as the kids'-and the kids' eyes get very large."
"The actors really have the hardest job of anybody here," Spedden said. "They're involved in a seven-week rehearsal process, so from July onward, some will be here several times to six times a week depending on their schedule up until when the show opens. The standards for actors are much more intense. We work on the language skills so they can feel a little more comfortable with the 16th century-isms: the "thees" and the "thous" and how it's used properly. We encourage and have basic guidelines for the musicians, but they're not held quite to the same standard."
Jung, apart from performing, also serves as a board member and assists in determining audition results. The standard process for an audition-er requires a monologue and an improvised response to a specific scenario the board creates.
"Improv is the scariest. You can't prepare for an improv audition," Jung said. "What we admire is that you try. If you just go with it-that shows gumption. We'll still admire it if we think it's weird. We can forgive a lot of things and help develop you."
Schultz believes the role of a performer requires much more than solely talent. "[It's] the ability to think on your feet, be creative, comfort with period language, openness to direction, the ability to create on your own and be responsible and having a professional attitude," she said. "I tell young actors, if you can make it at the Renaissance Festival, you can make it anywhere," Jung said. "If you can work for nine hours in all kinds of weather and still be friendly and entertain people, that's a dream."
The Maryland festival developed between two friends, Jules Smith, Sr. and Jim Rouse. Smith's involvement with the Minnesota Renaissance Festival prompted him to brainstorm a potential festival in Maryland. Rouse indefinitely offered his 12-acres of land to Smith, adjacent to event venue, Merriweather Post Pavilion, and the festival ran from 1977-1984. Smith and his son, Jules Smith, Jr. (presently the festival's general manager), researched prospective areas to move the festival and found the Crownsville plot, privately owned by a local family. They leased the land and went straight to work, developing the 25-acres within 33 days for the festival's grand opening. Was it the right move? 83,000 people attended that day in 1985. Since then, it has become the prime outdoor event in the region; the second largest festival in the country attracting guests up to 225,000.
Surprisingly, the festival attracts a strong portion of international performers from Germany, Sweden and Australia via the website and word of mouth.
"I think one of the reasons they like performing here is because of the caliber of the performers. It's a very positive performing experience for them, so that's very exciting, and I'm grateful I can be choosy with who I bring in," Spedden said. She equates her choosiness to Simon Cowell, one of the popular (or not so popular) judges on American Idol.
"I probably am most sympathetic to Simon," Spedden admitted. "I don't think he's mean at all. I think he's just being honest. It would benefit every performer if they sat on the other side and had to go through the whole audition process. It's one of those unfair points in life-for example, for an actor, you know within fifteen minutes of them opening their mouths if they're really good or if they just have that charisma." So is there that one specific quality that catapults a performer into the "yes" pile?
"I think you're always looking for someone dynamic," Spedden said. "It's always good to see unique skills but I think more it's the unique performer. You may say, oh, we have a lot of jugglers, but if someone comes along who's an incredible performer, it won't seem like you're seeing the same juggling trick. They have a way to really transform it.
"Sometimes you get a musician who technically may be brilliant, but they don't have the showmanship required to perform successfully out here. A lot of times with classical musicians, you'll notice they're kind of into their music, but they're not really into the showmanship. Here, they have to be."
Spedden shoulders the burden of deciding which performers stay and which performers go.
"It's always a difficult balancing act," She said, "You want to bring back people's favorites, but people always say, 'What's new?' One thing we try to do is present a little something for everybody. Some people want more family stuff, some people want more pub, wench-y body stuff-you try to have enough of that where everybody's happy. Some years, great musicians will come my way and I'll hire more musicians; other times, I'll focus on more street acts. Every year it's trying to get that balance."
New to the festival for 2005 are a group of performance artists called The Aerial Angels.
"They do aerial silk and hoop work," Spedden described. "It's one long silk that comes down like a piece of fabric and they wind themselves up and do aerial work through hoops."
Spedden has booked over 30 stage acts and 50 soloists and musical groups to perform at the fall festival. It's apparent the auditioning process is incredibly professional and organized-a continuous progression toward innovative performances as well as performers. Spedden, Jung and Schultz take great pride in the festival, as they should. The involvement of every performer, vendor, and staff member encompasses a great sense of community, an ongoing friendship that rekindles each year between the performers and the audience.
"People who are long time patrons visit once a year and start to feel like they know the performers. I think the closest thing is the relationship people have sometimes with TV characters. Just as people felt they knew the cast of Friends, people here feel they know these people and seek them out every year," Spedden said.
And after being a part of an organization for more than a decade, it's inevitable that performers acquire strong friendships with each other. "It's one of the few places that allows the type of theater I perform to be accepted," Schultz said. "Most of my friends are in that world. It's my social circle." She described her experience driving to the grounds every year for the first day. "I literally start crying because I think 'I'm home.' It's home to a lot of us. It's a place where people understand you and where people want to play. This world's too serious."
For Spedden, it's a detailed, yearlong preparation that lasts a mere nineteen days. Every audition, every yes and no, every rehearsal and class builds up to that moment when a small part of Maryland transforms into a world of history, character, celebration, and reunion.
"We tell the performers, this is a party and you're the host. They care that people are having a good time and everyone's happy," Spedden said. "I think the audience picks up on that and they know that we want you to have a good time here. It does feel like you're revisiting an old friend, and that makes it a much more immediate and intimate experience."
The Maryland Renaissance Festival runs Saturdays, Sundays, and selected holidays August 27-October 23. 10-7 p.m., rain or shine. Call 1-800-296-7304 for more information or visit thier website.
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From Inside Annapolis 10.2005
Maryland Renaissance Festival: Let Merriment Abound
By M.A. Cashman
"Pause for a moment to listen to a 1600s musician, watch a demonstration of glass blowing, quench your thirst with a mug of ale and whet your appetite with a gigantic turkey leg, pick up the latest gossip from the fishmonger, thrill to the combat joust and browse through the wares at one of the many fine craft booths. There's too much to do in a single day."
The first large-scale Renaissance Festival opened in California more than thirty years ago. Today there may be as many as thirty-five such festivals around the country, each modeled after the original, but independently owned. One of the early festivals was built in Minnesota, on the land of one of the new towns popular in the 70s, It was in Chaska, just west of Minneapolis, the hometown of Jules Smith, Sr., and his family. He was attracted by the idea of such a festival, and a meeting with Jim Rouse in Irvine, California paved the way for Smith, Sr. to start the Maryland Renaissance Festival in 1977 in Symphony Woods, part of Rouse's new town of Columbia. Smith Sr's arrangement with The Rouse Company, a fine landlord that provided utilities and charged no rent, lasted for eight years.
In 1981, the festival moved to a family farm in Crownsville, where on a 25-acre wooded site with 85 acres of free parking, they created a 16th century English village and named it Revel Grove. The festival is in its 29th year with Jules Smith, Sr. President, residing in Minnesota, and his four sons as on-site managers. Vice-President Jules Smith, Jr. heads the staff that includes Jaki Shives, Assistant Manager in charge of employees, Carolyn Spedden, Artistic Director, Justin Smith, Food & Beverage Manager, Marc Smith, Operations Manager, and Adam Smith, Site Manager. Cindy Andersen is the full-time costumer on staff responsible for costuming the 200 professional townspeople and about 15% of the visitors who dress up.
Smith, Jr. is proud of the fact that, "Kids rule at the Maryland Renaissance Festival. We get parents looking for their kids, but not many kids are looking for their parents. In this difficult time period, we can offer more security than the mall in Washington." While the festival runs for nine weekends, 12-hour days every day, the management and staff work year round. "It's a fair amount of work," according to Smith, but after 30 years, he still loves what he does. "You should do what you enjoy, what you have a passion for," he comments, adding, "It's worth it to see families after a day at the festival. The kid comes out in a Robin Hood hat and wooden sword; Mom and Dad have their arms around each other. "Shives is in charge when Smith, Jr. is off-site. As administrator in charge of ordering and hiring, Shives is a self-described "jack of all trades." Each year she hires 300 youngsters between the ages of 14 and 18 to handle soda, tickets, trash, parking, and check passes. She enjoys seeing most come back each year until they are 18 and off to college.
Spedden writes and directs many of the plays on festival stages, and the story line from English history. This year's festival dramatizes Henry VIII and Queen Jane Seymour visiting Revel Grove for the annual Harvest Celebration, as villagers await the news of a future prince and heir to the throne. Spedden holds auditions and casts the 200 or so performing artists - actors, dancers, singers, musicians, jugglers, magicians, all who provide entertainment, either on stage or strolling through the village as historic personages. Some are part of the king's court during the opening ceremony each day. After his official welcome at 9:45 outside the gates of the village, the King and Queen lead a procession of courtiers followed by visitors through the gates as the festival begins. Throughout the day, The Royal Court remains at the festival, happily exchanging pleasantries with visitors and presiding over several of the jousts.
The festival village offers many choices to visitors: 100 craft booths, 18 specialty booths, and 48 food and beverage booths, including five pubs, eight major stages, a joust field and lots of games. There is a fire-eater, jugglers, magicians, and comely wenches. There are free pony rides, a children's activity area, a maze, and an archery range. According to Smith, Jr., "It takes 1,800 people to run the fair; last year there were 300,000 visitors. The way the festival is laid out, the customer-vendor ratio is high."
The festival is laid out for meandering. In the village of Revel Grove, there are craft booths along nine paths with appropriately English names, such as Queen's Path, White Stag Grove, Valley Meade, and Stub Toe Lane. Each offers a variety to visitors who can have their fortunes told, get a massage, dress in the garb of the festival, purchase clothing, jewelry, pottery and other crafts, books and artwork typical of the Renaissance, and observe how glassblowers ply their craft.
Meandering down Meadow Lane, visitors meet Larry Wood with his leather masks; along Valley Meade there are the hand-made journals by Hope Shakyar, National Geographic photographer whose work reflects her travels around the world, and David Eisner's House of Musical Traditions, with instruments from all over the world. Along the Queen's Path, there is Allen Ye Printmaker with his "fine forged prints", and nearby the Flying Rainbow Bubblewands of Shana and Leah Odom. Down the King's Field Path is Cimmerian Treasures, the chain mail art of Kate Cox; down Tiltyard Path the Wheat Weaving of Cora Hendershot, and down White Stag Grove, Page After Page features Janet McCabe's Books of the Renaissance. Along Kenwood Lane are Wise Studios with the fantasy figures of Patrick Wise, and Perchance to Dream, the art of quilter Patti Chung, long-term exhibitor at the festival. This is the 25th year for Chung, who was with the festival in Columbia. Unlike most vendors who are from out of state, Chung is from Dundalk, Maryland. She describes her handmade fantasy quilts as, "Made of cotton, with designs of castles, Stonehenge, wizards, and dragons. Each is cut free-hand; no two are alike, and they come in all sizes, from King to baby quilts."
Visitors meandering down Stub Toe Lane can find refreshment in a massage and buy oils from Jeanné Berger at Her Majesty's Healers. There are also the marquetry of woodworker Patrick Parker in Arcane Art of Marquety, the Stoneware of potter Terrence F. Tessum, and the Stoneworks jewelry of Annapolis artisans Kate Hansen and Nancy Torney. Longtime friends and neighbors from Cape St. John, this is their 21st festival year. After dressing up with their daughters for festivals in Columbia, Hansen and Torney took a booth when the festival came to Crownsville. Torney describes how their original gemstone focus has expanded to include crystals and glass beads, how they continue to "make jewelry from fine parts, hand-knotted and guaranteed, and how they carryboth classic pieces and those that reflect fashion trends." Observing what celebrities wear and what jewelry designers use to show off their clothing keeps them current with fashion trends. "This year, " according to Torney, "The essential fashion accessory is the necklace of chunky or faceted gemstones." She sums it up by commenting, "You can never have too much jewelry."
For sustenance throughout the day, visitors may choose from a variety of food available all along the lanes - meander down Valley Meade for crab cake sandwiches, White Stag for Meat Pies, Meadow Lane for Corned Beef, and May Dale's Way for Steak on a Stick. There are many ways to quench the thirst, from Root Beer to real brew, and a variety of sweet treats, including ice cream.
Festival stages offer an enormous schedule of entertainment. On The Royal Stage, Johnny Fox, Swordswallower Extraordinaire, thrills festival audiences as he has for 25 years; visitors can see Foster Holdcomb and his Art of Fire on the Jury Rig Stage; and at the Globe Theatre there is Shakespeare's Skum, parodies of the Bard's work by Carolyn Spedden, who also wrote The Lost Princess, a family theatre production complete with a beautiful princess and a comic fairy Godmother on the Gatehouse Stage. The Pyrates Royale at the Globe Theatre, Men in Tights at the Market Stage, The Renaissance Man at the Lyric Stage, and Robin Hood and St. George & the Dragon at the Fortune Stage are other choices. The Joust Field is the setting for the Human Chess Game when the evil Sheriff Reginald Sharp is challenged by Seymour J. Seymour, a country cousin of the Queen. Also, there are shows at the Living History Pavilion in the Guildyard.
Renaissance fascination with processions and ceremonies is reflected in several staged events, including two knighting ceremonies a day, when all goodly children (age three and older) can be knighted by King Henry or Queen Jane. Our fascination with the history of the period is reflected in Mike Field's The Story of Mary, daughter of Henry and his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, and the Globe Theatre production of Shakespeare's Macbeth, directed by Timothy Shaw and Brittney Sweeney, in honor of the 1000th anniversary of the historic Macbeth. For a change of pace, Gatehouse Stage features an uproarious production of David Garrick's The Lying Valet directed by Glenn Evans and Joy Evans. Again this year, the festival hosts a variety of special events: August 27-28: Children's Weekend (all under the age of 11 free); September 4-5: Singles Weekend when Singles meet and mingle at the White Hart Tavern; September 6 (Monday): Seniors Day (all 62 and over admitted free); September 18-19: Scottish Celebration; September 25-26: Pirate Invasion (daily pirate costume contest); October 2-3: Oktoberfest with German music and dancing; October 9-10: Romance Weekend when couples renew their vows at a ceremony in the chapel; October 16-17: Shakespeare Weekend with Marathon readings of the sonnets; and October 23-24: Jousting Tournament when knights compete to become the best in the kingdom.
Weddings are held at the festival from September 7 through October 20. For a fee, costumes, music, and an ordained minister are made available. No extra flowers or decorations, however, may be brought into the festival. Interested parties are asked to call the management office to check on chapel availability. Additional caveats for visitors are: "No pets, no weapons, " and, "Parents seeking counsel on age-appropriate shows for their wee lads and lasses should visit our Customer Service Pavilion near the front gate for show descriptions and ratings."
The Festival is an invitation into the spirit of the Renaissance, the transition from the Medieval to the Modern World that revived art and literature exemplified in Shakespeare's plays at the Globe Theatre. Visitors are free to speak with the Royal Court, with Princess Arianna and her Fairy Godmother Bertie, and with villagers. Visitors are also invited to wear the garb of the day - tights, robes, capes, gowns, and other appropriate costume pieces - as they meander through the village of Revel Grove as if they live there. Those clad thusly may become fluent in Olde English, the language of "Your Majesty, faire, My Lady, prithee, privy, olde and shoppe." Indeed, those who merge with the sights and sounds and smells of Renaissance England may find those in modern dress to be woefully out of fashion.
The festival is located on Crownsville Rd. just west of Annapolis Mall between MD Routes 178 and 450. Smith, Jr. sums it up when he says, "It is a perfect family outing; come early for a full day of fun," Truly, it is more than you can do in a single day.
Top
From The Capital 8.8.2006
TopRenaissance Festival puts gold in coffers
300,000 people expected to attend 8-week event and add $19 million to economy
By Katie Arcieri
When the 300,000 anticipated visitors turn out for the 30th annual Maryland Renaissance Festival later this month, the event will draw die-hard fans from as far as merry old England and pump about $19 million into the local economy.
A 2005 study done for the Annapolis and Anne Arundel County Conference and Visitors Bureau found that the eight-week event ranks second in terms of economic impact among tourism blockbusters.
Only the U.S. Sailboat and Power Boat shows in October surpass the Crownsville festival, with a combined $51 million impact on the economy.
"We are becoming an international destination," said Connie Del Signore, president and chief executive officer for the Annapolis and Anne Arundel County Conference and Visitors Bureau. "The Renaissance Festival is key to our selling ourselves as an international destination. It appeals to a global audience."
Total expenditures among the 280,000 visitors who attend the festival is $12 million.
Ms. Del Signore said that number is based on visitors who went to the festival and spent the night at county hotels, not the event's day trippers, who could account for another $1 million in expenditures.
About $7 million is generated from festival expenditures used to produce and market the show, the individuals who work at the festival, and revenue generated from private housing rentals.
In celebration of its 30th anniversary starting Aug. 26, festival organizers said say they spent 10 percent more - or $750,000 - on entertainment to bring back favorite acts from years past, including the Jolly Jester, Daniel Duke of Danger and the "Mediaeval Baebes" singing group.
"We think it's important to do as good a show as we can and build upon it as we have in the past," said Jules Smith, festival general manager.
The show's operating budget totals $6 million each year. Besides entertainment, other costs include maintenance, marketing operations and administration costs.
The festival will feature jousting matches, wandering street characters and other perennial favorites. There will be 11 stages, each featuring four acts that perform four or five shows per day, along with crafts, games and food such as "steak on a stake" and the traditional one-pound turkey legs.
Festival organizers work to attract as many people as they can to the event so they don't have to raise ticket prices, Mr. Smith said. Prices have remained the same for the past three years: $17 for adults, $15 for seniors and $8 for children.
Bringing to mind the nobility, royalty and pageantry of the renaissance era, the festival's story line this year will focus around Henry VIII and his 30th year as King of England, appropriate for the festival's 30th anniversary.
"The year is 1539, and it's really the only period where the king is actually a bachelor," said festival artistic director Carolyn Spedden. "He's sort of in between wives."
The show's owner, International Renaissance Festivals Ltd. sold its smaller Toronto show last year in order to concentrate on the Crownsville festival.
"This is our original and older show, and our favorite," Mr. Smith said. "This crowd is much more sophisticated and appreciative than other crowds in the country."
