Today we drove to the other side of St. Louis for their second annual Pirate Festival. Remember how I said it was basically going to be a RenFest with different costumes? Yep.
They actually use their RenFest grounds, and since the Pirate Fest is smaller, they don't have all the buildings open. Some of the merchants don't much bother to transition to "pirate" theme all that well. A couple of places with armour on display, that sort of thing. Then again, I suppose most of the pirate stuff is out of place at your normal faire, so the trade offs are either way. Heck, there was some guy selling nunchucks and pretendy Samauri swords. I certainly wouldn't want to arm ninja at my pirate fest, but, you know, whatever. But then, I suppose there aren't that many Ninja Fests- the idea of hundreds of ninja in once place would be more than a little strange.
Anyway, the St. Louis grounds are nice. I was up to Shakopee once; it had been pouring rain all the bus ride up and most of the past week. The Shakopee site is basically a field- flat, no trees to speak of. They also don't have gravel. They have wood chips and in some places straw. The whole place was churned to a disgusting muddy swamp by the time we were there.
I suppose it was authentic, and all, but, erm, a little too authentic.
St. Louis, by contrast, has lots of hills and trees and bridges with gravel connecting paths. I suspect it can still get puddly, but I doubt it'd be anything like I remember Minnesota.
More than anything, I wish that these were a little less like themed outdoor shopping malls. I've got some cousins who do Buckskinners. That's basically the same thing, except it tends to be mountain men/American pioneers/Civil War era. They round up their gear and hang out in a field together. When people who aren't involved come by, they break out the wares. When we went to see Patty and Woody a couple times, they did the ax throwing and the rifle demonstrations, and Patty's brother (I think it's her brother) does scrimshaw.
Anyway, that's what I'd rather see, are genuine demos. I realise these people pretty much have day jobs, and if they don't make money on their hobby, they're losing money, but a lot of the scripted phoney stuff doesn't cut it for me.
We did watch the magician and the matchlock and flintlock demonstrations, but everything else was stuff that could've been a lot better if some of my undergrad friends had put it together.
Also, if you're going to be doing this sort of thing, patter is necessary. You know, the sort of Vaudeville Emcee behaviour that allows the audience to be more than passive observers, but without making them feel alienated. The audience knows the performer's world isn't their world, so it's the performer's job to acknowledge that it isn't, but encourage the audience to participate anyway.
My specific example was the guy demonstrating the matchlock musket: he's re-created himself as a former member of the Prussian (quasi-German) army complete with uniform, and interesting German accent. Interesting in that it's incredibly slow. He probably has to keep it slow to keep his pronunciation intact, but it makes his descriptions of things take forever. We ended up watching his performance twice, and it was basically the same- he's obviously done this a lot, but either he's forgotten that he's put the jokes in, or he's not aware that he put jokes in. There are places where what he's saying would be the joke if anybody else said them (You never fill the chamber from the powder horn, a spark in the barrel could go back up into the horn, making it explode like a bomb. An effective weapon, but only if it happens on the other guy's side.), and while everyone recognised that, yeah, this was funny, he wasn't getting the laugh.
The flintlock guy was performing as a French fort soldier. He was interesting, because he did the soldier part well, but he didn't bridge it and perform. He's showing off the flint and steel and asks a five year old in the first row if he'll let him shoot sparks into his hand. The kid said yeah, the guy did it, the end. It was sort of a non-event, even though I could tell that the guy was surprised the kid agreed. (Flint and steel sparks aren't going to do much of anything, but they look like they do, and most kids aren't going to agree to put their hands in harms way.)
Anyone who has ever seen a magician bring a kid up on stage knows that you ask the kid his name, how old he is, make a few cracks about the kid's parents/siblings, do whatever you're going to do with him, teasingly congratulate the kid for having participated, have everyone give the kid a big round of applause. This is pretty much standard "audience participation technique". This is what I mean by making the audience feel that it's OK that they're not part of it, but that they can still participate. It's including them, but understanding that they probably don't know what's going on, so the performer guides them.
Saw a lot of people who somehow missed that. There were two girls with bad French accents who had the spirit of it down, but missed the purpose. They were dragging kids up onstage who had no idea how they got there or what they were supposed to be doing.
Maybe I just notice because of all my theatre, but if getting the persona down went a little further than the D&D "this is who I am" and the re-enactor's "this is my kickass costume", it would definitely help the feel of the place.
Speaking of kickass costume, got myself some pirate socks. They're knee length red and white stripey socks. All I need now is one of those 17th century shirts (the staple of the period re-enactor, no matter the era, they all seem to have those loose sleeved gathered shirts) and then I've got a pirate costume. I've got a red and white striped shirt, but it looks too much like a t-shirt. I've thought about buying a shirt, but every time I see them I think, "I've got a sewing machine and an ounce of sense. I can make my own."
On the whole, t'was nice. Came home and am now reading Kidnapped because I've never read it before. Tried, but never managed to get far. Honestly, when I was a kid I was always disappointed by pirates because I was painfully aware that the myth and the reality didn't match up. Now, I care a little less about the reality.