the first "jerk" of AFR struck

Note: I generally have not liked a single thing Seth H. Holmes has posted on AFR since he subscribed. 

Seth H Holmes wrote:

Biased or not. It's absolutely irresponsible to bring a patron into such a
dangerous situation.

There are a LOT of "dangerous situations" that festival performers can and do put the patrons through, not just those involving fire.

There are jugglers who toss their clubs/knives/lit-torches around patrons, there are samuri swords chopping cucumbers in half on men's stomachs, there are sword-fights while patrons are on stage, there are whips snapping celery and straws down to the volunteer's fingertip, there's a guy walking a tightrope directly over the patrons in his audience, there are knife-throwers and black-powder guns going off everywhere, men "fall" off unicycles into the arms of the cutest female audience member...

These things are, once the act has practiced on them for years, perfectly safe, PROVIDED the patron volunteer do exactly what they were told to do, hold perfectly still when they're supposed to, and not try to "get involved" or upstage the performer.

It is no more "irresponsible" for an act to involve fire near a patron than it is for any of those other stunts.  Stunts are what they are, and have been practiced and performed successfully and safely for centuries.

Is there risk?  There is always risk.  The behaviour of the audience and the volunteer contributes as much risk as the stunt itself, and when the volunteer doesn't do what is asked of them, the volunteer effectively increases the risk.

Disclaimer: I am not naming or referencing any particular details of the incident at Maryland in this post.  This is a general observation from years of working festivals (not that i do those kinds of stunts), not one of specifics.

(security note: this is a public post.  please refrain from specifics on the Maryland festival incident in any replies.  i will screen and/or delete them.)

a "faire is family" post, from a comment i just wrote...

I'm a dancer of multiple tradition/folk styles, though morris dance is my active tradition right now. At the faire, my lady and I are Cat & The Fiddle Morris (she's the cat with the fiddle, i just dance morris). Outside of faire, we're members of Foggy Bottom Morris Men (google for it, i'm too tired to look it up). in fact, we're doing a pub crawl in arlington on thursday night, though i have no details where yet.

In addition, i'm well versed in english country, scottish country, scottish highland, cape breton step, english longsword, english rapper, and i've dabbled in breton folk dance.

for all of that, i hadn't done any traditional dancing at all until my first visit to MDRF, september 1993, after graduating from college. i walked in the gate and promptly got offered to join in the participation dances they did at the time (we're going to try to bring them back next year). by 1994 i'd started the scottish dancing outside of faire, returned with a little more confidence, and was honored to have actually been remembered from my one visit the previous year by the then dance mistress (now the laundress, mrs. pugh). Within the next year, 1995, i was performing at faire in Three Left Feet. By 2001, I had my own act.

here i am, a professional performer at the faire, and its in something i had only just started less ten years ago. Cat & The Fiddle Morris just finished our 5th season (my personal 11th working season) and are stronger than ever; we just directed our first "show", the Danse Macabre parade prior to the pub sing on sunday.

and i'm not alone in the "humble beginnings" story here. not by a long shot...

i can go on and on with many stories of current stage show productions and how each of them started from meager beginnings -- an actor joining the main company, now running a commedia production company and character director of the festival; a "mere" street magician many years ago now director of Fight School and running his own stunt-show production company; 2 members of our Young Actors Ensemble internship from the *90s* are still with us as adults (one you saw every night as a co-MC at pub sing).

the real wonder of this festival, the real reason its "family" for so many of us, is just that -- they are actively willing to support us to contributing something new to the festival, provided we keep our egos in check and remember we're working with a very large company that all have their parts to play. a little patience, a LOT of practice, the willingness to look to do something that hasn't been done, or at least isn't being done now, and the festival can be a wonderful supportive environment for developing skills, developing shows, developing talent.

would that everybody's home was so supportive...

final weekend bullet time...

Saturday -- bleh.  just plain bleh.  rain, mud, misery.  at least it wasn't cold (closing weekend '99 - THAT was a cold wet time...).

• called up a fellow fogg and told him not to bother as i didn't know how much dancing i'd be able to do.
• "dejected morris dancer" -- i did my best "marvin" impression, dejectedly waving my hanks but without bells, with the joke being i'd had to pawn them off.
  
• lots of shows cancelled, for the combinations of mud and sick actors.  oh well.  at least there are some ways to make up for it -- fight school again did "chess match: behind the music", and got a lot of visitors to the weapons tent.
• dragon inn set at noon, playing mostly for friends.
• 3pm info-booth set, no morris, but blueeowyn joined us for some simplified playfordding, and we found a little time, and some dry land, for baby stupina to come out and dance.
  
• "beer o'clock" came early.
• i actually remembered to buy something my mom had wanted me to get...usuallly i completely forget about these things until its too late.
  
• attempted to see "O That Lear" to see how it ended compared to its relatively rough state early in the season...only they instead did MacBeth a second time instead 'cause its not so dangerous on a wet stage.
  
• pub sing rain.  i used my cloak to keep fellow cast members in normal clothes dry so they could see the show.  lack of fire handled well:
  • Replica 17th century duelling pistol: $450.
  • Powder and musket: $100
  • Shooting a man with a mullet: Priceless.
• dinner at the ground round, our last with "the usual" crowd there.  on the way, inspiration struck!

Sunday -- wow, what a difference!  yeah, the fact that it rained all night meant the mud still sucked shoes into the abyss of archeology, but everything else was near perfect.  In fact, there was only *one* thing i would have had different, had i known.

• late again -- somehow, when we *really* need to be at cast call, there's no way we make it to cast call on time.  there's a law involved in there somewhere.
• morning music silliness just for us; not much dancing at all.  we go ahead and play the dance tune one last time just to say "we're done".
  
• 12noon boardwalk, started fun, played for capi as well as the passing crowds, then the one thing we'll remember forever (every year has one, this one was finally it):
  
  we had a curious child, around 4 years old, with supportive family, come up to see.  i suggested playing one tune we usually do for "the cute kid", only i noticed that he had earplugs and the mommy was signing: the child was deaf.  instant change of gears to our jig set, with heavy heal-banging on the boards to help it get across.  mommy and child couldn't have been happier at our willingness to adjust to playing the way the boy would need it to feel and understand. we  had to refuse a very generous tip offer (with suggestions to note us in the king's registry).
• 130pm, i walk the route, just to be sure of the timing.
  
• 3pm was good, with a nice touch of more baby stupina dancing (this weekend was our collective first chance to have that, as columbina's schedule is so tight during the day) until the end as just as we were about to do the pipes one last time...
  
  ...in walks the Marchioness of Exeter and Lord Cromwell, along with eowyn and Mistress Mannerly. they'd come to play, and to see how well Lord Cromwell learned his polka lessons from earlier in the season.  So with nobility dancing on one side, baby stupina dancing on the other, me waving the tambourine around like a crazy man...i sometimes wonder what the patrons who were simply passing through trying not to get muddy were thinking of all that. ;-)
  
  on top of that, as faireraven noted, there's very little more satisfying than seeing Lord Cromwell, the Karl Rove of the Renaissance, going "POP goes the Weasel!"
  
  
• 330: finally get to see chess match.  The Sherriff marches in escorted by 4 of the imperial stormtroopers who decided to be the most "wrong" part of the day of wrong tradition (on the whole, this was a relatively light year compared to most.  i wonder if keith's attitude is finally sinking in?).  it was a little rough in the lines, but tiredness, the weight of the mud, all contributed.  The fights were still fun (especially when they walked the little kid out there with the sword before Lord Seymore calls for the substitution.
  
  oh, and the naughtyness going on in the balcony between Edward Seymour and Daisy...
  
  i forgot my hat, and promptly got sunburned even for that meager half-hour i was out there.  bleh.
  
• 4pm rush backstage to change (and get aloe on my face).  Time to play dead.  Literally.
• 445pm: observe that the water backstage at the globe sucks.  it didn't used to...
  
• 5pm, we're mostly gathered together, mostly dressed, mostly ready, and Cyd and I lead the first Danse Macabre parade, hopefully to become an annual last-day tradition.  one of those cases where all the pieces fell into place; the location of the living history pavillion as a home base, the "daily diversions" at 5pm that the guild normally does suddenly being the right time for them to participate, the participation of others in the parade including O and his lady as well as friends from Noblesse Oblige, the fact that having taught the guild people the dances earlier in the season, we could dance them now.  everything was perfect except for one thing -- Jack Rackham gave Mickey Hooligan the go-ahead to do "one more song", so our march through the white hart got delayed by 6 minutes, which required some careful adjustments to the route.  (This being the *one* thing i would have changed for sunday -- i'd have told Hooligan we were coming so he'd have known to watch out for us.)
  
  in spite of that, a very successful parade.  in fact, only one person called us "satanists".  the california people would be annoyed; they get 4 or 5 per parade.  ;-)
  
  not that many of you read here, but a huge thank you to all involved and to all who supported this first run.
  
• pub sing!  i was a little late, doing the parade and all, and decided to stayl in mask.  i eventually took it off when the songs became serious.  some of our walkers stayed in mask to the end.
  
  i didn't bother to use my usual pole.  too crowded, too many "regulars", so i move forward where i would better serve, ducking down when it wasn't necessary to stand so others could see.
  
  Moment of the night?  They used my joke!  The inspiration from the night before paid off, the bit was used (having Zach "catch" the bullet in his teeth), people laughed, and i was on a high from that it took hours to come down from. :)
  
  Didn't cry much this year for a final, compared to years' past -- the main tear that came from my eye happened when something darn special, written by a friend, was read.
  
  Really, I'd gotten my crying out the week before, when the combined gaelic and english mist-covered-mountains gave me 8 years of flashbacks of Vpstart Crow's A Civil War Christmas all in a matter of seconds.  To Scott, Tom, Lisa, Cami, Tee, Joyce, Gwynne, Susan, Steve, Matt, Diane, Rick, and everybody else in Vpstart who's helped bring that show to life behind the scenes or on stage, and especially to Tim and Mike, I thank you.
  
  Back to this week, cannon goes off, royalty leave, and i'm done.  I pick up some crystal icycles for myself (having gotten the batch my mom asked for the day before), get our crap backstage, change quickly, and we're *still* among the last to leave at the end of the night.  ;-)
• Cast party was cool.  I liked the place -- supportive, quick on the service, expensive but large and tasty portions.  good beer selection (Lelio approved of my choice of beers ;-) ).  great compared to the last 3 years...
• again, the last to leave, as we were talking to Micha from Wolgemut, until the baseball game ended.  As with the Angels, long-story short, don't believe everything you read.  Micha is still in contact with Magne and Bruno, and at least as of that night, still desired to work with them again when Bruno has fully recovered and the tensions of this year have subsided.

monday, we arrive as bizarre bazaar is going, i get some more coffee, complain about my sinuses, and we gather up our crap (scattered at 5 different parts of the site) and get out.  monday night, i go to the show i'd been hyping, and i'll tell of that later.