Bidding the Renaissance Festival Farewell

It's the third part of our series about working at the Georgia Renaissance Festival. We talk about what a typical schedule is like at the festival, share a couple of stories about our experiences, and explain why each of us decided to stop working at the festival after many seasons.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Large Ner Drunk Collider podcast,
the podcast that's all about the geeky things happening in
the world around us and how very excited we are
about them. I'm Ariel Caston, and with me, as always
is the classy and sassy Jonathan Strickland.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Lad.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
I don't know where you've been, but I see you
one first prize.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Ah, that's a fun song, Jonathan.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
It's classy.

Speaker 1 (00:37):
And sassy.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
It is classy and sassy. I wanted to make sure
I lived up. Also.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
I don't know Ariel if you noticed, but you know
when we use Riverside to record these episodes, and one
of the things I usually don't even bother filling out
my name when I join in on Riverside because I'm
the one like active as producer.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
Did you see what my name is?

Speaker 1 (00:57):
Yes, you changed it to a Glory.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Yeah, Vain Glory. My mayor slash lord admiral character was
Edmund Vane Glory the Third, or EV three as he
would call himself. So I just thought, for Fund's sake,
because we are going to talk more about our work
at the Renaissance Festival, where you figured, well wrap this
up it's a three parter, so we we and also

(01:20):
it may hopefully be signs that before too long we
could go back to having we know, more normal ish
episodes of LLENC Because Ariel, you heard some news about
the WGA strike, at least I did.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah. So the a MPT or the WGA released something
to its members basically saying that the AMPTP had asked them.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
Back to.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Talks. And so that's happening, I believe today. Exciting. Yeah,
here's hoping that the w g A and AMPTP can
come to an agreement and then that that's a good
sign for sag Aftra. On the one hand, as an actor,
I'm like, oh, man, I want I want this strike

(02:15):
to be over, because yeah, I'm I am keeping busy
with non stricken work, but uh, you know, I want
the strike to be over. I want media to be made,
and I want to have auditioning is the job. I
love the auditions. But on the other hand, the w
g A has been on strike much longer and they

(02:36):
probably you know, financially, need to come to an agreement sooner.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Well, and I know that the w GA leaders already
cautioned union members and said not to get their hopes
up too high that this this could very well just
be you know, come to the table, find out that
they're not. They don't really want to budge on the
important stuff, and then it's right back to where they were.
So they're being very cautious to let union members know, like,

(03:07):
don't just expect this.

Speaker 2 (03:09):
To be the end of it. It may not be.

Speaker 3 (03:11):
And this is too important for us to really budge
on because it defines how entertainment works moving forward. And
if it's something that you know, the average person pursuing
a career in writing can't expect to make a living
doing this, that's a problem.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
So we have to wait and see.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
You know, we'll be cautiously optimistic, but only in that
the writers get what they need in order to make
a viable living doing what they love. Otherwise we all
lose out right, because if we don't get great writers,
because all the great writers are like, I can't live
on this, then we don't get great entertainment. So that's

(03:52):
a real problem.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
I agree, and like, AI can only go so far.
It misses a whole whole lot of humanity, and I
think it always will. That's my least Yeah, yeah, so
that's that's you know, I'm hoping for the best, but
I'm expecting the worst, I guess.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
I mean, if nothing else, this is at least an
indication that the producers have perhaps budged on their original
plan to starve out writers until October. It's a couple
of months early. So maybe that's an indication that perhaps
the producers are aware that the public opinion is largely
against them and that maybe they need to make some

(04:38):
changes or else they're going to endanger their entire industry.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
I mean, they're in such a protected position that it's
hard to say, but that's one can hope.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, although their Variety has an article saying Warner Brothers
Discovery has strike saved it more than one hundred million
in Q two, but that that CEO hopes and negotiates
students resume soon.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
So like, yeah, that's David Zaslov. He I worked for him.
I feel comfortable saying this.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
He's a jerk.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
He is a jerk and is only interested in the
bottom line. And that's why if the bottom line shows
less red and more black, then it's good. It doesn't
matter how many people are out of a job.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
I mean, hopefully, even as as much of a jerk
as you say he is as a businessman, hopefully he
understands that that is not sustainable. You know, it saved money,
but eventually, if they are not making new content, then.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
I would like to think he would understand that. But
as my experience working under Discovery Communications, I can't be
confident that or that if he does understand it, that
he cares. Because not to go off on a whole rant,
although this does kind of tie into some of the
stuff we'll talk about with the George Renaissance Festival, but
like I get really sick of c business leaders run

(06:01):
their businesses for the purposes of short term gains but
at the expense of long term performance, and we see
this time and again with lots of big companies. You know,
Warner Brothers. Discovery is one. Disney, I would argue, is
another where you can see decisions being made at the
corporate level that if you were to break it down

(06:22):
financially quarter to quarter, you'd say, oh, this makes sense
because it's cutting costs, it's maximizing revenue, it's maximizing profits
as a result. But then if you project it outward,
you say, but this is going to really hold the
company back from doing great things and also potentially alienating

(06:44):
its customer base over time over the long run because
of these decisions, and while that might not have an
immediate reflection in the numbers for this quarter, it is
going to be a big deal a year from now,
or two years from now or five years from now,
and very few leaders, in my opinion, seem to take

(07:05):
that long term view. This is also getting into a
business on the brink episode.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Right, Yeah, it is well, and it does take place.
It does. I'm not going to get into it right now,
but it especially ties into Renfest because some of the
things that Jonathan and I will talk about later that
were impetus is for us stepping away from doing it
are things that we assumed would hurt the Renfest and

(07:31):
the long term. But it seems a lot of Renfests
are going in that direction. Yeah, and so I wonder
if it actually will or if it's something that we
hold value in but the current audience base doesn't. But
in the realm of television, in film like, it's a
lot more black and white, right.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah, well color, I mean they introduce color TV like
back in the fifties, So I see, yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
But I mean, like the audiences, you know, they they
they have already proven like Netflix took a drop in
in like I think their very first drop in, like
when they hit their first loss, was partially because they
were making so much content, trying to hit as much

(08:17):
of the market with content as they could, but not
necessarily focusing on quality. And I feel like I'm not
I don't know, I'm you know, they're very secretive about
their numbers, but I feel like that's part of what
caused their losses because people are like, well, the stuff
on Netflix is no longer good, so why am I watching?

Speaker 3 (08:36):
Well? And we've seen we've seen similar conversations about specific
subgenres of entertainment, right, so things like the superhero subgenre.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
And I'm not.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
Gonna mention like specifics or whatever, but even before there
was this perceived decline and quality of various films and
arguably series, there was this ongoing conversation about superhero fatigue.
I think what you're pointing to, Ariel is, at least

(09:09):
for me, this is just anecdotal, So obviously it doesn't
really hold any water, but anecdotally, I personally have a
real sense of just content fatigue, not just not just
specifically superhero, but I'm just constantly bombarded by all these
announcements of films and shows and specials and that kind

(09:30):
of stuff, and there's way more than I could ever
watch unless that's all I ever did, and it ends
up overwhelming me to the point where I never actually
watch any of it because I'm just it feels like
it feels like effort and work.

Speaker 1 (09:47):
At that point, Timblet's overwhelmed too.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
It sounds like, yeah, no, he's overwhelmed that I'm in
here and he's out there.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
Oh poor baby. Now I agree with you. There's just
there's you know, it feels like a double edged sword
to say that for me as an actor, but yeah, sure.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
I mean yeah, as an actor, I can totally understand
the the being excited about the number of opportunities that
are out there.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
That I totally get.

Speaker 3 (10:16):
The problem is if the audience feels overwhelmed and never
watches the thing, then yeah, you got to be in something,
but no one's ever gonna see it because they're just
they're just maybe maybe even if people were interested in it,
they can't find it because it's buried under the eight
hundred other things that came out that day, so.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
Or it's or it's been taken off of whatever platform
it was.

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Made for, and yeah, and it's not available anywhere else.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Yeah, all right, well.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
You mentioned double edged swords. You know another place where
you find double edged swords?

Speaker 1 (10:51):
Dragon con Now the Renaissance Festival.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
That's right, So let's talk about the Renaissance Fair. We're
gonna finalize our conversation about this. So one thing that
we kind of touched on but we didn't really talk about,
was things like scheduling. And I was specifically going to
start with the scheduling that you have to deal with
if you're either a new performer and we're talking from

(11:17):
the street cast perspective. Ariel can talk a bit about
street musicians as well, because she's been both. I've only
done street cast. But if you're a brand new street
cast character, or you are a returning actor but you're
playing a new character, you have to go through quite
a few rehearsals in order to develop that character and

(11:39):
to create who this person is, what motivates them, what
do they want out of the day, Because ideally every
single character walking around has a goal that they have
in mind. It may not be a huge goal, it
might be a very modest goal, but they have it
and in their mind, the guests who are there at festival,

(12:00):
they're the people who are going to help them achieve
that goal.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
That's kind of the whole purpose.

Speaker 3 (12:04):
This process can last a very very long time, like
it can start several months before opening day at the festival.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Yeah, So you know, I've heard everywhere from four to
six months. There are obviously some productions that are very
quick and have a quick turnaround, but general four to
six months seems to be the consensus. So like, for instance,
for Garth, and I think this is still the case.
They usually audition around January, sometime in January, yeah, and

(12:39):
then in February, at least when I was rehearsing. In February,
we would start rehearsals and then we'd open up at
the end of April. So from February to April, at
least once a week, and I think it was once
a week and then every other weekend, possibly every weekend
for rehearsals, and once a week would be somewhere in

(13:04):
central Atlanta, and then because the fair site was further away,
you would on the weekends, you would drive down to
the fair site and rehearse on the fair site.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Yeah, the first year when I did it, or first
couple of seasons. In fact, I think the first three
seasons I did it. The only time we ever went
down to the fair site. I think there were like
two rehearsals that took place down there, and everything else
took place in other locations around Atlanta, And it was
only the last two because that was when you had
the whole cast get together and interact with one another.

(13:37):
So there was a distinct possibility you would be on
cast as a new character and not have met some
of the veterans and not know their characters at all, because.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
I I feel like that's just a certainty.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah, well, it definitely was the way it worked when
I started. Right like, there were people I didn't know
who they were. I didn't know who their characters were
because they did not have to go through the week
to week process of building a character. So like I
knew all the newbies, all the rookies, and all the
people who are creating a new character. I knew all
of them because we had come through the rehearsal process

(14:12):
together and because I was also in Shakespeare Parody. I
knew all the people who were in Shakespeare Parody, which
included some of the veterans. So those people I knew.
Anyone outside of that I did not know. I would
get to know them over the course of a couple
of big rehearsals. And I think it was only the
final rehearsal my first year that took place on site.

(14:33):
By the time my last season was twenty nineteen, By then,
they were doing rehearsals at the site every weekend.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
And it is a haul, y'all.

Speaker 3 (14:45):
It's a big it's a big commitment when you're actually
working there and you're having to go there every weekend
for seven weekends in a row, or maybe even eight sometimes,
but it is It is even worse when it's during
the rehearsal process and you're like, ah, man, I got
to schlep all the way across south of the city

(15:07):
to get to the site, unless you, for some reason
happened to live on the south of the city, which
the director often did, but everyone else did it.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
And I will say, like, it is helpful to be
on site more than once or twice before the opening day,
because you want to know how to get around right.
You want to know where the bathrooms are. You want
to know where all of the staff entrances and exits are,
because there's lots of what we used to call ferry
gates that you could go through to kind of disappear.

Speaker 3 (15:34):
Incredibly important because there were times where you're just like
just mentally you needed to have a break from being
on and being able to slip out a little side
exit was a lifesaver.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Or to you know, use the staff porta potties, which
the hoopskirt is really difficult.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
I'll take a right on that.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, but you know, every weekend is a lot now.
Probably part of my memory is adjusted by the fact
that scenario rehearsals and fight rehearsals would happen on site,
and if your schleppen steel around, I would say that
you do need you know, I am grateful for the
February to April rehearsals we had for fight. I feel

(16:19):
like that is something that required that much rehearsal to
be safe, because certainly I got injured a lot more
during the rehearsal process than I did on site. But
even there were some years where people just didn't know
their choreography. There was one year where I basically had to,
like under my breath tell the moves to my fight partner.

(16:41):
It wasn't their fault. They ended up with like a
personal conflict. They couldn't get around, and we ended up
doing it. It was fine, But yeah, so certain things
certainly do benefit from a lot more rehearsal, and rehearsal
on site on uneven ground and things like that. But
even like in the beginning days, fight rehearsals started downtown

(17:02):
kind of in a central location and then moved to
site once the fights were kind of solidified.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
Well, that's another thing is that when I started, all
the scenario took place on stages. So when it's on
a stage, you can rehearse it in a different location
because you're arguably using a pretty controlled environment. You're not
on uneven ground. You don't have to deal with slippery

(17:29):
grass or rocks or anything like that, and so it
made it a little bit easier I think back in
those days to schedule rehearsals at different locations. But as
we mentioned in an earlier episode, the festival moved away
from that. They ended up taking stages away from scenario
in order to have more stage acts perform at those locations,

(17:52):
which meant that when we did have scenario, which wasn't
every year, but when we did have it, it would happen
in the streets, And I always hated that because I
felt like it really limited your audience. Very few people
would be able to see as compared to being able
to sit in the theater, and it's a lot harder
to see what's going on, and it's a.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
Lot harder to block.

Speaker 3 (18:13):
Like blocking a stage combat fight is pretty easy when
it's a regular stage audience experience because you can do
all the cheats and everything upstage so that no one
can see, and it looks better when you're doing it
in the round. It's way harder to make it look
good from every single angle.

Speaker 1 (18:32):
Yeah, not impossible, but way harder. Yeah. Yeah. So with
all of those rehearsals and then you know, six weeks
of performances Saturdays and Sundays plus Memorial Day Monday, plus
possibly student days, plus possibly doing promotional gigs. That's a

(18:56):
lot of time commitment, most of which you know rehearsal process.
By the time I joined, you did not get paid for.

Speaker 3 (19:04):
Yeah, So when I first started, all actors would receive
a bit of a rehearsal stipend. It was not a
lot of money, but it was meant to do things
like help cover the cost of gas and grabbing, you know,
like lunch or something on the go when you were
heading two rehearsals. So it was meant to help compensate
actors who were having to slap across town to get

(19:26):
to the rehearsal site. But by the time Ariel joined,
that had already been phased out. That they got rid
of that sort of behind the scenes. When I joined,
the person who ran the entertainment department was also a
co owner of the festival, but she and her husband
sold off their share of the festival to the other owner,

(19:47):
and so when Ariel started, at that point the entertainment
department no longer actually owned part of the festival, and
that made the changes a lot more abrupt, i would say,
than they otherwise would have been. So one of the
first things that we saw gone were the rehearsal stipends.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
If you were combat you.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
Would typically get a boost to your take home pay
for being combat. If you were in a stage show
like the Shakespeare Parody, you would typically get a little
boost to that, but otherwise you were making very little money.
If you were being paid. Most people were being paid,
but they weren't being paid very much. They were talking

(20:32):
like less than minimum wage, and a few quote unquote
apprentices think unpaid interns weren't getting paid at all. They
were just there supposedly to learn the art of acting
and improvising and street performing, I guess which.

Speaker 1 (20:49):
Okay, So I have mixed feelings on this. On the
one hand, you know, I was a board member for
a community theater, I've done a boatload of community theater, right,
and that is usually completely free.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Right.

Speaker 1 (21:05):
You're doing it because you love to do it and
you want to perform, and sometimes you can have months
worth of rehearsal process for that and even more nights
a week. However, once you're performing, you're performing for a
couple hours a night, as opposed to ten to twelve
hour days. So like, street performance is a very different

(21:29):
beast from staged improv from the regular theater, from so
many other things. It's its completely own art style. So
I understand needing some sort of training in that, but
I definitely think that that has been a cop out
over the years.

Speaker 3 (21:45):
Well, I mean the training for that is the rehearsal process.

Speaker 2 (21:48):
That's the training.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
That's where the training should be coming in, not oh,
we can add in more bodies on our cast by
telling people who really love the idea of dressing up
and being silly, which has a huge appeal. I mean
that's why I did it, right, Like, I was like, oh,
I'm going to get paid to dress up and pretend
all day every weekend. That was what really drew me

(22:13):
to it. And I love entertaining people, so that was
a big part of it. But the problem is that
becomes the way that some institutions, like certain certain festivals,
including Georgia.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Can end up.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
End up, you know, praying upon the young performers who
either don't have the confidence or the knowledge or the
appreciation of what they are worth, and so they end
up agreeing to things that perhaps were far too predatory.
Like when you would look at the pay for street characters,

(22:51):
like it, not only did it not really change from
when I started in nineteen ninety nine, when I did
it in twenty nineteen, there were few people being paid,
so like that's crazy, Like at yes, Ariel had to pay.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Cut yeah, yeah, And there there were some people who
would get hired on at much higher pay rates, and
it was always very frustrating to me as a seasoned
actor and professional actor. And albeit I am a much
better actor now than I was straight out of high school, right,
but yeah, it definitely, especially if you're starting Fair young,

(23:34):
you don't necessarily know how to stand up for yourself
in those situations. And there I love my time at Fair.
I learned so much, I made some wonderful friendships, I
had some amazing experiences. But that that youthfulness can also
cause other problems in a very flirty kind of carnival

(23:55):
sort of a setting. I'm not speaking poorly of carnivals,
but in situations where you've got a lot of people
who work the festival, who travel around and know each
other and kind of like this big family, it can
cause some just social issues as well.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Well.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah, I mean also you have to keep in mind
that the culture in general has changed dramatically since Ariel
and I started. Like the Renaissance Festival in particular was
seen as almost like an adult Disneyland, Like it was
family friendly and kids were a big part of what
of the patrons who had come to the festival, but

(24:32):
it had kind of a naughty body edge to it, right.
A lot of the characters had sort of a wink wink,
nudge nudge kind of element to their personality. I mean,
I remember we used to have a fishmonger who would
play the character as if she were totally just like

(24:52):
adult and a silly, nonsensical person who just happened to
be dropping lots of double on tendra fish puns. And
she was brilliant at the job, like she was great
at doing it. But you're like, wow, this is like
and it was arguably the kind of humor that would
go right over a kid's head, but adults would get

(25:13):
it right, like that kind of thing, and that was
considered fine.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
But this also.

Speaker 3 (25:17):
Engendered a kind of culture among some of the cast,
mostly the men of the cast, that perhaps encouraged some
overly familiar approaches to other people at the festival, which
didn't just include cast, but sometimes, like you know, people
who worked at booths or sometimes even guests. And it

(25:40):
was not a good thing then. It's definitely not acceptable now,
but it shouldn't have been acceptable then either. I was
not one of those folks, but I did witness a
few instances.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, and I do feel like that is something that
has gotten better over time. Yes, I know that specifically
GARF has made steps to make it a safer environment
for the actors, for the participants, which is fantastic. So
I know we're already starting to we're starting to do

(26:14):
a little bit.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
We're dogging on the festival a bit. But yes, to
to the festival's credit, I would I would say that
that is one big, big, big improvement.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
Is that. Yeah, like it is discussed in no.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
Uh you know, ambivalent terms like this is not acceptable behavior.
We will not accept it. If you are found to
have engaged in it, you will be you know, you'll
be essentially fired. So uh yeah, I think in that regard,
there have been some changes in the festival that have
been extremely positive. It has meant that there has been

(26:50):
a very change, a big change in character direction as well.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
But that's not a bad thing.

Speaker 1 (26:55):
Yeah, I mean, I'm ass playing a kissing Wench. But
I think there is a way you could still do it.
But I don't think that fairs are putting enough resources
into their cast members to facilitate that. That being said,
going back to rehearsals to other things, if you're going
to count training as a rehearsal, you've got to make
sure that there is some sort of standard to training.

(27:17):
Some of the people who taught classes for the Georgia
Renaissance Festival were absolutely brilliant and phenomenal and had a
grasp of street characters. That are usually people who are
seasoned performers. But that doesn't always mean that you're going
to get good training, right, Yeah, that's true, and so
you need to make sure that your trainers are people
who are also good at teaching, yes, and not just

(27:40):
teaching what they think is right, but what is kind
of a standard. And standards are something that redfests kind
of have, but they don't have a lot of you said,
to speak to musicians. As a musician, most of our
rehearsals were just as the band, and then I think
we'd show up for dress orhearsal day and whatever day,

(28:01):
all the characters introduce themselves to each other. We were
encouraged to attend maybe a character building workshop because they
wanted musicians to be out on the streets and have
lots ofeas and still seem like part of the village
as opposed to twentieth century twenty first century whatever people
who just happened to be in costume and playing music occasionally.

(28:23):
But it was much looser that being said, you were
expected to be putting the rehearsal time in on your own,
with your band, with your stage show.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
Also, all the musicians are pretty much all the musicians
would participate in things like the opening gate ceremony, which
means that there would be some rehearsals where the musicians
would collectively need to get together and rehearse together, not
just in their little pockets of whomever they were performing
with throughout the day, but because you would be expected

(28:52):
to perform three or four musical numbers at the beginning
of the day, you had to rehearse collectively.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yeah, pub saying at the end of the day generally
was a group effort. So yeah. So there were a
few additional group rehearsals, but not all of them collided
with the street cast rehearsals.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, and stage.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
Shows rarely did at all.

Speaker 3 (29:15):
One other little thing about dress rehearsal type stuff, so
when the characters would all step forward and introduce themselves
and everything, there was also Ariel even alluded to it
when I was talking about my least favorite thing about
the rehearsal process, and she guessed the love and hate letters.
I actually love those. So the purpose of a love
and hate letters so each character was assigned a love

(29:38):
some other character that they loved, and then another character
that they hated. And chances are the person you loved
would not necessarily love you back. In fact, they might
actually hate you. But the whole purpose was really to
help you develop improv acting skills so that you could
perform against other characters, as well as develop your language

(29:59):
skills so that you sounded appropriately renaissance ishh. And I'm
being super super super kind to call it that, but
you would you would craft these letters in appropriate language
and either have compliments or insults or whatever, and then

(30:20):
send them. You would you would actually deliver them to
the recipients on the final rehearsal day, which when I
started was a pretty simple experience, like you just you
would find the people and you would hand them their letter.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
By the time I was gone, it had turned into.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
This crazy, grandiose display where some people would even read
out the whole letter, and I'm like, this is eating
up so much time. I you are clever, Congratulations, You're
very clever. Shot up and let's get on with it
so I can go home.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, So I love that, And I liked when people
put a lot of thought and effort into it, you know,
and some of that was just based on like what
you could afford to do, because like sometimes one of
the one of the I still have this love letter,
our mutual friend Lucas was assigned to love my character
one year and it was when I was Vogue, and

(31:20):
I got a letter written on a thin strip of
paper shoved into a beautiful glass pink bottle, and I
still have that. It was so beautiful, it was so
well thought out. They put so much effort into it.
And then like my hate was like gave me a
piece of paper that just said I hate you on
it that kind of had been crumpled and stepped in

(31:41):
the dirt because they did not want to put the
time into it. So I definitely think there was a
balance there. There were some people who did not care.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
It was obvious, who ended up writing their letter the
morning of as opposed to put their thought and effort
into it.

Speaker 2 (31:57):
And I always put.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Like I always tried to make it as character specific
as I possibly could work in as many jokes as
I could make it clear that I understood who the
other person's character was and their relationship to me like
that to me was always very important because I and
I almost always was on the receiving end of either
no letter at all because the person assigned to me

(32:21):
just never bothered to write it, or it was clearly
a letter that had been written, you know, hurriedly in
the last fifteen minutes, so that it would you know,
someone would not get an F on their homework assignment
or whatever. There were a couple of exceptions, but generally speaking,
I ended up being on the receiving end of crappy letters.

(32:42):
But I loved writing them, that was, and the people
who received them, I hope enjoyed getting them.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
I struggled with writing my love and hates, but I
always put the effort in. Usually, you know, it would
have some sort of like ribbon on it or a
little bell or something akin to my character. But it
was somewhere in the middle. It wasn't a big, gradiose creation,
but it was I had put effort into the compliments
or the insults, and then I tried to maintain those

(33:10):
love and hates throughout the year. There are some people
who just completely ignored them after that.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
But whatever, well, see, I was just about to ask
you about that, about whether or not like see. To me,
the whole love and hate thing was literally designed in
rehearsals to create a way for you to learn how
to interact with other people and to get more comfortable
with the language. So for me, on every single day

(33:34):
of festival, in fact, even like hour to hour on festival,
I would just decide what my attitude was toward other
characters and that would just be it for the day.
As opposed to oh, I was assigned to love the queen,
So from this point forward, I'm just gonna love the
Queen every single day. Like to me, I was worried

(33:57):
personally that that would mean I would start building holding
a story that only really I and maybe the Queen
would know. And thus, like if you were to come
in on weekend five, you know, in my mind and
in the Queen's mind, we're continuing a narrative, but you
just showed up, so you don't know what all that

(34:19):
stuff is. Whereas if I were treating it more like, okay,
for this interaction, I have decided I really like this person,
and that way it made it a little easier, I
think from an accessibility standpoint.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Yeah, I did a little of both. So there were
definitely characters that I was assigned to levery it was
always easier for me to hate people and I'm just
I'm going to be real transparent about myself here. One
of the places that I have grown most as an
actor is in my self confidence. I was not a
popular child in school. I was I was called a
little bit of a cry baby. I was probably a

(34:55):
little too emotional at times. And not to say emotions
are batter, you can be an emotional person. But I struggled.
And so going into Fair, you know, was at the
time in my life where I was trying to build
a lot of confidence, but I still had this like
mentality of like, and it didn't help that my first

(35:18):
year was as the old maid, right, so I had
this mentality of like, I want to be this desirable,
popular person that people like to be around, who's pretty
and all this other stuff. And you know, I would
go into Fair and here I was on equal footing
with these people. I was still an actor, but it
was kind of cliquy. So oftentimes I kind of still
felt like the odd duck out, and so acting to

(35:43):
love somebody kind of felt like an imposition on that
other person. It probably absolutely was not. This is something
I was putting on myself based on past experiences. But
hates were great, But I would usually start them over
at the beginning of a day, so like it would
be a real service level, petty thing that I hated

(36:04):
that would be easy for someone to stick on, and
you know, it would switch throughout the day. I think,
you know, sometimes you really hate the people you love,
and so like I would flip flop and people would
just not know what was coming.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Yeah, there were seasons where Ariel and I were acting
against one another as a Vogue and the Lord Admiral
and yeah, from from moment to moment, like whenever we
weren't together all day, but we would end up being
together multiple times throughout the day, and it always seemed
like whenever we got back together, one character was being

(36:36):
very sweet to the other one and the other one
was being terrible to the first one, and it would switch.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Like we were never we were never both hating.

Speaker 3 (36:45):
Each other or both gaga for each other. It was
always one one's hot and one's cold, and it was
just pretty funny because it wasn't like we were even
talking about it or planning it out.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
It just kind of happened.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
Yeah. Yeah, But I also think, you know, that's that's
when you watch a TV show, you always love the
cat and mouse game more than you love when the
characters actually get together actually break up.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
Right.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
So I feel like for the people who did come back,
who did know our characters, who were invested in the village,
I felt like that was a good fun payoff for
them because there was this cat and mouse game.

Speaker 3 (37:21):
Yeah, and for anyone else, it was just two people
who are bickering and it was fine. But to talk
a little bit about what your schedule is like on
a typical festival day, So let's say it's opening day,
actors get to the festival at least an hour and
a half before the gate opens if they don't want

(37:41):
to get dinged, because if you're late more than a
couple of times, you.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
Get fined earlier. If you're in if you're doing combat,
because you warm up and you run through your fights.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
Yeah, so you would show up, You would go to
your assigned parking space backstage, which was usually a the
ring of the outer wall for the festival, so they
had different zones, and you had an assigned zone you
would park there. Some people would come fully dressed, a
lot of us would come partly dressed change the rest

(38:17):
of the way in the in the parking lot. You know,
you got used to the fact that your your dressing
room was a parking lot outdoors, and you.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
Got pretty good at pretty You either just didn't care
and nobody else cared because you know dressing room etiquette,
or you got really good at like changing under like
your billowy pieces.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
Ariel often gave me a ride back in those days,
and I can tell you that I got very good
at turning around and looking out at the festival, and
she got very good at changing in her billowy pieces.
So we were respectful of one another's privacy. Yeah, But
also we also also is useful because there was usually

(39:02):
something that needed to be tied or tightened that you
really needed a second person to help with.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Yeah, And I mean I would say occasionally you see
an exposed top or a butt cheek or something like that,
usually by accident, you know, but butt cheeks were the
most common thing that you'd see by accident. But like
that is one place. I'll say that everyone in my
experience stayed pretty pretty professional and respectful in that like

(39:33):
you either didn't acknowledge it or you turned around because
everybody's most people are trying to change in the parking lot,
especially at the end of the day when you have
to change back out because you don't want to drive
in your dirty, nasty, sweaty Renaissance festival. No.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
By the by the end of certain days, I was
just like, the only thing going through my mind is
I've got to get out of this because I'd just
be so hot and uncomfortable. So we would get there probably,
you know, a lot of us would get there around
eight am some earlier, like when I was working there
the first time. My wife, she was the assistant to

(40:06):
the director, and one of her jobs was to deliver
water and ice to all the backstage areas, like all
the all the of all the stages, some of which
are actually on site, not just you know, a lot
of the stages would butt up against that exterior wall,
but some of them were internal and we had to
go and bring the water and the ice into those.

(40:27):
So we would get there like seven so that we
could do those rounds and everything, but yeah, you would
usually get there sometime between eight eight thirty if you're
our dear friend Shay, maybe eight fifty five, and then
around nine am we were supposed to all gather for
morning meeting, which was when the director would tell us

(40:48):
anything of note that was happening that day. Maybe there
was going to be a wedding, you know, maybe there
was a special guest, maybe we needed to you know,
some of the characters needed to swing by and do stuff.
Occasionally we would have like a special event and characters
would immediately get assigned to oversee them, often without having
heard about this before that day.

Speaker 1 (41:10):
Yeah yeah, and just trying to figure out how to
do it.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
Yeah, like you're going to oversee the walk the plank contest,
like oh what is that?

Speaker 1 (41:21):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
So we would do the meeting the meeting, like it
depends on who the director was.

Speaker 2 (41:29):
Some meetings were.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
Like incredibly efficient and short and you would get the
you would get the meeting through. You would go through
any announcements, like sometimes people would have an announcement to
the rest of the cast, like maybe they're getting rid
of a costume piece or something, and then you would
be left to continue getting ready until you were sent
out to entertain people who are gathering for Opening Gate.

(41:55):
Officially Opening Gate, I think was supposed to be ten
thirty when I first but by the time I was leaving,
it was like ten oh five some days, and that's
when you would have like a little ceremony kind of
explaining what was going to go on with the festival.
So from essentially ten am, when most of the characters

(42:18):
would have to go out and mill around with the
patrons to entertain them while they wait for the gates
to open, some of us would be held back so
that we would come up on these ramparts above the
gates to greet the festival goers. So pretty frequently I
didn't have to go out among the patrons because I
was part of the story. But from that moment until

(42:42):
six pm, you're working, and you do get some breaks,
like you get a break so that you can have lunch,
and you can take short breaks, especially if you need
to when it's starting to get really hot.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
Although it's frowned.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
Upon for you to take too many breaks, it's not
it's not clearly defined, but people notice if you are
frequently backstage as opposed to being out there entertaining people.
But yeah, from ten am to six pm, you are
if you're on stage, you are in character and you
are performing to entertain people.

Speaker 1 (43:18):
Yeah, and a lot of people like I, Okay, if
I needed to, I would eat backstage, but oftentimes I
ate lunch on site and I just made it entertaining,
and I, you know, my brakes weren't going to pee
or sticking my head in a freezer for a second.
So that is a I don't know by the time
you left. But when I was there, breaks were pretty much,

(43:40):
you know, they weren't clearly defined, and I feel like
that's almost a detriment because like, you don't know what's okay,
so sometimes you don't do it.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
Yeah, there were some of us who like the for
I would say for the first half of my festival career,
which again was broken up among several different you know,
multi year stints, but for the first half of it,
I took almost no breaks. Like I took a break
for lunch, and unlike Ariel, I would typically sit backstage

(44:12):
just so I could decompress a bit and eat, although
occasionally I would eat out on stage. I think I
ate out on stage until one day a young woman
who worked in a booth kissed the top of my head,
and I thought it was Becca, and I was getting
ready to do a whole big character bit because my
wife Becca, she was playing a peasant character and I

(44:34):
was the mayor, so I was going to make her grovel.
But then I turn around and it's a young lady
like probably sixteen, who just kissed the top.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Of my head.

Speaker 1 (44:45):
Not cool.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
Yeah, and I'm like, maybe I'll.

Speaker 3 (44:48):
Be eating backstage from now on. Because I didn't see
her coming, I didn't have any idea. I didn't know
how to extricate myself from that particular. And by the way,
I fully acknowledged that the maybe half dozen instances I've
had on site where I've been perhaps harassed is a

(45:12):
very strong word. In some cases it totally applies, but like,
things have gone beyond my boundaries a few times, maybe
a half dozen times. I fully acknowledged that for a
lot of the women on the cast, that was like
something that was frequently happening multiple times a season, Like
for me, it's across the entire time I was there.

(45:33):
But yeah, just a few times that happened to me.
I was like, gosh, I have a huge appreciation for
what the women on cast can can go through, depending
upon you know their encounters and the types of people.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
They meet up with.

Speaker 3 (45:49):
But yeah, anyway, yeah, you'd be there. You're work until
six most of the time. This actually wasn't a thing
when I first started, but by the time I came back,
when Ariel was well into her run as a character,
people the cast would stick around backstage because at the

(46:10):
end of the day, everyone's leaving and traffic would be
so bad that you would just be sitting in your
car waiting to turn onto a road and then waiting
to turn onto a highway. So you might as well
just sit backstage and hang out with the other actors,
and that became its own kind of ritual.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so like you could be there,
Let's say, if you got there at eight am to
do fight or whatever, right, and then you leave it
like six point thirty seven.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, maybe even seven thirty or eight.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
Yeah, I mean that is a huge long day, and
then you usually want to go get food or go
home and sleep. You know, I will say, as a
street character, it's like a marathon because you're you're running
between low and high energy all day long. It is
really interesting looking at it as a stage show slash band,

(47:09):
because my band played on stages and I would always
encourage them, Hey, let's go out and hang out outside.
Let's walk around instead of going backstage from stage to stage.
Let's walk on site from stage to stage and do
like a musical lotzi or sit and eat and play,
play on our instruments a little bit or whatever. But
when you're a stage show, and I'm sure this is

(47:31):
the same for like Shakespeare parody, those moments you are
on and you're such high energy that it's exhausting. So
that's part of the reason that like musicians are not
required to always be out on the streets when they
aren't doing their shows, because one they have to warm
up and prep and get their instruments ready. And two,

(47:53):
it's a lot more energy to put on a thirty
minute stage show than it is to do thirty minutes
in the lanes. Not always you can bust your ass
in the in the lanes, but you.

Speaker 3 (48:04):
Can, yeah, and I mean, but you're not able to
do that all day.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
It would kill you.

Speaker 3 (48:08):
So to your point, like when you're on a stage show,
you're running high energy for that half hour slot.

Speaker 2 (48:13):
You've been given. When you are on the in the lanes, you.

Speaker 3 (48:17):
Know, maybe you have a stint where it's just like
you're on fire and you're doing like different character interactions
and big bits and stuff, and maybe you've got a
half hour, you know, section of your day where it
really was like that. But it's more likely that you're
gonna have you know, mountains and valleys, right, You're gonna
have moments where things are high energy and really going,

(48:37):
and then other moments where everybody's hot. You're walking around,
you're making eye contact with people, but clearly no one
is quite in the headspace to play because they really
just need to find the next like shady spot, or
they're on their way to a specific location.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
And that's fine.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
I I will say that when I was doing Shakespeare Parody,
like after each performance, I would take about five minutes
sitting down backstage before I would go back out so
that I could I could like calm down, rest, drink
some water in peace before heading back out as the character.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
But yeah, that.

Speaker 1 (49:16):
Stage was one of the coolest backstages, like not as
in like the neatest.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
But are you talking about Greenwood?

Speaker 1 (49:23):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (49:23):
Yeah, Greenwood stage doesn't exist at the Georgia Renaissance Festival anymore.
Was a tiny, little diamond shape stage. Actually I totally
forgot about it. That is where I did have one
of another injury. I was thinking the only injury I
had was the courtly dancing one. That's wrong. I brained
myself on Greenwood stage because it was this diamond shape

(49:45):
thrust that you know. It came to the end of
the stage, came to a point that and most of
the audience was sort of diagonally to your left or
diagonally to your right, with only a couple people who
were able to sit toward the point of the diamond.
And the upstage part had had walls, and it actually
was like a little like L shaped hallway, like a

(50:07):
diamond shape hallway in the back, very narrow, but it
was an actual backstage that was out of view of
the general population. But it also had these windows that
looked out from the back stage, and they had gables
on them. And there was a day when I was
squatted under one of those gables as a character and
I stood up, not knowing that I was right at

(50:28):
the corner of the gable, and it hit me right
on the very top of my head, and I'm bald,
so I scratched my head. And anyone who's ever had
like any kind of scratch on their face or their
head nose, those bleed a lot, and when you're sweating,
it looks way worse. So yeah, that was I was
doing the rest of the Shakespeare parody, sweating and bleeding

(50:51):
and being in pain.

Speaker 1 (50:54):
I'm so sorry. I've also that stage. You did have
to be careful. Ten Penny played on the stage. I
think our first year as a band, and you have
to be careful. So we need to move on to
our final segment so that we can wrap up. But
before we do, did you prefer being more scheduled or unscheduled?

Speaker 3 (51:16):
I preferred being more scheduled because having scheduled things throughout
the day helped break up the freedom of walking around
and just entertaining left and right. Like the less scheduled
I was, the more tired I would be at the
end of the day.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
Yeah, I fully agree, and I felt like exception, I
hated being scheduled for front Gate. I know a lot
of people loved it because it was super easy. I
always felt like my characters were built for I always
built my characters that I've talked about it in the
last episode more for bit interactions and less for like

(51:54):
general conversation, So I always felt like I was giving
more value to the patrons, not front gate and even
opening Gate. I always I hated interacting with people because
I would tag everybody who would be there in the
morning with whatever I was doing because I'm really efficient,
and then I wouldn't have anybody to interact with, and

(52:14):
then it got really hard to figure out what to
do for the next hour while new people were coming in,
especially if it was a slow day. But I preferred
being more scheduled as well, because it meant that the
moments I knew that I had to play the lanes
and to interact with patrons on non scheduled things, I
knew that I could put more effort into that because
I knew when I would get my break to do

(52:37):
the next thing.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So I guess we can quickly,
or at least as quickly as we can, talk about
reasons why we have left. We've obviously touched on some
of them. The rehearsal process can be grueling and uncompensated.
Compensation in general is very low, like criminally low.

Speaker 2 (52:58):
I would say.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
It really undervalues performers. Specifically, it really undervalues street cast
who are not allowed to solicit tips. So because there's
no there's no additional compensation in the form of tips.
You're only dependent upon what the festival is providing, and
they're not providing very much in return.

Speaker 2 (53:21):
You have to do.

Speaker 3 (53:22):
Most people have to supply their own costume, which could
be very expensive depending upon the character you're playing and
how much effort you're putting into that character. Characters actors
frequently but not every year, but frequently had to pay
for their own meals, so that would sometimes be as

(53:43):
much as like half of what you were making for
the day just for the meal.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
You could pack your meal and put it in a fridge, yes,
most of the time, but then you would have to
but you're still.

Speaker 3 (53:54):
Paying for your meal, right you had to go out
and buy it somewhere.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
Else, and then you had to go like you if
you were back at the fair. There was a couple
of years where you would be scheduled in the zones
a fair and you'd have to work the back of
the fair. But if you're keeping your food up at
the front of the fair. That's a hell of a
hike to get your lunch.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
Yeah, lots of making Yeah. So for me, it was
things like and also like there seemed to generally be
a failure on behalf of the leadership at the festival
to show appreciation or even acknowledgment of the street cast.
Like you almost felt like the festival's looking for any

(54:34):
reason to just get rid of you because they don't care,
because there's never any gesture from festival management that you matter,
and that that's a huge problem with any organization. If
you've ever worked anywhere where you were feeling unappreciated, you
know how what a huge hit that is to morale.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm gonna be real honest. I
stopped doing Fair when I got married, partially because when
you sign up for Fair, unless you have something pre
baked into your contract that you're going to be out
a day, you can't miss a day. And I understand
that it's a it is treated like a job, so

(55:15):
it should be paid like a job. So the payment,
the pay was not enough to make up for the
time that I might have to miss because occasionally I
have a bad back or you know, and I usually
work through that anyhow, because I don't know when to quit.
But yeah, the pay was not enough for the time

(55:36):
commitment for me, and I was getting married, so I
had other stuff I wanted to do. On the weekends,
I wanted to hang out with my spouse. Another part
of it was just the I got tired of being
in the hot sun for that many hours with not
knowing whether or not it would get pained badly if

(55:58):
I took a break, and I rarely took breaks, but
once in a while some would be like, why are
you backstage? And I'm like, this is the first time
I'm backstage in the last five hours. Why are you
giving me a hard time? And yeah, you know, I
mean you're tired and hot. You don't want to deal
with that. I loved giving people like a little memento
of their interaction with me, and that got very expensive.
The upkeep of the costume was expensive, the props were expensive.

(56:20):
The you know, I would spend more. Like for instance,
when I was Vogue, and I did this with most characters.
When I was the Black Widow, I'd give out rings.
When I was the old Maid, I'd give out rings
and bells. When I was Vogue, I'd give out jewels
and ribbons. When I was Amelia Onaire, I'd give out jewels.
So all of my characters kind of had a thing

(56:42):
unless I was a musician. My kissing wench, I gave
out kisses. But those are lipstick. No, they weren't. They
were free unless someone wanted to tip.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
Wait what man, Yeah, I want to rEFInd.

Speaker 1 (56:57):
But I mean that's part. So like, you know, kissing
wenches put dollar bills and their bodices and that was
a part of the whole thing with Like some of
the worst interactions I had with patrons were people who took,
you know, an invitation to be a little bit saucy
too far. I got smacked once in the face and like,

(57:18):
this is not someone I was not like pushing a
kiss on anyone. I was trying to interact with the
wife about her husband, and she just smacked me in
the face because she felt I don't know, she thought
either felt threatened or thought it was funny. I had
someone put their hand all the way down my bodice.

(57:40):
I had a parent try to get their kid to
shove money in my chest and I was like, no,
this kid is not doing that because the kid does
not want to do it, and I don't want them
to do it, and you shouldn't be making her child
do this. So like, I was pretty good at getting
out of these situations or dealing with them as they happened.

(58:00):
As I got older and Fair and thankfully I wasn't
a kissing wench until I was older. I didn't like
being an old maid, but I will tell you it
was a good thing. I was not a kissing watch
at first year. You need years and years of experience
to do that. But yeah, not enough pay to cover
my costs or my time. I couldn't pursue other acting
gigs that did pay or had more more like growth

(58:25):
opportunity to them. And then yeah, yeah, I just I
felt undervalued. I felt like I felt like it was
almost a burden on the Fair for me to be there.
But I will tell you it also affected my desire
to go back as a patron. I have not been
back to Fair an awful lot since I left, because,

(58:49):
as you said, they were cutting back on street cast
and that's what I loved. That was the free entertainment.
You can watch a show you don't have to tip,
but if you want food, if you want to buy anything,
if you want to play a game or ride or
ride that all costs money. If you watch a show
and you want a tip, that costs money. The street
cast were the free entertainment at fair and when you
walked in, it's what made you feel like you were

(59:10):
a part of the village. And that was what was
special about the Renaissance Festival to me, and that has
kind of disappeared.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Yeah, now I feel the same way.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
That's how I was interested in joining as well, because
I had memories of going to the Renaissance there and
seeing characters and interacting with them and then being very
silly and funny, and I wanted to do that too.
And I feel like, especially over recent years, that the
cast now is much much, much smaller than it was

(59:41):
when Ariel and I were performing there. It is a
fraction of what it used to be, and it means
that if you do go to the festival, you can
have the experience of walking into the front gates, doing
an entire circuit of the festival and never being aware
that you were ever even close to a street character,
because they're just so few of them that there's a

(01:00:03):
good chance you won't see any and it does mean
that you end up having this big sort of Renaissance
themed fair ground, but without any of the flavor and
character that you would get with a good street cast.
And it's very frustrating to me because you know, once
upon a time you would go, maybe you weren't interested
in the street cast, but you were interested in shopping

(01:00:25):
or whatever. Well, these days, with the Internet, a lot
of the stuff you can find the Renaissance Festival you
can find like their supplier online, you can order directly
from them. So like there's fewer reasons to go to
a festival unless you can make it special. And yet
we've seen support for street casts drop to a point

(01:00:45):
where it's very hard to convince people to come back.
Like there are some people who are hardcore and we'll
meet back year after year, but a lot of people,
after they go through some seasons, especially seeing a decline,
they're like me and they're just like, I can't do
this again.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
I'm done.

Speaker 3 (01:01:02):
It's too depressing to me to be part of this,
and that just makes the problem worse. And because streetcast
are not revenue generators. Yeah, it's free to watch us,
it's free to interact with us, but we also we
don't generate money for the festival directly. We're part of
what makes a festival special, so it brings people in,
but that's hard to quantify. So when you are doing

(01:01:26):
the numbers, from a business perspective, you see the cost
of streetcasts, like how much you're paying to have these
people walking around and being silly, But you're not seeing,
at least not directly, the numbers that contribute to your
bottom line, Like it just ends up being a cost.
So from a business perspective, you could see why there'd
be little desire to preserve that unless you have this

(01:01:50):
appreciation of the street cast? Is what is an element
that makes the festival a place where people say, Hey,
I want to go to the Renaissance Festival this weekend.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
And it may not be the.

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
Prime reason, it might not even be one that they
can vocalize, but because it ends up creating that atmosphere,
it ends up being really important. I think that yeah,
And I think I think music throughout the festival and
I mean, like live performed music throughout the festival are
two things that I found really magical when I was

(01:02:21):
a patron, and I'm sad that both of those have
largely faded because there are fewer places for musicians to
perform throughout the festival, and there's just it's a smaller
group of people these days than it was when I
first joined.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Yeah, I will say Devil's Advocate. I know people who
don't put any like they don't. They would interact with
me because I was their friend already, they knew me
outside of Fair, but in general they didn't super enjoy
interacting with street characters. Honestly, my husband is one of them.
He doesn't go to Fair for the street characters or

(01:02:58):
the village. He went and not even for the shows.

Speaker 3 (01:03:02):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
He went because it was a fun place to look
at swords, but also he doesn't go often because it's
a really expensive way to go look at swords that
you can buy online. Even a lot of the handcrafters
you said you could find the suppliers for the the
booths online. A lot of the handcrafters have online stores
as well, because that's the age we live in. So like,

(01:03:25):
not everybody values that the way that Jonathan and I do,
but I do. I agree with you. I think it
made it special.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
Yeah, I kind of think of it like if you
were to go to Disney World, but there were no
characters ever anywhere in Disney World. It would be it's
not that the characters make or break it. It's that
the presence there is one of the things that ends
up being a memorable element that improves the experience, and

(01:03:53):
their absence makes it feel lesser than. But it's not
like you would immediately associate the character as being that's
the reason we have to go.

Speaker 1 (01:04:03):
Yeah, and like there are other fairs that do volunteer cast,
but you still have to make them feel valued right.

Speaker 3 (01:04:10):
Well, and like to your point, if you're gonna put
the onus on them to deliver certain things, like if
they if you're being treated like you have these responsibilities,
then you should be compensated. Like if you're being given responsibilities,
then there needs to be a two way interaction there.
It shouldn't just be one way where the festival gets

(01:04:32):
free labor from you. Like volunteering so that you can
be part of like a big group. So as you're
a pretty picture, that's one thing, but if you have
other duties that's a job.

Speaker 1 (01:04:43):
Yeah yeah, yeah, or if you're going to get penalized
if you have a conflict come up and I'm not
saying like, if you've got a volunteer cast. You know,
if you're in a community theater show, you agree to
show up for things.

Speaker 3 (01:04:58):
But like, like as also, community theaters typically are nonprofits,
and the Rensluns Festival definitely is not.

Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
Is Yeah, yeah, so I and like, I know that
stage stage shows and traveling shows have the same issue
of getting paid what their time is worth and their
travel is worth, and things like that too at various fares.
You know, I don't have all of the insights onto that,
and I don't necessarily think that I'm in a place

(01:05:28):
where I should speak about that publicly on a podcast,
but you know, it is a thing. Various fares have
various budgets based on where they are and how long
they run and what kind of audience they're getting, and
so like, there's not a good standard to even say
this is this is a good standard of practice. But
I generally think, yeah, if you've got duties and responsibilities

(01:05:49):
and you're expected to show up at a certain time
every day and stage to a certain time every day,
you should get some sort of compensation and you should
also be shown appreciation.

Speaker 3 (01:05:58):
Yeah, yeah, and if you if you're being true as
a volunteer that you should be able to leave whenever
you want, right, Like you should be able you show up,
you work an hour and you're like, all right, that's
enough for me. I'm going You shouldn't be told like,
oh you can, Like, well, you're not paying me. I'm
a volunteer. I'm now volunteering to leave. So it needs
to like, whatever the arrangement is, it needs to work

(01:06:19):
both ways for both parties.

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
It can't be.

Speaker 3 (01:06:22):
It can't be that one party benefits from the other
and there's nothing in return.

Speaker 2 (01:06:27):
That is just not acceptable.

Speaker 3 (01:06:29):
So really that's the big thing. Like we could probably
go on forever about things we have observed with the
specifically with the Georgia Renaissance Festival over the years, but
that ends up being so narrow casting that I think
we can we can skip it and instead we can
just say that, you know, we always hold out hope

(01:06:49):
that there will be a change in culture and that
will see performers being valued and being compensated properly and
have a kind of a rejuvenation of the festival.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
I would love to see that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:03):
Yeah, And also if you enjoy going to Renaissance, festivals,
regardless of which one it is. I am so glad
for you. I hope you have a lot of fun.
Just show appreciation to all the people who work there
because it's it's fun, but it's hard, yeah, you know,
but continue to enjoy it. And to the actors who
are still working at renfairs where maybe, like Jonathan and

(01:07:25):
I have felt undervalued. Great, they really love it and
they really love you, so enjoy them.

Speaker 2 (01:07:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:07:33):
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with having a good time. We're
just saying, like the things that led to us leaving,
But that doesn't mean, like I still know a couple
of people who who work their season after season. I
don't hold any ill will toward them for that decision.
They're still getting genuine enjoyment and benefit from it. For
you know, however, they view that it's just for me personally,

(01:07:55):
it no longer met that that standard.

Speaker 1 (01:07:58):
Yeah yeah, but you know, people, people grow and move
on and do other awesome things. But yeah, we need
to wrap up today. So if there are any questions
you have about the Renaissance Festival that we didn't talk about,
how can they reach out to you Jonathan to have
you answer them?

Speaker 3 (01:08:17):
Well, what they can do is they can take a
trip down to their local grocery store and they're gonna
go down the produce aisle and in between different types
of apples, you're gonna see a fruit that doesn't look
like anything you've ever seen before, and you're going to
go ahead and just grab that, put that in your

(01:08:38):
basket or your cart or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:08:39):
Do the rest of your shopping.

Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
When you check out, you will find out that this
object you picked up, this fruit, doesn't register as anything
in the system, and therefore you can.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
Just take it, and you're going to take that home.

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
You're gonna go home. You're gonna take this weird fruit.
You're gonna peel it, you're gonna chop it up into
tiny bits. You're gonna put those bits into like a
food processor or a blender of.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
Some sort, blended down.

Speaker 3 (01:09:04):
You're gonna turn that into a shake. You're gonna drink
that shake, and then you're gonna forget everything that happens
to you over the next eighteen hours. So just make
sure you've got a buddy to kind of look after you,
because I don't know what you get up to, but
neither will you. That's probably the problem. But when you
wake up. You're going to see that on your computer

(01:09:26):
screen is a little blinking line and green and it says,
what is your question?

Speaker 2 (01:09:32):
It's me, I've hacked in.

Speaker 3 (01:09:34):
You can ask me and I will answer, Except if
the question is what was that fruit? I can tell
you now the answer will be what fruit?

Speaker 1 (01:09:47):
That felt very like Welcome to Nightveil.

Speaker 3 (01:09:50):
To me as I may or may not be somewhat
influenced by Welcome to Nightveil.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
If you don't understand the li green line hacking reference
and you want a more modern way to contact us,
you can do so on social media on Facebook, Instagram, threads, discord.
We are large Nerdron Collider on Twitter x whatever it's
called now. We're at llenc Underscore podcast, and you can

(01:10:19):
check all of our show notes on large nor John
Collider dot com. I've had some fun picking pictures of
Jonathan and I from Renfest to put up on these
latest episodes, and or you can email us at large
neurdron pod at gmail dot com. Invites to discorder also
on our website. We love hearing from you. Thank you
for listening, Thank you for asking us to talk about

(01:10:42):
this topic. It's been honestly a lot of fun, and
until next time, I am Ariel, hear ye, hear ye caston.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
And I am Jonathan.

Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
Fairly well and safe journeys home.

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
Strickland. The Large Nordron.

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
Collider was created by Aeriel Casting and produced, edited, published, deleted, undeleted,
published again. Cursed at by Jonathan Strickland. Music by Kevin
McLeod of incomptech dot com