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Not only did it bring back memories, of course, but as I saw one of the usual photographer’s there who I knew, I asked for my friend to let me say ‘hallooo!’ to him. This led to a walk around the admittedly small Fairegrounds and a video visit to friends I haven’t seen in many a year. It was bittersweet, of course, and heartening in that almost all of them told me I was missed as was my group.

It took me some time to fall asleep, so filled with with happiness and an emotional high. But before I fell asleep, i knew I was going to post about the Faire and my group, The Wild Rovers, today!

Early Faire Years.

In college I was in a theater program as a minor, and part of that was learning stage combat. I loved it! There were not many opportunities in the Anchorage bowl to use the skills, but as a few of the people who were in the same class as I decided to put together a ‘live steel’ show of Battle Chess on for the Faire, I was contacted if I’d like to be a part. Of course, the answer was a resounding YES! At that time, in the early-to-mid 1990s, the show was a separate entity, not affiliated in the lore of the Faire with any of the baronies, so with two shows a day I could come and go as long as I was there for warm-ups before showtime. I have one existing woodcarving depicting this show:

That is I, all the way on the extreme left side, axe and shield, seeming half asleep! Two Baron’s would be the Kings on opposing sides and choose the scripted moves; any pieces that met would then ‘fight’ it out, determining which side took the square. Pretty straight forward. Being a barrel-chested young fella, I was always cast as a Rook, I think only once being a Knight. Thinking back, I believe I missed being in three years of the show from early on to my last year, which was something like 20 years of performing in the ‘live steel’ show. It changed from Battle Chess (this was, by the way, YEARS before Harry Potter) to Tournament of Champions, where supposed grievances would be brought before the Barons to be determined through combat, and then back to Chess in that time.

After some three or so years of being a separate entity, it was determined that the show needed to be incorporated into the full story of the Faire, which meant auditioning for one of the Baronies. The idea behind the whole Faire were that three barons would meet at summertime in this shire to compete for trade agreements and such, and there were the good guys, or Red Baron (yep!) and bad guys, the Green Baron, and the wise mediator guys, or Blue Baron, and the fighters would come from these. THis was to change later when Guilds were evolved into the story of the Faire, but more on that later..

I joined the Green that first year as part of the story of the Faire as a Guard for the Baroness. I chose the character I had been playing a role-playing game as, a kind of lovable rat-bastard named Donny Brooke, taking on originally an Irish accent which wound up going between Irish and Scottish without my realizing it, which brought about the background that his mother was Irish and his father was Scottish. At any rate, that year was the last year for the director of that court, and the next year the new director asked me to be the Baron! 😲 Hell, yes, I’d do it!

Did that for two years, making the Bad Guys ‘Craggies’, barbarians that would celebrate their victories by mass slaughter and such, but not the mustache twirling, angry all the time, snarling, spitting evil that had become the norm. That’s why we only had two years of Green Baron-ness; the Powers That Be wanted the Bad Guys to be impotent Disney-like villains that could not follow through on any threats. my opinion, anyway. I did get to wear a ‘whole nine yards’ kilt that was pleated by hand, the Olde Way, every day; being 100% wool, it turned out to be very comfortable and cool in summer! The Baron’s never actually fought during the chess game, but on that second year, the white shirt, I did get to clear the board in a fit of barbaric rage!

But that ‘firing’ led to the Better Thing.

The Wild Rovers

The shire the barons came to each summer needed a name and inhabitants. It was decided to incorporate Guilds into the Faire, which would be townspeople, magistrates, merchants and so forth. Taking much of what was developed for the Craggies, my co-director and I envisioned a mixture of Gypsies and Tinkers, both being of wandering peoples, and it gave us a grand opportunity to invite characters for many and diverse cultures to join, leaning into the idea of educating the patrons on the cultures of the East and the West, as we could.

The main Idea was to be a more Hollywood looking Gypsy and Gypsy encampment, bright colors and such, while also being able to impart historical references along with having several placards about the encampment with more in-depth info. I was very ambitious that first year of the Rovers, too. I had mentioned that it would be incredible if we could have a Gypsy wagon that could stand out. We, and I as director(s) were always very fortunate to have wonderfully creative people in the group; The week after I mentioned the wagon, one of my group, a very handyman kinda guy, shows me a plan for building one! That first year, it was perhaps 60% complete with no roof but for two plywood sheets, but that second year….

Myself and the fellow who wrote up the plan were the ‘horses’ that pulled that sucker around and about the Faire, too!

We went from very small to bigger and grander in both the encampment size and membership.

After a summer where the food that the Faire provided for it’s actors for lunch, a brown bag affair, also had mayonnaise that had turned brown in the heat, the Rovers began their own feast every day of the Faire. We could not allow patrons to join, for obvious reasons, but we would invite the Baron’s to partake, and we always had a lot of food that many of the Rover actors would make and bring. A few years, we even had a whole roasted pig, complete with apple in the mouth! Unfortunately, I have no picture of that…

It was endless fun to portray the character of Donny Brooke. In fact, during the course of the many years of rehearsals, a character questionnaire was mandatory for every actor to fully flesh out their character so the assuming of the role became secondary. We may never get the opportunity to tell patron or other actor of our character background, but it was there and ‘alive’ if needed.

In fact, over the course of about 10 years, I had compiled a ‘Wild Rovers Handbook’ for rehearsals that ran almost 140 pages, from the history of Gypsy and Tinker to what interactive theater is and how to do it, improvisational skills, acting skills, FaireSpeak and so on. There were also a 12-week set of templates for rehearsals and what needed to happen by those weeks to be on track to be ready for Faire days so the next director could follow them, should it come to pass.

There was a slight evolution of all characters, but other than one other person, I and Donny were the longest running characters in The Wild Rovers.

As there a LOT of photos, I limit the number: Donny didn’t change TOO much. Better boots, better doublet, expanding waist, graying and thinning hair…😎 Then, of course, there were the fight shows. I mentioned how I loved doing them and some of these photos show the intensity and commitment. Again, there are SO many, I restrict myself to a few:

After a few years we had semi-professional belly dancers join with us..

…and we shared our dart game wealth on the last Sunday of the Faire by going to the final performance of ‘The Tomato Show’ wherein rotten tomatoes were purchased and thrown at ‘rotten actors’ slaughtering any one of Shakespeare’s plays

We would buy baskets and baskets of tomatoes, form a firing line and at times begin a count, very loudly, of “One….two…three!!’encouraging the whole audience to throw when at least 10 of the Rovers along the back of the audience would then launch their barrage! Yeah, there were some casualties in the audience who were hit with tomato guts, but most were absolutely there for it!

Many organizations seem to have to deal with politics of one kind or another, and this RenFaire was no exception. There were difficulties with becoming almost ‘too big’ and rivaling the actual courts. I think is started when patrons began asking where the ‘Purple Court’ was. We wore purple, as you’ve seen, but we never put ourselves forward as a ‘court’. I will never understand why people let things fester in their minds than let someone know they’ve done something to annoy them. That seems to have been the case with the board of directors, as I would hear things through the grapevine that this person or that had a problem with the way I was running the Rovers or the group itself. When I’d meet with and ask them, no, everything was just fine!

Well, I had promised myself that as soon as the Faire stopped being fun, or at least more trouble than fun, I would pack it up and turn over the directorship. 2015 was that year when I found myself yelling at my actors during rehearsals not once, but on three different occasions. For nothing that was their fault, either. It was more dealing with the board, especially after having a group of fine people join with us who were going to portray faeries. This was to be mostly as a part of a booth they purchased as a vendor, but they wanted to be also a part of the Faire. Faeries running a shop, if you will. I was run through the ringer by the board on this because over a decade ago they had a group of fairies (note the difference in spelling) that went badly. Apparently so badly that even ten years on there were board members that were resistant to the idea, even after two in-depth meeting with me and the booth runner. And then I was called in because someone had come to them with a rumor that was absolutely false and they refused to let me know and speak to who brought the rumor to them to make sure things were straight from my mouth! It was stressful enough that it cause my outbursts. As things had gotten more bizarre dealing with the board the previous five or so years, the writing seemed to be on the proverbial wall.

I informed my group that it would be my last year as part of the Wild Rovers.

Even as I let the board know that I had been grooming two of my performers to take over the directorship, they chose someone else with a terrible directing record, forced changes upon them fairly gutting my 17 years of creation. Two years later, the Rovers were gone, no longer a part of the Faire.

That took a while for me to accept, even as I let it go. As with the loss of a loved one, we must accept and move on. In my case, move away! 😁 Still and all, I have so many incredible memories that I still share with many of my friends in Alaska, and hope for a return to get them together and have one last Wild Rover feast!

The Last Good-bye