RMF post show
We did our post-faire wrap up meeting… some good ideas for the 10th year (jousting, archery tourney or feast perhaps?) — we’ll have to see what we can do on the budget we have for 2007.
Add comment November 8th, 2006
Posts filed under 'Festivals'
Alumni show
Tonight was the KWIF ToTE 25th anniversary alumni show. Again, I was really lucky and got to play (Steve Hutton decided to perform and I had to balance the sides). I was amazed on how well the groups worked together and I think overall we did a pretty good show (given how rusty I should be). It was a very nice reunion of the “legacy” players and good to reconnect with all of them. Karen and Bernie as they hosted showed the audience many years of t-shirts from ToTE (each of them were wearing about seven of them, removing one at the beginning of each segment) - the funniest thing though was Bernie taking off one of his shirts and a cloud of dust billowing out… 25 years indeed. Hope to be there for the 50th anniversary.
Add comment November 4th, 2006
KWIF special guest night
Karen’s been hosting the KW improv festival since Wednesday (it runs until Saturday) and tonight they had the special guests nights which had improv groups in from all over Ontario. It was very fun to watch (some really funny stuff) and uh…. surprisingly…. perform — I got pulled into the show last minute to kill time because one of the groups had delays getting to KW with the 401 closed. Eventually they showed up and we wrapped up the temporary ToTE set and the show rolled on to a very funny conclusion. Saturday is the 25 year Theatre on the Edge alumni show, so hopefully lots of people we haven’t seen in a long while show up.
Add comment November 3rd, 2006
Nice aerial
John and Paul have been flying all over the place. It seems that Paul’s new plane purchase and John’s renewed interest in flying have combined very well for the last little while, resulting in lots of fun trips all over the province. Since they were likely to be flying around anyway, I asked if they could pass over Waterloo Park and do aerial photo for use by me with planning around the medieval faire. Apparently they must have been at a pretty serious bank because the shot they got is phenominal! It’s also neat that you can see the holes we dug for all the banner poles for the tournament ring, so I can even use it as a reference point for next year. Really neat and with the fall colours, it’s just so beautiful.
View a side by side comparison against old aerial image
Add comment October 21st, 2006
Travelling thanksgiving
Flew back from NY today, largely uneventful which was nice — our Thanksgiving was largely just relaxing and unwinding from travel and we didn’t really do a whole hell of a lot other than try to get caught up on things. Ron apparently got his photos from the medieval faire up on his website, so hopefully people check that out.
Add comment October 9th, 2006
Post faire wrap
We had a relaxing Sunday today - took back costumes and some theatre risers that we had used, general check-over clean-up of the park facilities — Shae found some nasty opened and half-used 4L can of cheese spread… remind me not to eat the medieval nachos next year. The party was as per usual a fun one with Ron starting it off showcasing his fantastic photos that he always takes. Dinner was good and then the usual giving of gifts. Overall, it was a great time. One thing I have to say about Chuck is that he runs a really great party and provides really good food which is always appreciated.
Some co-workers apparently said that they should try to find the RMF wrap party, but didn’t know where it would be because there aren’t any buildings big enough to host such a big Dungeons & Dragons game. Remind me to make sure they’re taken to the stocks next year.
Add comment September 24th, 2006
Weather luck for RMF
Another year of super lucky weather control. It stopped raining for exactly the period of the medieval faire — stopped early in the morning before we got to the park and started again late in the evening. So, the day started very cloudy and overcast but we got moving right away… we got lots done the previous two setup days so we didn’t have much to do this morning other than deploy the straw and setup some tents and games. Some minor vandalism that the security guard actually CAUGHT! (must be a good year, as we never had good security). Bathrooms arrived on time and clean this year and everyone snapped to action on their remaining tasks (special thanks to Nicole and Glenn on the vendor control). The day started and the faire was underway… weather stayed gloomy for most of the morning, but thankfully still no rain. The gold group did a fantastic job at the year recaps and warming up the audience and our scenes were pretty good — fights were as they always are, minor issues but largely good. The weather got sunnier and the falcon guy wanted to fly his birds, so he did, but they flew away and he couldn’t get it back for a long time because they were heavily distracted by the large number of people. The second thing that was fun was the maypole guy got his ribbons twisted up and couldn’t untangle them, so he stopped doing the maypole — I sent Al over and he fixed that… if you ever do a festival, you need Al, he’s a brilliant site manager. Games ran well and our new additions (Maypole, Quintain and Hit a Knight) were well received, although looking at Ian at the end of the day, he and his crew were wiped from having so many kids attack them. Faire sped by and wrapped and we started breakdown a bit late (6:10) and being that we’re a week later, we were worried about the amount of time (sunset at 7:30). Well, magic must have really been with us, because with unprecidented speed the truck was loaded by 7:20 and we were offsite by 7:45. Storage was unloaded completely and we were at the restaurant by 9pm which was totally unbelieveable. All and all, the 9th year was a good year considering how it could have gone… numbers were down, about 3500-4000, but likely because of the weather — at the very least we are a go for next year and we plan on making it a big one.
3 comments September 23rd, 2006
Second day down…
No problems with the park last night, everything was intact. We worked fairly hard today, got tents setup and areas roped off. Games got repaired and prepped, so we should be ready to deploy them at a wink. We saw 120 bales of straw arrive and it’s always fun to climb up on top and throw them off. We did a short cute dragon-in-the-jail rehearsal and all should be good there. Found out there will be no parking for us tomorrow as there are baseball games in the park beside us, but we’ll manage. The close of the day saw a bit of rain as we all jumped in our cars to leave. We got a lots done but skipped a few things for this year because they didn’t seem like they were worth the effort — had a few brainstorms for next year that will be jazzy. The weather is still taunting us and it seems like there may be a window of nice weather for us between the early morning thunderstorms and evening rain where it might actually be a good day. I don’t quite understand it all and there seems to be no predictability from the weather reports, but I guess we’ll have to take what we can get. Hopefully people don’t stay away. See you on the morrow — Huzzah!
Add comment September 22nd, 2006
Setup started for the last RMF?
Started doing setup today — record times for getting everything out of storage, good planning and strong help made it really work well. In the park, everything went very smoothly, got the centre ring all setup, some tents built and the security guard even arrived early. Weather forecast does not look good at all, and if we get rained out, we’re worried that we won’t have enough money to do a tenth year, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens.
Add comment September 21st, 2006
Dress rehearsal sleepiness
Karen, myself and well everyone really are so tired right now — even falling asleep on the couch. We finished our dress rehearsal for the RMF today and had an extended fight rehearsal. Essentially we spent from 10am to 4pm in the park running the whole show. Overall, it was pretty good for a rehearsal, and we cleaned up quite a few areas that needed improving. As it usually goes, on the day of the faire it will likely be 200% better (for some reason), but I think in the end, everyone was quite happy with it. I was expecially impressed with the gold group and their recaps of previous years, especially the fun Ceili dance sequence that would occur at the end of each section. Now we just have to do the good weather voodoo and all should for Saturday.
2 comments September 17th, 2006
Kubb - the viking game
Jonathan had his birthday today and Julie bought him Kubb, a traditional game from ye olden days. Jonathan who’s always thinking about fun games to play and also how they might fit into the medieval faire, suggested that it might be the kind of game that would be a lot of fun to have at the festival. I think that’s a great idea so I bought two sets for the medieval faire and we’ll see if we can fit them in this year (if they arrive in time). Looks like a neat game and I can’t wait to play.
5 comments September 12th, 2006
Victory… uh… (almost) to Toronto
Today Karen, Adam and I went to do a promotion for the medieval faire coming up in 2 weeks (can you believe it?!?!). It was the opening game of the University of Waterloo’s Rugby season and we were hired to put on a bit of entertainment for the home crowd. Naturally this meant we needed a hero and their nemesis. There I was dressed in Toronto blue-and-white (medieval tabards) amidst at least 500 black-and-gold (in some cases painted) Waterloo fans. Adam, Karen and I roamed all over, talking to the crowd and handing out flyers… I spent a lot of my time trying to russle up support for Toronto from those wearing the Waterloo colours. Unfortunately, as soon as people realized what we were about and that I was representing the opposing team, they quickly made sure they clearly articulated their support for their home team and stood beside Adam. It was definitely fun to be the underdog trying to cling to anything that showed someone could potentially be a supporter of my team (even though they were adamant they were not) and watch people quickly say “go Waterloo!” when they realized that I was making them out to be a Toronto fan. Adam had some very quick and funny quips at my expense which made it that much more enjoyable for the Waterloo fans. It ended on Adam and I taking to the field while Karen embellished a story about the conflict between he and I — at the end of which, he thoroughly trounced my ass. Definitely had a great time doing that and for what it’s worth, I hope Waterloo won.
1 comment September 9th, 2006
Conflicted…
Karen and I had a long conversation today about the medieval faire. We’re both very conflicted around wanting it to continue and also wanting to be done with it. After much analysis I think we don’t want to be done with it because:
- it’s not that much work anymore (for us anyway)
- we have good people helping out (some may be in need of a break themselves)
- if we include more fresh people, they can be more involved
- it’s a great community thing
- if we go to 11 years, it doesn’t mean we have to go to 15 years
- we’re not sure we want to start something else from scratch
- we want to bring our kids to it someday
It’s really tough though. It is similar in thinking to wanting to go out at the top of your career, not when you’re done and washed up. I guess we’ll see, but at least we’ve admitted to ourselves that it’s not as cut and dried as “we’re done at year 10“.
2 comments September 2nd, 2006
Gargoyles
Went back down to the busker fest today. Got a call from Al on my cell phone telling me that one of the guys doing an art installation knew me and was from Alberta. Not too many people that could be, so I went up onto the parkade to talk to them and it turns out it was Adrian, Laryssa and Siobhan! Monica was there with them and we had a bit of a fight performer reunion and talked about what was going on… needless to say I was surprised that Adrian and Laryssa were there. Adrian was rigging Laryssa and Siobhan who walked down the wall of the 7 story parkade and hung there throwing little messages down below to the people passing by. We got on great (glad that FDC didn’t cause issues between us) and decided to get together for dinner. Karen, Monica, Siobhan, Adrian and Laryssa managed to squeeze a nice dinner in at Salute (catered to Laryssa’s gluten free diet) before they had to go back and do the evening show of the festival. I was really thrilled to get together with them and it sounds like we might all get together in Banff at the end of the year.
Add comment August 26th, 2006