Last Sunday, my family spent the day at the Maryland Renaissance Festival with some friends and their kids. We go every couple of years and have a great time. The Maryland RenFest is huge and well-organized, consisting of permanent buildings set in nice woodlands. The entertainment - the joust, music and comedy - are of professional quality as are the costumes, props and other elements of the setting. The food may not be particularly authentic (can you say medieval cheesecake on a stick?) but it's good and plentiful.
Despite all of this, some of the attendees (and I assume they were attendees and not professional staff), don't seem to understand the whole "medieval festival" part of it. We saw people, strolling around as if completely appropriate, dressed as:
Captain Jack Sparrow
A Jedi Knight
An 18th Century British Soldier
An X-Wing pilot
and Trinity from the Matrix
Yes, a woman in black leather and vinyl with slick-backed hair, a black trench coat and dark sunglasses certainly fit in perfectly with the renaissance theme. And, no, she did not look like Carrie Ann Moss.
Huzzah.
5 comments:
If you went on Sunday, I may be able to explain the soemtimes ummm...peculair costuming. The last day of Faire is referred to as the "Day of Wrong".
I'm told it started as a day for the actors to get out of character a bit as the transition into the real world once again. It's know a mini holiday amongst all the attendies and die-hards known as Rennies.
Everyone tries to out "costume" everyone else. People dress up as fairies, men dress up in Women's gowns, girls dress up like men; all and all it's really just meant to be in good fun. I had one a perfectly tudor gown, red and black...made to look like the 16th c version of the Star Trek uniform. :-)
You forgot the guy in the Purple Pimp Suit.
Hey, thanks, Isabella! I didn't know that. To be perfectly fair, the "odd" costumes we saw were very well done, especially Captain Jack and the X-Wing Pilot.
The purple pimp, a bit less so.
:-)
I didn't see anything like that when I went.
No, I take that back. I did see a Captain Jack Sparrow look-alike.
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