Delight at the End of the Trouble

Ever since 1499 when I joined King Richard’s Faire as a strolling minstrel, our 10-month off-seasons have been as quiet as Lake Wobegon, although I suppose the “little town that time forgot” might seem modern compared to a Renaissance festival.

Not this year. Just halfway into our lull we learn that Carvershire, our beloved, shaded glen has been claimed for some other use, and we are moving a mile or so down Route 58 to a new location.

You can read the details in various news sources, or see and hear them on at least one Boston TV station, offered by any search engine. For those who do not already know what the new location has been since time-out-of-mind, the word “engine” is a clue–and no longer will we rennies laugh at the sound of a distant choo-choo.

From theme-park to theme-park we go, turning it into our own. At the front gate in the morning, I’d often greet groups of people approaching from the parking lot: “Welcome to the Edaville Railro– Oh, wait! That’s those other guys!” Best laugh line I had except for one in the same spot, facing the other way as they left the faire: “Thank you for spending you mon– Oh, no! No! I mean day! Your day! Thank you for spending your day, your day with us!”

One Edaville track curved around the backside of Carvershire before turning away and back through a cranberry bog to whence it came. We couldn’t see it, but the sound was unmistakable. “A baby dragon in the woods,” I’d tell patrons who did not attempt, as did I, to keep a straight face. As for the small aircraft sometimes heard over head: “Behold! Another flying machine from the great DaVinci!” It’s fairly–and certainly fairely–easy to turn laughter into cheers.

So the faire will open in 1525 from Labor Day weekend through what you folk of the future call October 19th. Since King Richard’s Faire is still on the Julian calendar, and since the Julian calendar went out of print over four centuries ago, we are never sure of the dates, only that we show up on the weekends.

Yes, we have performed and played and juggled in the glade every year save one since 1482 when Columbus was still slicing bologna in his brother Bartholomew’s delicatessen–in Lisbon, not in Venice, truth be told. Exception was 1520 when we were shuttered due to the Bubonic Plague, after which time we still have a cart with physicians wearing those alarming crow’s beaks that makes the rounds picking up a cadaver or two here and there.

Some say that the new locale features paved walkways. If so, that’s welcome news to those who occasionally tripped over Carvershire’s rugged terrain. Yes, there’s more authenticity in the bare ground, but I sure as hell will not miss the tree roots.

Then again, I will surely pine for the canopy of branches overhead unless the grounds crew can work some magic to shade the new site. Wouldn’t put it past them. Since I’ve been piping for King Richard’s realm, the most wondrous feats of all have been the days we have been able to perform that have followed days of deluge. Add those days together, days when opening just should not have been possible, and our grounds crew has saved at least two full seasons of that faire.

Many of the faire’s merchants worked a comparable miracle this past week, managing to move their shops and stands and signs out of Carvershire on but days notice. Many other faire friends were there to assist, bringing trucks and tools, all to allow all of us some degree of familiarity for seasons to come.

Speaking of seasons, yes, I’ll back for at least one more. Never before have I made a public announcement like this, but the off-season was already murmuring with change of personnel before we were hit with a short-notice eviction. And Yours Unruly was loud with complaint until cooler heads prevailed upon me to play in King Richard’s realm–wherever it may be and in whatever appearance–into the future with all of Edaville’s amenities.

No longer can I cling to 1499, the last year of the 15th Century.

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Movin’ On.” Photo by Paul Shaughnessy, 1508.

Random Acts of Awareness

At the Renaissance faire last weekend, I strolled though Canterbury Kitchen’s picnic benches piping jigs and reels, always good for a few tips.

Gained two right away, and then saw a form rise from a bench out on the perimeter. Was but a silhouette against the late afternoon sun, an arm rising and a finger pointing at me. The voice was that of a woman and quite loud: “Mass Bay Community College!”

Not drunk but under a slight influence, she rose, continuing to point and thrust that finger, pronouncing me “the greatest English teacher ever,” or something like that. Can’t say I recognized her, but her voice and the gleam in her eye rang a bell. She went on and on telling everyone seated that I was the reason she stopped being a wayward teen and became a nurse. That’s when I recalled her from at least 22 years ago.

Embarrasing, but nice, and from an open wallet held up for her by a friend she found $6 to stuff in my tip-mug. Had there been $66, or more, I believe she would have given it all. Fellow about my age at a nearby table was chuckling. Told him I didn’t know if I should play another jig or give a grammar lesson. That quip landed a $5 tip.

Two days later, a funny thing happened to me on the way to Salem for rehearsals of the witch trial re-enactments through the first week of November. Since the annual, long-running Cry Innocent is “immersive theater,” there are breaks in the play where the actors, in character, field questions from the audience which requires us to know about the era.

On that day, we were schooled by each other with our own chosen projects, about 15 minutes apiece. One was all about hysteria created by itself and how it spread, playing on suspicion, turning people against each other. The presentation was based on Arthur Miller’s 1953 play, The Crucible, a parallel commentary on the red-scare and McCarthyism that gripped the USA soon after World War II.

That’s what I listened to just an hour after hearing, in my car, an NPR report that schools, churches, and hospitals are now under protection of the National Guard in Springfield, Ohio.

At the Screening Room last night, an elderly woman asked what the ticket cost. Obviously a senior, and someone I thought I recognized as one of our regular patrons, I quoted the senior discount.

“Ten dollars,” she cried, “that’s way too much!”

Not sure if it was resolve on my part or the fact that I was beyond surprise that kept me silent.

“I thought it was four dollars,” she finally said.

Now I struggled to keep a straight face, but I couldn’t resist some comic relief: “That was back when Jimmy Carter was president.”

She laughed and was quite pleasant in response: “Oh, I’ve been coming here all this time! I guess I just never noticed the increase.”

What I thought: “Lady, whether you know it or not, you have experienced a neurological event recently and should get checked out.”

What I said: “Most patrons here tell us how low the prices are compared to the cineplexes.”

When the film ended, she waited for me to descend from the booth to apologize for the earlier exchange, telling me what a good film it was she just saw, what good films we always have here. I felt this nagging urge to tell her to get a neurological test, but just could not bring myself to do it. Instead, I assured her that no apology was necessary, and that we hope to keep showing provocative and inspiring films.

She danced, smiling, out the door. I longed for a stiff drink.

The film she saw was War Game. Set on January 6, 2025, it imagines, according to the blurb, “a nation-wide insurrection in which members of the US military defect to support the losing Presidential candidate.”

Hardly a flick to send you home smiling and dancing. Everyone else left looking like they also were in need of stiff drinks, though they all told me the film was riveting, enlightening, convincing.

Yes, I nodded in agreement on all three points, and off they went to think it over. What I didn’t say is what I now think over: War Game never mentions, never ever hints that the very real-life possibility of a MAGA insurrection–the very real-life reason the film was made–already has the tacit support of one of America’s two major political parties.

I don’t know if I should play another jig, write another opinion column, or drown myself in drink until this is all over.

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This pic is at least ten years old. Who took it? My daughter? Nancy Cushman? Paul Shaughnessy?

Bad Dad Jokes & Six Bad Words

At a rehearsal for the witch trial reenactments this fall, six of us got to talking about October dates. Taking note of the director’s and actors’ mentions of “Indigenous People’s Day,” I waited for an opening.

Trying to sound apologetic: “Um, I need to tell you that, as a member of a Renaissance faire, I am contractually obligated to call it ‘Columbus Day’.”

What I thought would be an explosion of laughter was a implosion of shock.

You could hear the brakes screech on five brains when responses burst into the room as if through a windshield: “What?” “Really?” “They can do that?”

This time I really was apologetic, without trying, profusely so, almost begging them to recognize my attempt at a joke. Call it a bad joke. Call it a dad joke. I’m twenty years older than the director, and older than any two of the other four actors combined.

Earlier in the rehearsal, we were going through the paces of a new scene. This is called “blocking” where we position ourselves on stage (“hitting our marks”) as we read the lines. The new scene is quite ambitious with enough movement by four of us–on the stage and down to the front of the stage and back–that I’d say it qualifies as choreography.

To go from on stage to before stage in Salem’s Old Town Hall, there are three permanent steps built into the left side near enough to the wall that can be used for balance. The right has a portable set of three steps close to four-feet wide tucked between the stage and a railing for the flight of stairs down to the front door. That railing is within easy reach.

Oh, the memories! Last part I had in a play was on this very stage some 50 years ago, a children’s play based on a Hans Christian Andersen story in which I was type-cast as a wild and wacky wizard who in one scene was thrown off-stage by an impatient king. In my 20s and much thinner, I actually went over that rail and down the stairwell crashing with a loud noise and a howl.

It was a stunt. During rehearsals I was able to practice going over the rail and, well out of audience-sight, grabbing the bottom of two spokes to pause the fall and land easily–until the last show when one spoke snapped and made the trip down in my hand, but that’s another bloody story.

Today I could no more go over that rail than I could pull it apart with my bare hands and snap all the pieces in half. This week, after a few runs with the two side paths for our circular on-off-and-in-front-of movement, we thought we’d try a variation. The portable steps were moved to the center of the stage facing the audience with nothing to put a hand on.

You can likely guess where I’m going here, or, in this case, where I couldn’t go there. It was all working quite smoothly until it was my turn to get off the stage. I went to the edge, began to say my line, looked down, and froze.

This was far from the first time these six words were in my head, spoken–at times yelled–just to myself. I didn’t want to say them right away because I did not want to draw pity. For that matter, I didn’t want to say them at all, but the time had come. I had no choice:

Trying to sound funny, I looked up, right at the director just 15 feet away: “I am too old for this.”

As with my attempt at politically correct humor–now there’s a contradiction in terms!–no one laughed. This time, in lieu of shock, the sympathy that I hoped to avoid was unanimous, and it was palpable.

After one of those pauses when even the atheists pray that someone else will speak first, the director thanked me for my honesty. She then got up, walked to the steps, looked down, and announced to the company: “This is a bad idea.”

Whether I was let off the hook just for my own sake hardly mattered. The others soon chimed in that, not only was it risky, but it obstructed the smooth, circular motion that went from side to side.

Back the steps went stage right, and just like that, it was as if my late-life crisis never happened. Still, I couldn’t help but worry that my sense of humor had passed its expiration date. As fate would have it, I had a last chance just before the session ended.

We were entertaining ideas for the arrest scene which opens the play outside the hall when we villagers, including one manic piper, draw and work a crowd. Bridget Bishop, the accused witch, resists, argues, and runs from the constable into the crowd while the rest of us corral her. Today someone proposed that she sit down on the bricks.

The director enthused: “Like in the Sixties! Protestors sat down so they could not be picked up.”

I held my tongue and again awaited an opening: “Um, about the Sixties: I was there…” Must have been the Cheshire Cat smile that got the first laugh.

“And I was picked up more than once.” Another chuckle. “They always did it with a cop on each side and had a fairly easy time packing us into their wagons.” This gained smiles of appreciation that I’ve seen on young faces many times hearing about anti-war demonstrations. But I needed a punchline:

“And, yes, I was so much thinner then…”

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The stage upstairs in the Old Town Hall, Salem, Mass. This pic, taken ten years ago, or nine years before I joined the troupe, shows the railing that separates the stage from the stairwell. Look closely and you can detect the first step of the portable three behind that last chair. Just out of view would be the blank space left by the spoke I broke which was not replaced until about ten years ago.
https://onceuponawheat.com/visit-salem-witch-trial-sites-part-b/

Old Dog, New Trick

Two months ago, egged on by a mid-life crisis–or in my case, about a four-fifths-life crisis–I joined a theater troupe in Salem.

Called “immersive theater,” Cry Innocent begins outdoors when a town crier delivers the news–from the old world, from nearby villages, from the frontier, from the docks–and is interrupted by a breathless constable who delivers a warrant for the arrest of an accused witch. She’s milling around among the gathered crowd, and is soon arrested.

From the mid-90s into the mid-teens, I watched that scene from my busking spot on the Essex Street Mall, pausing for a 15-minute break before the actors took the play–and an audience–into Salem’s Old Town Hall.

Sounds like a case of couldn’t beat them so I joined them, but I stopped busking Salem a few years before the pandemic. What brought me back was a grapevine notice–via the Renaissance faire–that they were short of male actors needed to burn the witch (or so I read into what I read). Musicians were also mentioned, so perhaps I might get away with a line or two when not piping up a storm.

There’s a reason I’m a wind musician.

My hope for a small role might have been raised when the script offered a few, but it was soon dashed when I learned of “doubling.” In this case it was tripling, as three roles I might have easily delivered were “tracked” into one. Another track had four, and so two actors each had a coat-rack backstage, in view of the audience, with coats, cloaks, aprons, scarves, and hats to give the appearance of different characters from scene to scene.

I was to open as a timid, nervous-wreck of a servant and close as a bold, plain-speaking farmer–with a blase, above-it-all Puritan minister in between.

But there were plenty of actors–real actors and drama students from Salem State and other nearby schools–to cover the roles, and I couldn’t help but notice that they needed to schedule two others to handle all the other necessities, such as the “sweep” (talking up an audience on Essex Street), the box office, and sitting at the rear of the hall to lead people to restrooms and escort parents with fussy babies to a “Quiet Room.”

My plan from the start was to play full-tilt on Essex Street–directly across from my old busking spot–for at least 45 minutes before each show, and then position myself where the town crier would appear at least ten minutes before he rang the bell. In effect, I opened the show. In fact, on several occasions, I was able to spot the crier’s approach, jump an octave to hit a final note, doff my cap, take a bow, and say aloud:

“Ladies and gentleman, it is my great honor–and much to my great relief–that I give you (pause, flourish of the arm) the Town Crier!”

My ulterior motive, of course, was to convince them that I was of more value as a musician than I would be on stage. It worked. To my greatest relief, I remained an understudy to the end of the run, although, to be fair to myself, I did learn all of three characters’ lines. By the end of it, my fear was more of the transitions. How quickly could I go from a minister’s robes into a farmer’s apron?

Mind you, this all happened two or three days a week while I was spending weekends piping up storms at King Richard’s Faire. Both gigs are athletic events, and, not to play the role of Captain Obvious here, but my nimble and quick are long gone. There’s a reason I haven’t played Salem in recent years. I barely play Newburyport anymore.

Be that as it may, the two months were withering, and November couldn’t come soon enough. What I didn’t know was that Cry Innocent ran a full week after Halloween, partly for school field trips. So, when the last show ended, I breathed a huge sigh of relief–only to have a funny thing happen while saying farewell on my way out the door:

“Hey Jack, wanna play Fezziwig in A Christmas Carol?”

Added to that was the mention that the director “needs Fezziwigs.” Perhaps I should have taken more note of the plural, but all I thought was that it’s a small role and I know the story quite well. Also, I could crave January just as I did November, with a few mostly idle months to follow.

In the week before the first audition, I would learn that, like Cry Innocent, this production is also immersive–so immersive that Scrooge and Marley take the audience on a trolley ride from the Gallows Hill Museum & Theater to a cemetary a few blocks away for the Christmas Future scene. That much made me smile.

Then I realized that, also like Cry Innocent, characters are tracked, and that, after playing Fezziwig in the Christmas Past scene, I’d be changing outfits, getting into a car, and arriving at the cemetary while the audience watched Christmas Present and shed tears for Tiny Tim before boarding the trolley to watch me as Joe, the owner of a pawn shop, purchase bits an’ pieces that Missy and Mrs. Dilbert–or Belle and Ghost Past who rode with me–hawked from Scrooge’s rooms after the old cheapskate croaks. The thought of doing it was as breathless as that sentence to describe it.

Watched all this in the rehearsals, and it’s great stuff. Bad news for you is that all 102 scheduled performances are already sold-out–pretty much sold out as soon as they went on sale in September.

By all means, keep it in mind for next year, but let me qualify my enthusiastic review: Great stuff when the other actors at the rehearsals play Fezziwig/Joe. No I’m not being modest, just realistic:

The rehearsals drew more actors than I think the producers anticipated. By the second night I counted five others for the Fezziwig track. All of them are experienced with far better instincts and more of a knack for acting than I–I who last performed in a play in 1973. Some are theater students committed to the art. For all of them, it’s some meaningful part of their livelihood. For me, it’s a lark.

Lest I sound impossibly selfless, there’s the practical consideration: Driving into Salem late weekday afternoons, whether through Beverly or Danvers, takes 90 minutes to go 25 miles. And even more practical than that is that this Jack no longer jumps over candlesticks.

At the end of the second night, I told the producer that I didn’t mind sitting out. In fact, I suggested that she not schedule me at all, but should call me in an emergency, as I do know the lines. I also mentioned that I’d be glad to hear of any musical role they might add, as they did enjoy my riffs on “Deck the Halls” and “The Holly & the Ivy.”

But local theaters run on shoe-string budgets, and while 102 sell-outs might raise your eyebrows, the 35-seat capacity of a Salem trolley–not to mention the ambitious overhead–should lower them again.

Did I waste two nights by getting roped into this? Not at all. Salem’s theater scene is flush with great people, young and old, a few–very few–almost as old as I. I’m fortunate to have gotten to know them and will have my eye on listings for future productions that might–possibly, hopefully–include an aging piper.

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On any given day, you might find four entirely different actors ready to perform *Cry Innocent*, but surrounding me on this day, clockwise from top left: Colin LaMusta with the crier’s bell, Caleb Palmer with the arrest warrant, Melinda Kalanzis with testimony, and Mikayla Bishop with an attitude. Photo by Artistic Driector Kristina Stevnik.

A Laugh on the Dark Side

Years ago, a woman walked into the lobby of the Screening Room while I was bouncing up and down the four steps to the projector’s booth trying to determine the right level of sound for a film opening that evening.

Since the steps are visible right behind the ticket counter, she faced me there when, once satisfied, I took my position as ticket-taker.

“Hop-Frog!” she laughed.

“Huh?” I asked.

“The character in the Edgar Allan Poe story, ‘Hop-Frog’! You remind me of Hop-Frog!”

“I’ll have to read it,” I smiled.

As way leads onto way, I never did read “Hop-Frog,” and some 25 years passed before I trekked a short distance up the Maine coast to see Poe: Tales of Fear & Suspense.

Much like Robert Frost: Fire & Ice, which I caught in 2021,* this is dinner-theater a few miles inland from Ogunquit at the Clay Hill Farm where a chef prepares green beans as if they might be the main course. I’ll leave the taste of seared salmon to your buds’ imagination.

Also a one-man show, Poe, like Frost, is resurrected by Kirk Simpson–who is also my liege, King Richard at the Renaissance faire so named. For all the similarites, the performances take divergent roads: While Frost offers poems that reveal much of his life, Poe selects stories that dramatize characters and conflicts of a dark imagination. Frost is autobiography; Poe is selected works.

But the performance is not at all free from Poe’s own demons. Simpson, in character, begins with a brief description of Poe’s wife, Virginia, a first-cousin half his age, just 13 when they married–and 24 when she died of tuberculosis. Simpson’s re-creation of grief leads seamlessly into “Annabelle Lee,” Poe’s lamentation haunted by “a high fever and jealous angels” and punctuated by quiet coughs into a napkin.

With that as an appetizer, a menu of seven stories is atop each table, along with those for food and drink, offering three “audience choices.” For the first, Simpson took a spin-wheel among the tables, chose a woman to spin it, and then annouced the result:

“Hop-Frog”!

What makes Poe so vivid, so memorable, is Simpson’s theatricality. As much as facial expressions and inflections of voice, he takes care of–and I’d say advantage of–every move. For Hop-Frog, a jester who outwits (and then some!) a king and a court who ridicule his misshapen leg, that’s an exaggerated, lunging gait. That woman at the Screening Room wasn’t far off.

Apart from her comparison, “Hop-Frog” strikes me as the evil-twin of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” published 12 years earlier. Hans Christian Andersen offered something family-friendly, and Poe, very much in character, flipped it to the dark side.

Simpson also has a way of enunciating “ourang-outang,” the oft-used joke-of-a-word in the story’s subtitle, that should remind Poe fans of his fascination with–and disdain for–P.T. Barnum. Couldn’t help but hear the story as a source of influence for magazine pieces years later by Herman Melville and Mark Twain who both shared that fascination and disdain.

After “Hop-Frog” reached its fiery conclusion, Simpson brought his spin-wheel to me. Hoped for “The Masque of the Red Death” for its relevance to the Covid outbreak, but Simpson announced the result aloud: “The Pit & the Pendulum”!

True to my namesake’s occupation, I added, equally aloud: “I apologize!”

Never would have thought that “Pit” or the following “Tell-Tale Heart” could be cause for laughter. Neither features a court jester. But Simpson plays the role of maniacal narrator as well as he plays jovial king and rueful poet, and we often laugh against our better judgement. All while retaining a sense of terror. Exit Andersen and Twain, enter Hitchcock and Serling.

We may have missed the other four stories on the menu, but during intermission, Simpson, as if a demon sent by Poe, circulates among the diners wearing a masque of death–such as we see at the renfaire–scraping a brick with a trowel, the unlikely tool to cover up murder in “Cask of Amontillado.” He also bantered somewhat about “The Black Cat,” so only “House of Usher” was left entirely unpainted.

The show ends with “The Raven,” so iconic it’s the only literary work to have a professional sports team named for it. Yes. we’ve all heard it, but never so vividly as from an actor who can induce sound effects–tapping, gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door–and a chorus of “Nevermore” from some 30 listeners. Simpson puts us in that chamber.

To enter and take a seat, keep your eye on Clay Hill Farm’s 2024 schedule (caption below) for what it bills as its “autumnal tradition.”

Meanwhile, my eye will be on the Screening Room door to tell one patron what I think of her comparison. We had another exchange over that same counter, around that same time, when she laughingly told me that she found my Daily News columns “sardonic.”

Apparently, I reminded her of Hop-Frog in more ways than one.

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Before it appears again next fall, you might consider Simpson’s one-man performances of Dickens’ *Christmas Carol*, *Frost: Fire & Ice*, and similar presentations of Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain:
https://www.clayhillfarm.com

*My blog-review of Robert Frost: Fire & Ice:

Barding Around