From the Frontlines: June Faire XXX

June Faire is, like Ursulmas, a regular event that is open to the public.

All through grade school and high school I did theater. Usually I was an actor, but in high school I spent a fair amount of time as stage crew. Then I went to college and my active role in theater came to a screeching halt. At Ursulmas I was asked to join a crew putting together a production of Arlecchino and the Cup of Love (a farce comedy written by a member of the SCA, set in period Verona). Doing a production as an adult is a rather different feel (especially the cast party!) from my younger years. The variation of experience in the cast is much greater – we had novices who’d never acted before, and a few who’d been acting longer than I’ve been alive.

We did an invitation-only dress rehearsal, but our real opening was at June Faire, where we did two showings on Saturday.

Performing outdoors with a jury-rigged stage is also quite different from performing in a conventional theater or auditorium. The weather demonstrated this with an assortment of conditions from bright sunshine to rain, from too warm to too cold; cast members at the first show were fanning themselves backstage, during the second three of the female members of the cast gratefully huddled under my cloak. Traffic noise from the road behind us was also an issue. The sun set during the second show, and we finished the play by the light of propane torches.

All in all the play went well, with a decent house for both shows who did quite a bit of laughing, mostly when we expected them to.

And then there was the cast party.

The director and the majority of the actors were from House Methelstede, an Aquaterra house known for its bards. Naturally, therefore, our cast party included a bardic circle. We were rolling along nicely when the camp was hailed, and half a dozen bards and minstrels, including the Bards of Key Point entered! I finally turned in, exhausted, at 3AM, and I’m told that the circle didn’t break up until sunrise. In addition to some truly awesome songs and stories I got to perform a story as proxy for another bard and found someone who knew the lyrics to a song I’d been hunting for.

Words really fail me – it was a truly amazing night.

And June Faire wasn’t over yet.

Sunday I spent most of the day with the Moneyer’s Guild, which was doing a fundraiser – selling examples of our coins. I gave the ‘making money the old-fashioned way’ spiel about two hundred times to mundanes, and the guild sold over a hundred coins (the storekeeper apparently credited my salesmanship with the bulk of the sales). I also struck my first groat – a larger coin than the usual pennies. Most importantly, however, I formally swore my apprentice oath to the Moneyer’s Guild of An Tir. Three other new apprentices were also sworn in, one of whom is almost ready to be a journeyman. For that matter I’ve completed two of the five requirements for being a journeyman (making 100 blank coins by various means and working as a two-man striking team) and am working on the third (my mon die).

A mon die is used to strike the reverse of a coin. In period this allowed the king to know who to chop body parts off of (yes, literally – the middle ages were not all chivalry and deeds of honor) if the coins turned out to have less precious metal than they were supposed to. The guild requires this to be in a 13th century English style – also known as the ‘long cross penny’ (many good images show up on a Google search). Note that unlike modern coins, the same obverse (or face) of a coin would appear with several different reverses (backs) depending on who struck them.