Organizers and performers are sharpening their blades, polishing their acts and putting their wares on display for the second weekend of the Maine Renaissance Faire, scheduled for July 29 and 30 at the Acton Fairgrounds.
More than 100 vendors and dozens of performers will be on hand in full regalia, depicting everything from street urchins to noble knights to a queen. Owner and chief organizer Melanie Huard said there’s a lot that goes into the preparations for the annual festival, but it’s all for good fun.
“You get to play,” she said. “You get to pretend. I know that sounds crazy, because it’s usually little kids that play, but grown-ups can play, too.”
The “play” includes an atmosphere that resembles a trip back in time, with plenty of fair food, hand-crafted items available for sale, and singers, dancers and actors putting on more than 35 different performances on eight stages throughout the fairground. They range, Huard said, from the Royal Stage, which may feature a variant of Shakespearean presentations, to musical performances to comedy acts, such as the more lighthearted antics of the “Washing Well Wenches.”
One of the “wenches,” who identified herself only as “Daisy Sweaters,” gestured with a feather duster and offered a gap-toothed grin as she described the show. Typically, she said, she and her fellow wenches have a series of gags that they spontaneously string together, making sure to involve the audience all the way. All the gags have a laundry theme (“Men’s garments half off. We don’t care which half!”). Often, she said, they even bring audience members up on the stage with them.
Sweaters said she has been performing – or “doing laundry,” as she puts it – since 2017, and goes with the show to similar fairs, traveling all over the country.
“It’s the ability to see all different areas,” she said when asked what makes her want to follow the show.
For other entertainment, there’s jousting. Robert Earhart, 51, is one of the knights. A retired stuntman, he said he jousts in Renaissance fairs nationwide for a living.
“I love being a knight,” he said. “I love wearing the armor.”
Earhart said there’s a risk involved, of course, and he himself was hurt badly enough to need surgery on his shoulder once, but the performers all take precautions to prevent injury to themselves and their horses.
“It’s about as dangerous as playing rugby or other combat sports,” he said.
Lording over it all is “Queen Elizabeth I.” On Friday, the queen, otherwise known as Kate Hopkins, was dressed in her “dark fairy queen” costume to have some photos taken. She said she has been performing in this role in various fairs since 1993.
“I am literally a professional monarch,” she said.
Hopkins has a background in theater but noted that performing in a fair is much different from the typical community theater experience. There is no script, she said, no proper stage in the traditional sense, and performers like her need to stay in character for a much longer time.
A long (theater) show is two and a half hours,” she said. “This is literally from 10 in the morning till 6 at night.”
Like Huard, Hopkins said the fair, which she called “an immersive theatrical experience,” is its own brand of fun that always draws a crowd.
“In general, a Renaissance fair is an ability and a place where the hassle of all the stuff in your life goes away,” she said.
The fair itself nearly went away, formerly being held in Lebanon until it closed in the late 2000s. Huard, who was a performer and craft merchant at the fair back then, decided in 2019 to try to find a way to revive it.
“Selfishly, I missed the people, and I knew the only way I could see them was if I put on a Renaissance fair,” she said.
Huard said the fair first returned last year and was a big success. This year’s fair has gone well so far, too. She said over the first weekend, July 22 and 23, the fair had about 5,000 visitors on Saturday and 4,000 people on Sunday. Huard said she hopes in the future to open for three weekends, not just two, and possibly move to a larger venue.
The fair will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. this Saturday and Sunday. Tickets for one day are $20 for adults, $15 for children ages 5-12, and kids under 5 get in free. Multi-day passes are available online, and season passes are available for future fairs. Click here for more information.