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| Annette Storckman |
True story, my very first Shakespearean performance was at a Renaissance Fair. For twenty-five years or so my hometown held a pretty popular one Labor Day weekend. The drama club at our high school whipped up a production of the "Pyramus & Thisbe" scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. I was one of the heckling lovers.
The "rude mechnicals" work, decimating this forerunner of the tragic Romeo and Juliet story should by all rights be drop-dead hilarious ... if it weren't for the heckling lovers. Bottom and his mechanicals are funny. Priviledged young people, smugly mocking these adorable, amateur performers, with their smug and horribly dated jokes, is not.
An ye harm none, do what thou wilt. - The Wiccan Rede
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. - Aleister Crowley
With her play Faire, Storckman takes us backstage for an exuberant and somewhat melancholy look a the complicated and intertwined lives of a company of Ren Fest performers.
Those who live this life of fantasy live apart from traditional American society, and often imagine themselves dwelling in a universe parallel to ours. It can be liberating, especially if one has felt constricted by social norms, to persue your bliss, whatever that may be.
In the case of the central couple of Brian and Nikki, married with a newborn, their engagement in polyamory appears to result, as it does with so many who engage in "open marriage" not as a source of freedom and joy, but as a way of coping with dissatisfaction in their relationship. Or maybe that's just me, speaking from experience.
As much as they try to escape the dominant paradigm, a patriarchal hierarchy reigns supreme, as women struggle to be the next queen.
Who should I read tomorrow?
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