Renaissance lives on in Texas festival

Forty years ago, an old strip-mining site in the countryside near Houston, Texas, was transformed into a village modeled after Europe's 16th-century Renaissance, with Shakespearean performers and craftsman who didn't expect the event to see its second year.

They were wrong.

From 15 acres filled with three performance platforms and costumed vendors with English accents selling handmade goods from tents or on blankets under trees, the Texas Renaissance Festival has grown to 1,200 acres to become the world's biggest Renaissance fair.

"We're easily the largest, double the size of the next one, in England, in Europe, anywhere in the world," said Corey Brock, the fair's marketing director, in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Instead of a crowd of 33,000 people who attended the first 1974 festival during six rain-and-mud-filled weekends, this year's fair is expected to draw more than half a million visitors, supported by a staff of 3,000 over an expanded eight weekends, Brock said.

The festival, with eight villages having different themes, encompasses 55 acres, while parking and campgrounds each take 200 acres. The rest is for the future expansion of founder and glass artist George Coulam's dream, he said.

"This place is a picture postcard of 1593," Brock said. "You know why it took off? Two reasons: The 16th century is one of the most interesting times in the world, and we keep this place perfect. We're always improving it, providing great customer service so that it's really like no other place in the world."

Vicki Fearn and Marianne Chase were in their mid-teens when they made extra pocket money working the 10-hour shifts at the 1974 festival, selling wares while dressed as lower-class British "wenches".

Fearn, 56, a healthcare worker, said the fair was successful in transporting her to another time and place, especially with dancers, musicians and actors dressed as the king and queen and their courtiers, and horsemen in the role of jousting knights.

"It had a very hippie vibe," Fearn said.

Marianne Chase, 57, a schoolteacher, said she has attended many Texas Renaissance Festivals since working at a booth at the 1974 fair.

"Of course, the first was my favorite because it is commercialized to me now," she said. "I think the first one was a trial to see if people down here would enjoy it. They needed artists and actors and general workers to sell food. We won a hawking prize ($10) for yelling 'Come buy our fish and chips!' loudest in an English accent."

(China Daily 11/27/2014 page10)