The Ohio Renaissance Festival

By James Scott





Behind the tall walls of what appears from the ground to be a castle entrance in Harveysburg, Ohio, lie countless shops, activities, costumes, and decorations: all contributing to a collective theme at the Renaissance Festival. Thousands of cars rest on the lawn outside the gates while their owners browse shops such as The Crowning Glory (a novelty hat store) and Tribal Revival, enjoying food options ranging from turkey legs and stuffed spuds to cheesecake on a stick and the popular apple or strawberry-topped funnel cakes from Fat Friar Funnel Cakes, and serving as spectators at a number of awe-inspiring shows and performances that the festival offers.

Other attractions at this humorously titled old-fashioned village of “Willy-Nilly-on-the-Wash” include the games and rides, which have been creatively fashioned to fit the Renaissance theme well. Vegetable Vengeance, which is by far one of the more notorious and popular games, features a man with his head and arms fitted into stocks while contestants hurtle tomatoes at him, oftentimes only to have insults hurtled back at them when they fail to strike him. This attraction is known to typically attract a large audience, which will usually end up taunted by the man in stocks until they succumb to the weight of his sneering and eventually pick up a tomato, themselves. A few of these mockeries include “I’d pick on you but I see that nature’s done it for you”, “yeah, pansy-arms, you better come around”, or “byebye, Nancy” (this was spoken to a young boy who did not manage to make a tomato hit its mark). An observer may find amusement in the man’s endless string of derision for those who do choose to throw a soggy tomato on him, but they are at their own risk by not participating, for as he assures his crowd: “Just ‘cause you’re sitting on the sides doesn’t mean you’re safe.” There are also axe throws, star throws, and knife throws parallel to Vegetable Vengeance, but this gaming event still seems to retain the most popularity at the festival, in spite of the fact that a tomato is not even a vegetable, in actuality.

As shows go, impressive performances can be found all around the thirty-acre village; Daniel Duke of Danger, the joust, and the Muditorium seemed to emerge as the most prominent acts at the festival. Daniel Duke of Danger, who has been a performer at the festival for a number of years, humors his audience with a variety of good-natured and genuinely amusing jokes while accomplishing such feats as juggling torches lit with fire on both sides, playing two flutes simultaneously while upside down and resting on a three-inch wide platform, and balancing at the top of a free-standing ladder while spinning a plate on a stick, which is clenched between his teeth as six rings twirl around his arms. For each performance, an audience member is also always called upon to stand up at an appointed time and hold Daniel’s bag of tricks above their head, shouting “I’ve got them, I’ve got them. Oh God, I’ve got them.”

While Daniel Duke of Danger’s act focuses on stunningly strange and remarkable talents, the joust’s primary aim is exhibiting realistic, old-fashioned action for its audience. This event is known to draw the largest crowds of any attraction in the festival, and as its onlookers congregate on the wide field overlooking the festivities, they can spot men fully clad in knights’ armor charging at each other on galloping horses with their lances outstretched readily for a collision, sometimes resulting in a resounding splintering of wood to which the audience will either applaud or boo at depending on which knight was struck. An announcer dictates the knights’ names to be Sir James and Sir Shanton, and thunderous low-toned percussion proclaims the knights’ valor as they circle the ring beforehand with an arm raised in acknowledgment of the cheering crowd. The combined speeds of the horses running towards each other means that a lance will strike its opponent with approximately 60 miles per hour of force, and due to the promised fact that the joust is not staged; the audience becomes even more glued to the intensity of the event. “Let’s give these people what they came to see; let’s have a joust!” the announcer will shout multiple times, to which the congregation responds with clamorous excitement.

Lastly, there is the Muditorium, infamous for oftentimes spattering its front row observers with runny brown muck during the shows. The goings on at the Muditorium include audience members coming on stage and occasionally having strength tests with one of the primary performers, usually ending in a performer slamming down into the mud pit on center-stage which sends a jettison of brown spray onto any spectators in its path. Those who do not manage to obtain a bench seat before the proceedings begin must peer over the wooden fence surrounding the Muditorium, where they can see and hear the crowd yell “Rah!” in consensus whenever a wooden sign with this word painted onto it is raised. Although this event is known for dirtying up its participants and onlookers (some left the ring with handprint-shaped mud marks on their back), it still seems to elicit a feeling of satisfaction and amusement out of its audience during the show and afterwards as well.

The Renaissance Festival also has quite a few shops to offer, and products reflecting this time period exist in the forms of swords, wooden walking sticks, jester hats, and homemade paper which you can see being churned from pulp directly within the shop. Quills and ink are also provided to test out large slabs of paper, which have been scrawled upon by countless individuals. There also is a shop with incense of all kinds, including incense sticks which you can burn for their fragrance or glasses of liquids with pleasant aromas within. The man from Vegetable Vengeance attests to the crowd that he uses one of these incense sticks to keep the tomato odor from settling into him, for as he stated, “I don’t like smelling like salsa.” A sign hanging from a post inside the store declares “No charge to sniff… pop a cork, take a whiff!” Instrumental performances can also be found scattered throughout the village by musicians on hammer dulcimer, ocarinas, a harp, and also on glasses of different sizes filled partway with water and touched along their rims to create harmonically vibrant melodies.

Overall, the Renaissance festival is an opportunity for all ages of people to explore a real-life representation of 1500’s culture and themes. With shows, games, shops, and even a few rides (involving passengers sitting inside a wooden dragon or barrel), there are plenty of opportunities for having a good time and even learning some things about the time period. The festival runs from September 1st to October 21st every year and is open from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m., with children’s tickets costing approximately ten dollars and adults’ tickets costing approximately seventeen dollars depending on where you get them. More information can be found at the festival’s official website, which is http://www.renfestival.com/.