Male

Biography for John Smith

I have long had a fascination with history and only practical considerations (and the “encouragement” of my father) lead to me to pursue a career in Engineering instead of education. It is my wife who has the history degree and who has had a special interest in Tudor England. She had attended the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Agoura as a girl, but my first exposure was in 1988 when she and some friends from high school talked me into making the drive to the far end of the universe. Little did we know that we were witnessing the end of an era, and I regret that I have so few memories of that day.

The next year we visited the faire in San Bernardino with another group of friends and returned with them for a few years, each time in slightly more correct peasant costumes. Neither of us had any background in sewing, but we had a portrait book from the library and the “brown book” we picked up at the faire and after much trial and error we built our first upper class clothes in 1993. Although we look back at these with some embarrassment, they were good enough for my wife’s gown to take second place in the costume competition that year. That same day we were approached by some people dressed far better than us and soon we were enmeshed in the marvelous disaster that was the Renaissance Fayre of the Oaks. There we met many wonderful people (including many of you) and learned a great deal, and it was only afterwards that we realized what a bollix it had all been.

Out of that experience came the beginnings of the Guild of St. Elizabeth, which again looked promising at the time. With them we worked the small faire circuit (where we met more of you) for a couple of years until we realized that this was not a group we wanted to be associated with. We worked freelance for a while (we worked with Gay Lynn at the Folsom faire), and finally reached nirvana when we were accepted into the Guild of St. George in 1996.

Again, we found that we had arrived a little too late. We heard lots of stories of the good old days, before the banishment from Agoura and the arrival of REC. It is all very epic really. Still we soldiered on in our ignorance, doing our best to learn about history and acting and audience interaction, all while the Faire was sliding toward carnival games and fantasy. I was Glade Stop coordinator for a few seasons and my wife was a dresser for Gay Linn the first year she was queen. I was also appointed as the guild’s education director. Finally, in 2000, after a miserable year of record heat on a postage stamp “glade” without a tree in sight, the leadership of the faire told the guild that they were dissatisfied with the show we were presenting and would be appointing new leadership for the guild for the next year. By this time, the guild had been incorporated as an educational organization, and the leadership of the guild (which did not include me at that time) realized that the guild could not fulfill its educational mandate and still be part of the REC fairs. Fortunately, Kevin Patterson and AYLI productions had just begun producing the renaissance faire at Santa Barbara (and Stafford Lake was on the horizon), so the guild was able to find a more sympathetic venue for our endeavors. To this was soon added an extensive relationship with the Huntington Library in San Marino and other educational and museum opportunities. In 2004, the membership and leadership of the guild asked me to take on the role of board president, a position to which I was recently reappointed.

My wife and I seem to be unusual in the faire community in that we enjoy portraying “good” nobles. I started out by portraying Sir Christopher Hatton (I am relatively tall), then portrayed Lord William Howard (who saved first Mary and then Elizabeth), then Sir George Carey, and finally, Sir Charles Howard, the second Lord Howard of Effingham (who of course saved all of England in 1588). This has also allowed my wife to portray her favorite character, the virtuous and respected Katherine Carey. Under the gentle tutelage of Jeff Schoenberg, and with much better access to Elizabethan portraits, our clothes have gotten progressively better looking and more accurate. We are both founding members of the guild’s Early Music Ensemble and are gradually learning French and Italian court dances under Athene’s instruction. My wife and I are certainly fortunate that bringing history to life is a shared passion and that we have found people who share that passion with us.

Cheers!