🚀 go-pugleaf

Greetings from Arval!  Thomas wrote:

> I am going to explore the idea of a series of narrow focus events with a
> moving time frame.  The idea is to re-enact history "as it happens"...
> Each person would be asked to adopt a good persona.., would bone up on
> the "news", decide how their persona would see it with regards to
> themselves... During the revel we would be constrained to discuss only
> the recent events from our personas point of view. 

I encourage you to pursue this as far as you can; I think it would be a
great addition to what the SCA can offer.  For myself, I doubt I'd be
interested: I'm not attracted by historical re-enactment and role-playing.
My re-creative interests tend to focus on the small scale rather than the
large.  I delight in a well-researched and crafted piece of re-creation,
but it doesn't especially concern me that the event as a whole is (to lift
Tadhg's phrase) a mish-mash.

A few pieces of advice: You need to create a focus for your event.  Simply
inviting people to adopt a persona for the day and expecting them to create
the atmosphere is unlikely to succeed.  How often do you and your friends
spend an entire evening discussing contemporary politics?  Surely 11th
century revellers are unlikely to have spent all their time chatting about
the latest developments in the Norman Conquest.  I think the event needs a
central activity which would have been the basis of a social gathering from
the period.  A tournament might be a good choice - that's essentially the
method used by Tournament of the Lions in the several places it has been
run - or a holy day feast, or a merchant fair, etc.  Instead of asking
people to talk about things appropriate to the period, ask them to _do_
things appropriate to the period, and provide them suggestions: In your
pre-event announcements, provide music for the musicians, patterns for
simple, appropriate garb, games and dances that fit the period, etc.
Provide this material long enough in advance that people have time to use
it to prepare.  If you'd like, I can put you in touch with people who have
run events which share some features with your ideas, so that you can see
the sort of pre-event publicity they provided.

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Arval Benicoeur                                       mittle@watson.ibm.com