JOUST FOR FUN : Golden West College Becomes a Bustling English Shire for a Renaissance A’Faire

Pretty co-eds hold court on the Golden West College campus every day, but this weekend, the Virgin Queen will reign supreme.

Queen Elizabeth I (known as the Virgin Queen because she never wed), attended by nearly 200 costumed gentle folk, jesters, knights and the like, will tarry on the GWC greens Saturday and Sunday at A Renaissance A’Faire. The Elizabethan-themed festival is presented by the Academy of Festive Arts, including Renaissance Events, a newly formed auxiliary of the GWC Foundation, to raise funds for the community college.

According to the event director, CarolAnn Moore, A Renaissance A’Faire is a spinoff from a 21-year-old festival jointly sponsored by the cities of Huntington Beach, Westminster, Fountain Valley, Rossmoor, Los Alamitos and Seal Beach. Formerly an Americana-themed event, the festival adopted an Elizabethan flair last year, said Moore. The Academy of Festive Arts, which was formed last November to coordinate the fund-raiser, hopes to gross $100,000 from the event. Proceeds will be applied to GWC projects not funded by the state, including the expansion of its Intercultural Center and Student Service program.

According to Moore, A Renaissance A’Faire visitors can explore a bustling 16th-Century English shire, where vendors hawk their wares, entertainers cavort in the streets, and elegantly clad lords and ladies strut like peacocks among the peasantry. The year is 1561, and all have turned out to catch a glimpse of Good Queen Bess and her court, who have come to visit the queen’s cousin, the Countess of Lennox.

“Queen Elizabeth I was the consummate politician,” said Moore, a Renaissance history buff who has taken part in Renaissance festivals for more than 20 years. “She loved to be out among her people. At the faire, we’ll re-create the kinds of activities that would take place during one of her visits. The townspeople will sell their wares, the Gypsies will entertain and tell fortunes, various military groups will perform for the queen.”

“Actually, during the harvest time, the townspeople would have had some kind of market faire anyway,” she continued. “But with the queen in town, it was the perfect occasion for a party.”

To aid in the revelry, Moore and her committee have brought together dozens of “faire people,” entertainers who make the rounds of Renaissance faires throughout the state, to perform on the grounds’ many stages. They include the Barleycorn/Castleberry Dancers performing traditional English country dances, and Bob Bartley, Gypsy and Scooter, a pirate-themed bird act in which Bartley spins tales of the high seas while his parrots play dead, hoist a pirate flag and do “other things you wouldn’t expect parrots to do,” said Moore.

Because the Virgin Queen was quite a fan of chess, the faire will also include a “living chess board,” an entertainment popular in Elizabethan times, said Moore. Dressed as knights, bishops and other chess pieces, performers will take part in a mock battle on an oversized board.

Encampments, domestic and military, will dot the GWC campus as well, said Moore. Military groups, wearing re-creations of period armor and bearing lances and swords, will demonstrate the knightly arts in staged skirmishes. Celtic clans will weave, spin and carry out domestic tasks in family camps, while, in the Gypsy camp, fortunetellers and astrologers will beguile visitors.

“There’s lots of trumpet-blowing and bell-ringing and processions,” noted Moore. “Every square inch (of the faire) is a show.”

To keep the community flavor of the festival and to allow nonprofit groups to raise money, Moore’s committee has helped several distinctly non-Renaissance groups from past years participate by distributing a handbook on Renaissance costume, food, language and history, and sponsoring a series of informational workshops. For example, instead of selling hot dogs, as they did at previous festivals, the local chapter of the International Order of Job’s Daughters will don bodices and hustle “pygs in a coffin.”

More authentic food, including turkey legs, pastries and bangers (sausage), will be available (soft drinks, however, will stand in for ale) and reproductions of period leather goods, oils and incenses, garlands and clothing will be sold. In the interest of parent sanity, the limits of authenticity will be stretched a bit at Lilliput Land, where small fry can have their faces painted or participate in a Renaissance costume contest (all visitors are encouraged to dress in period, said Moore). A family area will feature a “greased pig toss,” a rope ladder climb and other games of skill inspired by 16th-Century entertainments.

What: A Renaissance A’Faire.

When: Saturday, Sept. 14, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 15, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Where: Golden West College, 15744 Golden West St., Huntington Beach.

Whereabouts: San Diego Freeway to Golden West Street exit. South on Golden West to the college (park in the Gothard Street lot).

Wherewithal: Tickets sold at the gate. Adults $5; $3 for seniors, children 10 and under free.

Where to call: (714) 548-4942.