For 9th Year, Ojai Enjoys a Renaissance

Ladies and gentlemen, Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth . . . of Buena Park!

Her Royal Highness toured the shores of Lake Casitas on Saturday, surveying what had become a 16th century English country village.

The ninth annual Ojai Renaissance Faire, which continues today, drew hundreds of Elizabeth’s modern-day subjects in velvet and leather and hundreds more curious spectators in shorts and sunglasses.

For the history buffs and actors who spend the nine-month season portraying real or imagined period characters, faires are serious business. Folks interviewed for this article had to be pressed to drop their royal titles and reveal their real names.

Queen Elizabeth I, an Orange County woman named Patty, was not granting interviews during a walk through the fictitious “Wixonshire.”

“She’s shopping right now, but when she returns to court, we might be able to spare a few minutes,” said the Queen’s Lord Chancellor and spokesman, Sir Henry Carey (aka Brian Dwyer, who sells auto parts in Tarzana).

Dwyer said he does reenactments, including medieval combat, to escape to another century, albeit a romanticized version of one.

“I feel like I’d prefer to live in those times than the times we live in now,” he said. “I prefer candlelight to lightbulbs.”

A member of Her Majesty’s royal court, Lorraine MacDonald of Oxnard, was christened Baroness Serona on Saturday. An actress who enjoys the role-playing of Renaissance faires, MacDonald said she can take only so many “my lords,” “fare thee wells” and “anons.”

“I’ll do the lingo, and then I’ll get tired of it,” she said.

To research the clothing of a noblewoman, MacDonald turned to books and the Internet, making the elaborate gown she wore Saturday from a maroon tablecloth and gold curtains from Goodwill.

“Sometimes if it’s hot and I don’t feel like wearing all this stuff, I’ll come as a peasant,” said MacDonald, who plans to perform in about 10 weekend faires this season.

Lake Casitas is among the favorite stops on the California circuit, but with highs in the 80s Saturday, the Ojai Valley was probably not the best place to be wearing ermine and wool. Still, faire veterans said they have endured worse. Dwyer, the lord chancellor, remembered a Sacramento faire where the thermometer--a post-Elizabethan invention--reached 114 degrees. (That’s Fahrenheit, a scale that wasn’t created until the 1750s.)

Renaissance devotees--many of whom are actors--attend faires in groups called guilds, establishing characters for themselves and story lines for the weekend.

“Theater people and faire people are pretty much the same thing,” said Casey Prout of Simi Valley, who portrays Cussen Trouble in a guild of Irish and Scottish mercenaries.

“It’s kind of like rehearsal,” Ventura actor Brian Grace said. He was attending his first faire and had improvised a servant’s outfit from his “Fiddler on the Roof” costume.

Not everyone came to Wixonshire in period dress. Everyone was welcome--and will be again today from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.--to gnaw on a turkey leg, catch a Shakespearean play or try their hand at archery. The weekend was organized by Visions in Time Foundation, a local living-history group.