The Smithsonian Magazine just published a pretty interesting story about how the proliferation of Renaissance Faires (RenFaire) in the US got their start due to artists being blacklisted during the Red Scare period of the late 50s and early 1960s. The first Faire in the US occurred in Los Angeles in 1963, by a mix of artists and educators who found themselves black/graylisted for various reasons, including refusing to take loyalty oaths.
The first faire was the brainchild of educator Phyllis Patterson who tapped into the talents of many out of work artists.
“That whole [anti-communist hysteria] helped guide what I did next,” Phyllis later told Rubin. “What happened to their lives and mine intertwined.” According to Rubin, Phyllis was “emphatic in her conviction that the Renaissance fair was able to flourish thanks to the Hollywood blacklist, [which] had the effect of making gifted and skilled people … available to lend their talents.”
The Smithsonian piece is rather long and detailed with videos and pictures from the first event and some of the early faires that followed. Things came together for the first event as a mix of pleas and luck with people going on the radio to ask for help building the Elizabethan village and loans of surplus materials out of warehouses. Subsequent events were a little more formally organized, but there was attention to detail right from the first one with Patterson coaching “performers in improvisation, English accents, Elizabethan vernacular and street cries.”
Perhaps most importantly, the aesthetic of community participation by attendees which is a hallmark of Renaissance Faires today was a cornerstone of the founders’ philosophy right from the beginning.
The original faire organization actually grew to encompass other events and expanded to present Victorian Christmas faires as well.
I suspect many readers here have participated in RenFairses in some capacity, (I worked at one for five summers as a kid), and will have an interest in reading more about their history in this article.