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Can't wait for the festival? Too far away to visit me in person? Dispair not, as you can purchase a CD of my work at my online store, now featuring Return to Revel Grove featuring 27 new compositions. Also available is my first CD, A Morrow At Revel Grove, featuring 29 Vignettes of original music, as well as a manuscript of said compositions.

pulled from: http://musicbythemaster.com/

Even with armor, it hurts. Even through the armor, it leaves bruises. But where else can you have such fun? Where you can deliberately try to knock your friend off a horse?
— Sir John Bashir, Earl of Bath
Ripper Moore as Sir Henry Clifford
Enlarge Courtesy Jacki Lyden

Modern jousters often adopt the names and colors of actual Renaissance knights. Ripper Moore, a 14-year veteran of the circuit, jousts as Sir Henry Clifford, Second Earl of Cumberland, and wears his coat of arms.
Ripper Moore as Sir Henry Clifford
Courtesy Jacki Lyden

Modern jousters often adopt the names and colors of actual Renaissance knights. Ripper Moore, a 14-year veteran of the circuit, jousts as Sir Henry Clifford, Second Earl of Cumberland, and wears his coat of arms.

What valorous sentiment lurks in the heart of the American jouster? What drives our modern-day knights to bash each other with heavy wooden lances? In 100 pounds of armor? On a 2,000-pound horse, moving something like 20 mph?

Jacki Lyden took a trip to the Maryland Renaissance Festival to find out. (You can see the honorable gentlemen in action in the audio slideshow below.)

Retired jouster Richard Alvarez spent 11 years in the saddle. Now he has directed a documentary, American Jouster, on the life of these modern-day practitioners of an antique martial art.

It's not a life that is circumscribed by Rennaisance fairs, he explains. Other jousting opportunities include independent tournaments, stunt shows and medieval restaurants.

In fact, if you'd like to joust full time, there's a way. There are four major companies that work a year-round circuit; you could travel around the country with them, really living life as in medieval times: You sleep in a tent, traveling from "kingdom" to "kingdom," and as Alvarez explains, "you joust for the king who pays you the most money." For young people without much of a mortgage or other overhead, Alvarez says, it can be pretty good money.

Of course jousting isn't just about the loot.

"A lot of [people] want to escape the everyday mundane grind," says Roy William Cox, a former Marine who jousts as Sir William Westmoreland. "You know, sitting in a cubicle, listening to the boss, wanting to take that boss out and hit him with a 10-foot pole — my guys get to do that."

Alvarez says the life of a jouster has a pull for some military people. There's a "quasi-military camaraderie to risking your life with these guys," he says, "that appeals to the military mind." And make no mistake, it is a risk.

"Try as you might, there's no way to fake gravity," Alvarez says. "When you fall, you hit the ground." The last person killed in a jousting tournament in modern times — during a 2007 re-enactment staged for a British TV show — died from the same injury that killed Henry II of France: a lance splinter through the eye slot and into the brain.

If you're willing to risk it, you'll need to start small. To become a knight, you must first be a squire — a knight-in-training — learning to ride a horse and control a lance. Some of the squires' duties include putting armor on the horses and knights backstage.

Women can be jousters, too, though they're not seen as often as men. Cox's wife, Kate, is one of the world's best, says Alvarez, who features her in his documentary.

And Kate Cox's niece Nicole Zentgraf was on duty as a squire at the Maryland Renaissance Festival. She's 9 years old and already learning to ride.

taken from: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113429069

According to our beloved member (and noted actor) Mathemactor:

The Company of the Rose (professional acting company of the MDRF) will open their production of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" this Saturday, October 3, 2009. It will run on every remaining Festival day (excepting hurricanes and other acts of God) from 3:30 - 4:45 PM on the Gatehouse Stage. The cast list has been posted on the official web site, Here, but scroll down a bit.

"The finest production of a Shakespeare comedy ever, in the history of the world" ---Washington Post Theater Review

from Rennfest.com:

October 3rd & 4th:
Oktoberfest - Renaissance Style

German music and dancing.

That's all the excitement we can build for Oktoberfest weekend? Personally, I love wearing my lederhosen and drunken-chicken hat for the wonderful German festivities. I think this weekend needs a big boost in appreciation as the German "Queen Ann" is celebrated as Henry VIII's most recent wife!

OOOOOOOOOOOmpa! Let's get ta' polka-ing!

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