Full Disclosure Time:

I’ve never done the Texas Renaissance Festival.  

I’ve never even been on-site.  

I’ve been to the front office during the off-season. I’ve seen Toon Town, the permanent Rennie village. I’ve been to a taco truck down the road. It was good.  

But the actual festival itself? No clue.  

There are three things I can tell you for sure about TRF:  

1. It’s the biggest show in the country.  
2. It’s the most attended show in the country.  
3. It has a campground for patrons, and it’s super debauched.  

Given what I’ve just shared, you’d be justified in thinking I can’t tell you if the documentary Ren Faire is true.  

You’d be wrong.  

What is the Ren Faire Documentary About?

Ren Faire is a three-part documentary chronicling the misadventures of the owner and upper management of the Texas Renaissance Festival. It’s chock full of backstabbing, power plays, open weeping, sexual deviancy, rococo art, kettle corn, and my unbelievably buff friend Timmy.  

The Characters in Ren Faire

George, the owner of the Texas Renaissance Festival, is trying to sell off his festival. Jeff Baldwin, the General Manager, is confident George won’t sell and will instead bequeath the festival to him one day. Louie, the kettle corn mogul, thinks he can put the deal together, buy the festival, and push Jeff out so he can run the whole thing his way. Darla, the vendor coordinator, sees how both Jeff and Louie are distracted by their problems, swoops in, and takes the General Manager title for herself. She believes George should sell, but maybe not to Louie. Maybe to some Greek people. It’s unclear. The feeling I get is that George hired her mainly to piss off Jeff.  

In each episode, the main players talk trash, maneuver around one another, suck up to the owner, make big promises they can’t possibly keep, ham it up for the camera, and behave like overall dickheads.  

The whole thing ends mostly as it began. George still owns the festival, Louie still wants to buy it, Jeff is hired back in his old role as Entertainment Director, and Darla is sacked. (There’s Rennie scuttlebutt about Darla that isn’t in the show, but I won’t get into it here because I’m not familiar enough with the players to speak on it—but the drama was thicc.)  

Guys. This show fucking rules.  

While my peers wrote indignant Facebook statuses about how “this show does not represent us,” I soaked in each episode with glee, impatiently waiting for the next one to drop so I could revel in the chaos of an unkillable yet mortal titan shambling toward the grave. 

I love this show so much.  

Because it’s true. It does represent us.  

The Unabridged Truth: The Reality of Ren Faire Culture

Renaissance faires are run by messy, broken, complicated autists with addiction issues and a complete inability to follow rules and orders. And it’s not just the owners and managers who are emotionally crippled to such a degree that Emily Brontë would tell them to tone it down—it’s most of us.  

From the gamer Rennie who puts a janky bow and arrow into the hands of your overstimulated, sugar-fueled child and tells them to aim for the bullseye, to the guy picking up trash and cleaning condoms out of port-a-potties, to the hot actors in cast ripping through one another in a sexual fury of hormones and mono, we’re all FUCKING WEIRD.  

Renaissance faires are WEIRD. They are weird places run by weird people.  

And few people are weirder, more complicated, and more conflicting than Ren Faire owners. Some of them are absolute cocksuckers—real weaselly dirtbags who screw over workers and patrons alike. These rapacious mercenaries make up the bulk of owners, but as they age and sell their shows, die, or go to prison, they’re beginning to lose their foothold.  

Others are folks who love ren faire, cobble together their life savings (or daddy’s money), or maybe form a collective of broke nerds to create what are essentially fancy LARPs in county parks with extra whimsy and heart.  

Most are somewhere in the middle: aging white businessmen looking for something else to do—smart enough not to open a bar but dumb enough to hedge their solvency on horny actors in tights.  

In my 30+ years growing up in this business and working closely with owners as an entertainment/fight/site director—or from afar as a hired performer or even just the guy at the front gate selling commemorative programs for two dollars—I’ve amassed a war chest of fun facts. The mildest of which I’ll share with you now. No names. No locations. No genders. Have fun guessing. 

Let’s dive into the blind items, shall we?  

– The owner of one faire sometimes brings their paramours to see The Jackdaws and then gets frisky in our front row. Honestly, it’s a big mood. Love that for them.  

– One owner told everyone they were dying of a terminal disease and that their wish was to run a faire before they died. They’re still alive, and that was a long time ago.  

– A member of site crew got injured on the job, and the owner asked them to commit insurance fraud so their premiums wouldn’t go up.  

– Two owners saved my dog’s life. One pulled strings to get me into their vet, and the other, with tears in their eyes, gave me a wad of cash and said, *“Don’t ever fucking tell anyone I did this.”* A lot of people think the one who gave me money is an asshole. I’ll never tell. I think they like it that way.  

– An owner installed a shower house for crew that made you pay a quarter for every four minutes. Very classy.  

– One owner cheated on their co-owner spouse with a barely legal actor, bringing them vodka and leaving money on the counter when they left. Pretty cool.  

– Multiple owners have tried opening faires only for them to get shut down at the last minute due to mismanagement, shady dealings, or local zoning. I have personally been in the room for three separate faires when I found out we were minutes or days away from not being able to open—but somehow, we managed. If the cast and crew really knew how close some faires were to shutting down at any given moment, they’d riot.  

– One owner tried to cut everyone’s pay by half after the faire had opened and contracts were signed. After the threat of very real physical violence, they changed their mind and magnanimously decided to pay what they owed.  

– If you catch one owner in the right mood, they’ll sit behind the food court with you until 3 or 4 in the morning, snacking on leftover faire food and chatting about life, the universe, and everything.  

Are we judging yet?  

History is littered with brazen, bold showmen and women who bent the truth and never blinked in the face of bureaucracy. In the Roman Empire, they flooded the Colosseum to recreate famous ship battles. I’ve been to the Colosseum. It’s big—but not *that* big. The mind reels to comprehend how it was pulled off.  

Some crazy asshole was in charge of that.  

I don’t want you to think I condone bad behavior. I don’t. A lot of these people are lucky not to be in jail or murdered by spurned lovers.  

But just as many are hardworking, decent folk who believe in this with every fiber of their being.  

The thread that ties them together? A spirit of accomplishment. A raging, eclectic insanity that flings their minds and checkbooks over the cliffs of certain doom, only to land, miraculously, on a stack of mattresses.  

But it’s unfair to focus solely on the people at the top when there’s a whole cursing, sweating, over-caffeinated human pyramid underneath them, holding the whole operation together.  

Moving on from George, let’s talk about Jeff.  

Through Jeff, we see someone who has given his adult life to the cause. He sees himself as a sort of auteur director, but he’s stifled by George’s micromanagement and his belief that Jeff doesn’t have the guts to run the business as it needs to be run.  

Being at the top often calls for tough decisions that appear heartless and cruel. Those at the bottom seldom know the gravity of those decisions or how deeply the entire economy of ren faires relies on hard choices. George doesn’t think Jeff has it in him.  

I’ll be honest: I see Jeff’s story as a cautionary tale.  

Full disclosure: Jeff is the only person in this cast of characters I’ve ever spoken to, and I thought he was an asshole. But after watching the documentary, I feel a shared misery.  

When Jeff was fired after years of hard work, I felt an intense wave of nausea. No stock options. No ownership. Just, “You’re done.”  

Imagine helping someone build something for decades, only for them to get tired of you and fire you. That’s awful, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. When it cut to him sitting in his dark house, tears streaming down his face, I thought to myself, “Shit, that could be me one day.” 

After all, I direct two faires. That’s two vastly different owners (who, to be fair, I do believe are good men) I roll the dice with yearly.  

If I hadn’t decided to open the St. Petersburg Renaissance Faire before seeing Ren Faire, I think I would’ve made the decision after seeing Jeff Baldwin getting depression weight loss surgery.  

Getting shafted after investing your career in a show is not just something that happens to Jeff. For about two decades, there was a faire that would fire their entertainment director the same year they bought a house and settled into the area. That can’t be a coincidence, right? Maybe once, but four or five times in a row?  

After watching Ren Faire, if you wanted to be an entertainment director of a decent-sized show, I imagine you’d rethink that desire. It’s a thankless job. You alienate your peers and lose friendships when you don’t renew contracts, no matter how valid the reason. You’re a hired poker player, playing with house money but suffering emotional consequences when you bust out.  

Still, when you’re good at something, you’re good at it. I haven’t been fired yet (this decade). I’m just thankful I have the St. Petersburg Renaissance Faire to pour my passion into so I don’t annoy the owners I work for with my unbridled energy to be in charge of EVERYTHING.  

Believe me, I can be a pain in the ass at staff meetings, asking about food lines, bar procedures, and water lines, and how they affect the overall vibe of a show. It’s a miracle the staff hasn’t edged me out—or killed me yet.  

Still, at Brevard, my predecessor was fired accidentally over a group Facebook message. Now, every time my phone pings, a small shiver of dread runs down my spine.

Enough about me, let’s talk about Louie.

Through Louie, we see the limitless opportunity this gig offers to those willing to seize it. You could start working faires sleeping in an ’87 Ford van with a Straight-6 engine and end up a successful entertainer. You could be a teenage runaway picked up at a bus station by a gamer and eventually run site crew. You could grow up as a fat kid everyone found annoying and eventually own your own renaissance faire.  

Once Louie sees the opportunity, he doesn’t let it go.  

Louie is presented as a recovering alcoholic, running on Red Bull and fever dreams, and honestly? I’m here for it. Renaissance faires have a loose caste system: vendors typically aren’t allowed to drift into entertainment, but entertainers can drift into vending.  

In Louie, there’s audacity—but there’s also commonality. Louie is the type of person I’ve met most often in my travels: a hustler who believes in himself almost to a fault and doesn’t understand why there shouldn’t be a seat at the table for him.  

When he talks about the songs he parodies at his kettle corn stand, I see that guy I’ve met a hundred times. He chuckles at his bits and jokes—uncomplicated, unanalyzed, unrefined—yet likely far more popular than anything I’ve ever performed at one of my shows. Honestly? I kind of fuck with Louie.  

One time, I had the opportunity to buy a renaissance faire. Like Louie, I didn’t have the money, but I said yes anyway because I knew I’d figure it out. Like Louie, when it came time to sign the paperwork, the owner got cold feet and decided to keep it.

Ren Faire is a fantastic, outlandish, over-the-top telling of a group of humans trying to keep their shit together.  

What motivates them?  

I think it’s making people happy—and the pride and glory that comes with it.  

I’m not going to lie and say it’s completely altruistic, but when you weigh the entire ecosystem of a renaissance faire—the cast, crew, vendors, and management—I do think altruism tips the scales a little heavier than greed or personal achievement.  

Even if the guy at the top is a real bastard. (In George’s case, that’s debatable.)  

So, is the documentary true?  

Not at all.  

Yet our reflection still stares back from the mirror.  

Here’s to the outcasts. The freaks and the marginalized. The broke, the mentally infirm, and the polyamorous thruple that crashes out after half a season.  

With our powers combined, we create a functional renaissance faire.  

How does it work?  

I don’t know.  

It’s a mystery.

Ready to enjoy a Ren Faire of your own? We invite you to enjoy us at the St. Petersburg Renaissance Faire this spring from April 19th through May 11th for jousting, turkey legs, and celtic music. The only thing missing is the behind the scenes drama, because none of us are rich enough to stab each other in the back yet!