Shrewsbury Faire is back this weekend
Rane (left) is the son of Equinox, the dragon, and Mist, the woodland fairy. Just another typical family portrait from the Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire. The faire returns this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 14-15. Photo by Lance Masterson.
It seems every child at the Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire wanted a solid bubble, and the man who delivered them with sleight of hand, Harley LaQuinn, was hard to miss.
First, he hovered around the faire’s entrance. Second, he was always blowing bubbles. Third, he costumed as a jester and wore a harlequin mask. Most important, perhaps, he stood nine feet tall.
“I tell all the little ones that I’m so tall because I ate all my bean sprouts. I got them from a guy named Jack,” LaQuinn said, dropping a name from the Fairy Tale Hall of Fame.
Older kids are more skeptical of this claim. They want to know why LaQuinn’s legs are so long and his arms are so short. He has an answer for this question, as well.
Harley LaQuinn was hard to miss at the Shrewsbury Renaissance Festival.
/ Photo by L.E. Masterson
“My arms would have been just as long, but they only got me on half the charges.”
“I tell the older kids I had a run in with the law in Spain. Authorities there put me on the rack and stretched me,” he said. “My arms would have been just as long, but they only got me on half the charges.”
LaQuinn would have killed them in the Catskills. But he wasn’t doing too shabby at the faire, either. Kids flocked to him. They followed him. They wanted his solid bubbles. He wasn’t the Pied Piper, but he would do until the real thing came along.
LaQuinn said it’s all in his approach.
“I get some kids that get scared. I get some kids that are just mesmerized. And the ones that get scared, I try not to push them. I don’t want their parents to push them, either,” he said. “I jokingly say that my mom always told me not to talk to strangers, and there’s no one much stranger than me. So when I’m alone, I can’t talk to myself.”
LaQuinn underwent his sudden growth spurt when a friend and fellow performer decided he had outgrown his stilts. It was time for someone else to rise to the occasion.
“(My friend) wasn’t going to be coming back to the area to do a gig. So I picked up his pair of stilts and started doing both the magic and the stilt walking,” LaQuinn said.
He relies on the basics.
“Just like anything else,” he said of mastering the technique. “Short steps, and one foot in front of the other.”
LaQuinn, or Matthew Van Zee as he’s known in his other world, is also a magician. He did double-duty at the faire. He was Harley in the morning, Van Zee the Magician in the afternoon. Sometimes the characters overlapped.
“I had one girl come up to me. After I had got down and wasn’t doing the bubbles. I was doing magic. And she’s like, ‘but I didn’t get my bubble yet today. I have to have my bubble’.”
No problem. It’s what LaQuinn does.
“I blow bubbles, and make them solid. And then I give the kids something to remember me by, and to remember the event by. I even have some kids here that have collected my bubbles for over 10 years now.”
Ultimately, the key to his success isn’t in magic at all.
“It’s interactions with the audience. The joking. Having fun,” he said. “That’s it.”
Brett Baker, on the other hand, isn’t a performer in the traditional sense. He created his own buzz just by walking around the village green. He owes it all to his tailor. Or as one faire-goer said when he first saw Brett in costume: “Man, that’s a dope dragon suit you’re wearing. It’s so awesome.”
The suit is, indeed, ‘awesome.’ It combines technology and art. The wings, for example, raise and lower. And the suit is air conditioned.
“(Brett) is pretty toasty right now. There’s actually a fan within the head to keep him cool when it gets too hot,” explained his wife, Lynx. “He can only do the costume for about an hour, hour-and-a-half, before we strip him down and put him in a different costume.”
It seems it takes an entire village to make a good dragon suit.
“All of the pieces have been made by various artisans,” said Lynx, “and we collected them and put them together.”
But ultimately, theirs is the story of a young dragon, Equinox, and a wood fairy, Mist, who dared societal conventions and were married 29 years ago. Their son, Rane, was born three years later. They have been a faire fixture ever since. Continued participation has strengthened their identity as a family.
Sir Charles (black horse) and Sir Michael joust it out during the recent Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire. The faire’s highlight for many, the joust was performed by Knights of Mayhem.
/ Photo by L.E. Masterson
“You know those things you do as a family that no one else may understand. It’s sort of one of those things,” said Rane. “It’s something that we share, connects us on a separate level, other than we are blood.”
Shrewsbury featured numerous stalls. Some vendors specialized in bringing whimsy to life. Others were more grounded. They chose to demonstrate trades from that era that are still practiced today.
Blacksmith Tymon Teichroeb combined past and present.
“I’m a fabricator,” said Teichroeb. “But I also do this full-time on the side with my fabrication. I have my own setup at home.”
Teichroeb was joined by fellow blacksmiths Isaac Morain and Hunter Oxley to provide onlookers with a living history lesson.
“We’re just doing demonstrations, showing people how it would have been done back in the Renaissance,” said Teichroeb of their area. “Everything we’ve got out here, tools-wise, is accurate to that time frame.”
Even the bellows.
“We have our bellows here that one of our members custom made for us,” Teichroeb said.
He noted it's made from canvas and wood and operates under a two-part system that maintains constant air flow.
Some observers showed a casual interest. Others were there for information. For they, too, want to step back in time.
Tymon Teichroeb demonstrates how blacksmithing was done in ye good ol' days. Also pictured: Isaac Morain.
“We give visitors tips and pointers. Where to go for equipment. What to get first,” said Teichroeb “It’s something you don’t see everyday. So it’s definitely something that piques people's interest.”
Dance also has power to pique interest, though the ties that bind are more emotional.
“We come from many different cultures and dance is what brings us together,” said Sarah Matson of her troupe, Tribal Rising Dance. “Dance is the universal language of love.”
Most of the troupe’s belly dances are improvised. On this day, there were three dancers. The leader, with help from her backing musicians, was positioned front left on stage.
“We do a very communal dance in which the others follow the leader and the queuing of the drums,” Matson said.
Members of the audience were asked to join the dancers on stage. Those accepting the offer were mostly girls.
“It’s next generation, right. It’s what we do,” said Matson. “Dance is for everyone, everybody and every age.”
Men, however, were reluctant to take the stage. That’s not the case in every culture.
“Male belly dance is big in the Middle East. It’s very strong and celebratory. So if you get up, it’s great. It’s different,” she said. “But culturally here, not so much.”
The Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire is Saturday and Saturday, Sept. 14-15, at a site just off the Kings Valley Highway, near the border of Polk and Benton counties.
Go to www.shrewfaire.org for more information.
