One reader asks:

1. From your experience with these, how would you classify and subclassify them?

2. What are the distinctions and why and how are these distinctions important?

There are several different ways to classify and subclassify them.

1) Volunteer festivals -- for these, nobody is paid, including the acts. Everybody goes out to have a good time, and that's it. I avoid these.

2) Historically accurate festivals -- these represent a specific period of history. All the props must reflect items that were available at or by that particular time frame. In many cases, you won't be able to use playing cards, especially modern ones, at these festivals. Plan to spend some time justifying props for these.

3) Fantasy fairs -- these can be organized chaos -- no attempt to create any historical period at all.

4) "Commercial" faires -- these tend to pay their performers but they will be laden with souvenir t-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers, DVD's, CD's, postcards, etc. Sometimes they will cut you more slack than others.

A good performer with common sense will understand how to work any of these after a bit of exposure to the atmosphere.

Just check the performer's guide -- most of them have one -- and go with the flow.

There is often some overlap between the various categories.

Here is some more information about this kind of show, not from a Renaissance festival POV, but from a reenactor's POV.

My friend in Nashville, Rick Green, has been performing for the last couple of years as a Scottish conjurer who was in the country during the War Between the States.

In order to pass muster with the people who stage these events at which he performs, he had to make sure that the fabrics his clothing was made from were like those from the period, the patterns were correct and that the props looked right. Fortunately, there are many experts in his neighborhood, so he was able to do a more than passable job right from the get-go. And with further help, he has become a fairly well-known performer in this field.

And his material (magic-, clothing- and prop-wise) is flawless.