Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Pageantry, pomp — and wenches
Hear ye! Hear ye! Florida Renaissance Festival celebrates 25 years of going back in time
Its reign going on 25 years, the Florida Renaissance Festival keeps expanding its kingdom.
The seven-weekend affair will descend on Quiet Waters Park in Deerfield Beach starting Saturday, and bring with it pageantry and pomp and parades.
Spread out across the grounds will be live music and theater shows; handmade arts and crafts; and hundreds of actors and volunteers in typical Renaissance attire ready to take guests back in time.
Of course, there will also be some surprises. Among 15 new acts planned will be a “Pirates of the Colombian Caribbean” acrobatics performance atop a wire cable 30 feet in the air, and a traveling comedic act called The Tortuga Twins with audience participation and interaction. The jousting show is bigger this year, with a different company, more horses, and the addition of gladiators.
“The last thing I want is for someone to say: ‘Oh, the Renaissance Festival. I went the last two years. It’s the same old thing. Been there, done that,’” said festival founder Bobby Rodriguez, 69. “One of the things that is important to me is that the show is not the same every year because we’ve been around for so long.”
He also wants every weekend to provide
a different experience, so there are themes for each Saturday and Sunday, including pirates, time travelers, masquerade, wenches, Celtic, Vikings and barbarians. Dressing up accordingly is encouraged, though not required.
“There was a point in time when the show was four weekends long [and] every week was the exact same thing,” said Rodriguez, of Davie. “I want to make sure every weekend we have something different. I have some acts that are only coming in for one weekend, some for two, some for three.”
In all, the Renaissance village takes about three weeks to set up and two weeks to take down.
It’s a far cry from how the festival started 25 years ago. Most everything needed for the then twoday affair at Snyder Park in Fort Lauderdale fit into just two moving trucks.
“I was everything [back then]. I was craft coordinator. I was entertainment director. I taught the dance classes. I taught the acting classes. I did all of that for the first six, seven years,” Rodriguez recalled. “I was a one-man band those days.”
He did have real bands that first year, too.
Oakland Park musician Ty Billings, 53, has been performing Celtic music at the festival since the first year. He has performed with different bands throughout the years and watched the event move from Snyder Park to Topeekeegee-Yugnee Park in Hollywood and finally settle at Quiet Waters Park. He’ll return to the festival this year with the band, Celtic Mayhem.
He said he has seen the festival crowd became more diverse and less niche.
“The crowd has become more accepting to things that are not strictly Renaissance,” he said, referring to the themed weekends. “It’s certainly a broader audience.”
But they also have higher expectations, he said.
“Each year must be better than the year before to keep them coming back,” Billings said.
Adolfo Herrera, 52, of Lauderhill has been with the festival for 11 years. He plays the role of King Ferdinand II of Aragon for the official royal court and is a site crew member, helping set up the festival.
Herrera is Cuban-American and his fluency in Spanish came in handy because Rodriguez had always wanted to have a Spanish royal court to honor South Florida’s Hispanic influences.
For Rodriguez, who is of Puerto Rican heritage, showcasing diversity is important. Throughout the festival, there are sectors where visitors can learn about the Renaissance period beyond just European royalty. The H.M. Royal Artillery section, for example, will feature demonstrations on how to use cannons and small arms. New this year will be a section on the Ottoman Empire.
“The point is to try to enlighten people to different cultures,” Rodriguez said. “It’s a slice of living history.”