[MR] Well, we could pare down the feast, for one thing.

[Gina Shelley]

Wrong, actually. It's pretty easy to do it if you keep a repetiore of stuff ready to go and plan. So my group does. However, we are not so pushy that we would jump up and take it upon ourselves to do that without being asked or otherwise given permission. 

 

In fact, we're willing to work up and entire playlist for the occasion, schedule other performers, and either entertain or manage the entertainment the entire feast through, if that is what the autocrat wants. Not only are we willing, but we have in fact done that and were happy to do it. 

 

Not everyone wants a whole feast full of mostly non period music, though, so we don't assume that is what the autocrat wants without asking. We have no idea what they have planned. It's not always entirely welcome, and other musicians and entertainers we have talked to echo this. So if we don't automatically assume everyone in a feast hall is in our fan club, this is why. 

 

If we feel pretty confident our efforts will be welcome, we will often feel comfortable just out of the blue jumping up and doing something spontaneous. We once wrote a short song at the table and then performed it five minutes later in a packed feasthall. Dragging in people at our table who don't usually play with us to help, no less. Again, this is something we have done, so your suggestion that I don't do this when I should are frankly kind of strange. 

 

Since our whole "mission" at events is to try to encourage people to participate in entertainment and to help bring more entertainment type stuff to the fore in general, I am wondering why I am being accused of griping without offering anything. 

 

And as an aside, we personally don't care if someone talks through our sets or otherwise does'nt pay attention. We consider ourselves more of a pub band than a performance band, and as such, expect noise and distraction while we are playing. It does not disturb us and we have made a point to learn to stay focused, since SCA events are full of distractions. We figure if you want to listen or sing along, you will, and if you don't you won't and it's all good. People on the other end of the hall can't even hear a lot of the entertainers, including us. You fill up a feast hall with bodies and all of a sudden you got no acoustics. This is one reason we don't turn our backs on the populace when playing, the way a lot of people do. I realize it is proper to face high table. It's also pretty excruciating for everyone else who can't hear what is going on, but feels an awkward sense of duty to be quiet nonetheless. I don't care if someone listens to me or ignores me, but I would at least like them to have a choice. 

 

Dulcy

 

 


> 
> As far as entertainment goes, I would say, if you are bored and know
> how to tell a story or sing, why don't you go ahead and do something?
> At my last feast, I saw multiple examples of this spontaneous
> entertainment. Another thing I have seen is to hold a Bardic
> competition during feast. It's easy to complain about something, but
> not so easy to do it, right?
> 
> The only drawback are the gentles who do not care for the person doing
> the entertaining and feel that their conversation is more important,
> preventing some of us from listening to the song or tale. It takes a
> stong performer to cut above conversations and some people don't feel
> prepared enough to do this.
>
 		 	   		  
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