The Renaissance Faire--a 50 year-long party, communal ritual, political
challenge and cultural wellspring--receives its first sustained
historical attention with Well Met. Beginning with the chaotic
communal moment of its founding and early development in the 1960s
through its incorporation as a major "family friendly" leisure site in
the 2000s, Well Met tells the story of the thinkers, artists, clowns,
mimes, and others performers who make the Faire. Well Met approaches
the Faire from the perspective of labor, education, aesthetics,
business, the opposition it faced, and the key figures involved. Drawing
upon vibrant interview material and deep archival research, Rachel Lee
Rubin reveals the way the faires established themselves as a pioneering
and highly visible counter cultural referendum on how we live now--our
family and sexual arrangements, our relationship to consumer goods, and
our corporate entertainments. In order to understand the meaning of the
faire to its devoted participants, both workers and visitors, Rubin has
compiled a dazzling array of testimony, from extensive conversations
with Faire founder Phyllis Patterson to interviews regarding the
contemporary scene with performers, crafters, booth workers and
"playtrons." Well Met pays equal attention what came out of the
faire--the transforming gifts bestowed by the faire's innovations and
experiments upon the broader American culture: the underground press of
the 1960s and 1970s, experimentation with "ethnic" musical instruments
and styles in popular music, the craft revival, and various forms of
immersive theater are all connected back to their roots in the faire.
Original, intrepid, and richly illustrated, Well Met puts the
Renaissance Faire back at the historical center of the American
counterculture.
