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.
