Period Acting
Several things qualify as “period acting”. In this case I am referring to fairs. Namely Renaissance Faires and the Great Dickens Christmas Fair. The actors who work these fairs call this type of acting “full immersion improv acting”. These are events at which an actor assumes a character and walks among their audience interacting freely within the confines of their character and the limits of their context.
In order to succeed at one of these events one must be well versed in the societal rules of the time period they are portraying as well as knowledgeable about colloquialisms etc.
At these events, actors are usually divided into two groups; guilds and contracted stage acts. Guilds are the organizations that represent different groups of society. These groups can be; nobility, peasants, sailors, nationalities, book characters (in the case of the Dickens fair) or differing strata of society.
The Contracted stage acts are exactly what they sound like. They are replicable shows by performing groups that are hired by the fair to perform a set number of shows during the run of the fair.
I have been involved in both guilds and stage acts.
Guilds/Stage acts I have been involved in:
The Royal Order of the Tudor Rose
The Other Books of Charles Dickens
Fairs that I have participated in;
Northern California Renaissance Faire
Central Coast Renaissance Faire
