S02E02 #
Lullaby Lounge: Bardic Inspiration
Aired: 2020-06-30 Posted: 2020-08-09
This episode included the show’s first dance break, set to Take a Knee. Quoted below is a particularly interesting story about Kate’s background in the renaissance faire that was told during this episode.
I’m going to tell my story tonight of when I used to work at the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. Um. For those of you who didn’t know, or couldn’t guess, I worked at a renaissance faire from ages fourteen to seventeen. And two of those years were on cast. So I was a part of the character acting troupe that was coached and, like, put together produced by the Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire. I started as a vendor when I was fourteen, and I vended– er, I worked for a dragon seller. I was one of those people that, like, had the puppet on their shoulder and, like, convinced you to buy this dragon puppet, that like… what the hell are you ever gonna use it for? But it was my job to hock these, like, ninety dollars, um, these ninety dollar dragon puppets that just sat on your shoulder and you controlled with a cable. And I– my parents, my mother and my stepfather, had actually gotten married at the renaissance faire, and I had expressed wanting to work there since I was a very young child. Like, I had always wanted to work at the ren faire. Um, partially because I think I wanted to just play pretend all day, but there’s just something about that place that was very significant to my development as a creator, as a producer of art.
Um, I auditioned for faire twice. The first time I didn’t get in, cause I think partially I was too young. Um. And then after the year where I was a dragon seller for a certain amount of weekends, and the people on cast had started to sort of recognize me and notice that I was trying to become one of them, I auditioned at fifteen– it would have been my freshman year of high school. Um, and, I got in! I was the youngest member on cast at that time. I actually, like, I didn’t even get a callback. They just handed me a contract before I walked out the door. Um. They… I was hired immediately. Um. I learned later it was because, one, because I auditioned well. And two, because of this woman who played Grace O’Malley, the pirate queen for many years there. Um, I don’t necessarily– I’m not– I don’t know if she wants to be, like, connected to PARF these days, but, um, we’re just gonna call her Grace. Because she was Grace O’Malley to me before we became friends, so she’s sort of always going to be Grace O’Malley to me in my head.
So, I auditioned to be in the cast and I was… I wasn’t– I was– First of all, I love doing homework. So I made up my own character. A lot of the times when you work for PARF, they’ll just hand you a character and be like “this is who you are” but there is an option to pitch a character to them. And the character I pitched was Grace O’Malley’s cabin girl, um, Flintlock Fiona. And Flintlock Fiona was an Irish, young Irish pirate, a teenage Irish Pirate, and she was the cabin girl on Grace O’Malley’s … So I pitched this character of Grace O’Malley’s cabin girl. And they were like, “fine, you can be a cabin girl, that’s cool with us.” But then it turned out during the season that there was another teenage character that was central to the plot. So, like, I had pitched my character to them, Flintlock, and she was a little rough-and-tumble cabin girl (at this moment, Kate switches to an Irish accent) with an Irish accent, and I got to do whatever I wanted, and act like a little brat all the time. Um, just like very, like, determined little pirate girl. Lots of anger, very rough-and-tumble. (Kate returns to her normal speaking voice) Um. And. I was very hype about being able to be Grace O’Malley’s cabin girl, and I got to hang out with Grace all the time, being her cabin girl. But there was this part of the plot that was central to the day’s plot, which was
…
So I was sort of jealous of this other plot character. Um, she was playing Grace’s daughter. And as part of the day that happened every day at faire, because it was sort of like Groundhog Day at PA. Every day was a new– was the same thing, happened over and over again. Morgan got captured in the morning, and then she got free, and then she gets captured at mid-day, and then, like, it was this whole thing where the pirates were against the privateers, and there was this big kidnapping plot, with Morgan and I clearly wanted to be Morgan O’Malley because I just wanted to be Grace O’Malley’s daughter so bad. So I had this, sort of, like, feeling for the first half of the season where I’m being weird and competitive with this girl, and this girl is just an actor person who doesn’t really care about ren faire, and, um, I am just acting my little heart out all the time, doin’ all my stuff. And then, mid-season– Yes, Westworld vibes 100%, Holly. I– I very much felt connected emotionally to Westworld, because it reminded me of working at the renaissance faire. Um. Hell yeah, Grace! Privateers are just ocean cops! All cops are bastards!
…
It’s a weird season because, on one hand, I’m living my dream of working at the renaissance faire, and get to work at– hang out with the pirates all the time and do a bunch of cool pirate stuff. And then, halfway through the season, the girl that’s playing Morgan quits. And, part of the reason why she was hired was because she’s eighteen years old and legally allowed to do the stunt show. But then they didn’t have anyone to fill her place, who was over-age and could make all the dates. And that’s why I stopped going to high school. Because I quit high school to become Grace O’Malley’s daughter. And I, um, I worked there every weekend, and all the school days, and it was my job to be captured in the morning, and then free myself, and then get captured again in mid-day, and then for the big joust at the end of the day there was this big stunt show, that I to, like, run through fire, and like– I had to basically dodge all the stunts, because legally I wasn’t technically supposed to be on the structure. Um, I had to dodge all this, like, stunt stuff, and do a little bit of acting during the show at this big joust every day, every day that faire happened. So, twice a weekend? I also had to be there in the morning to practice it and such, because we had to make sure all the charges and stuff for the special effects were all fine, and all this stuff. I basically got a ton of extra acting homework, which I clearly loved.
So, maybe the second time I do the joust, this is when I really realized that, like, I had the power to make people feel things. And that renaissance faire was different, because it was like everyone existed in the same place at the same time. It wasn’t like theater, where you do something and then people know you’re not you. It was a different space. So, I run down the stairs as part of the joust. I like, I have to punch this cop, first, gotta punch this cop, break my handcuffs, um, run down the stairs, dodge around the fire, and then my– the woman who plays my mother, Grace O’Malley, is across from me on the stage. Um, I have to run to her around other fire, I think. And I… this probably would have been the second day I did it, so the first weekend that it happened. When I run to Grace, I yell, “Mama!” and Queen Elizabeth cried! I’m crying just thinking about it. I mean, that moment when the woman who played Queen Elizabeth at the time, cause she was supposed to be sort of, like, lording over whatever was happening… Um, she came up to me, and she– she held my face because it made– it made sense in character for her to be generous towards me. But, she came up to me and she held my face and she just said, “You called her ‘Mama’,” and she, like, had tears running down her face. And that moment, where I was like, “Oh shit! It’s not just the audience that I’m– I can make feel things. It’s also the other people who are in the space with me.” Changed my life. Also the first time I’ve had people ask for my autograph. Because, um, there was a little girl that saw me at the diner after the– after faire ended, and she asked me for my autograph. So… It was just a lot of experiences all at once that I think solidified what it meant to be a performer, and to be a part of theater, and what theater could do. Because it wasn’t– Cause Kate was in it with me, right? She could– She had– She could manager her feelings the way the rest of us could to make whatever happened and it was just different. It, it solidified that I could make people feel things for real. So yeah, that’s my story, about playing the daughter of a pirate queen for– instead of going to high school.
Setlist #
- Glitter and Gold - Barns Courtney
- Ballad of the Bard - Kate Nyx
- Go Go Power Rangers - Ron Wasserman (from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers)
- Warrior of Love - Kate Nyx
- Dead Souls - Nine Inch Nails (originally by Joy Division)
- What Would Peggy Carter Do? - Kate Nyx
- A Faerie Ballad - Kate Nyx