Jousting Draws Large Crowds At Maryland Renaissance Festival

For the jousters at Debracey Productions, every performance, and every practice, is different. No show has been rehearsed in its entirety before it happens, as the horses would get bored and want to skip to the end. The outcome isn’t scripted; during the show, the athletes do their best to come out on top.

“The audience really feels that. They like the competition part of it,” said Bill Burch, owner of Debracey Productions.

Jousting is the biggest show at the Maryland Renaissance Festival, or “Renn Fest,” each year. According to Royal Court director Mary Ann Jung, each joust can draw between 4,000 and 5,000 people. Because of the audience the event draws, Renn Fest and Debracey Productions work to integrate the overarching story of Renn Fest into the jousts while also allowing them to tell their own separate stories. A handful of Renn Fest performers, often including Jung, act as “speakers” during the joust.

Within the context of the Renaissance Festival’s storyline, the jousters are knights visiting to provide entertainment, and the reality isn’t far off. Debracey Productions travels to different Renaissance fairs throughout the country. Maryland’s Renn Fest is Burch’s favorite festival to perform at for multiple reasons, including the location, the jousting arena and the support of the festival’s management.

“You can really appreciate a show like Maryland, period,” Burch said. He later added that the event “has the most amazing arena on the circuit.”

Renn Fest was the second festival that Burch ever performed at, back when he first began jousting at the age of 21, and though there were about 24 years between that performance and his return to Renn Fest with Debracey Productions, the experience stuck with him. Burch had been sent ahead of the other jousters with a friend to build up the props, and they were taken on a golf cart to find the owners of the fair. When they finally found them, they were busy helping someone build a booth.

“Coming from a dairy farm, that really spoke to me,” Burch said. “I feel so lucky to work with people who really care about the product and who put their hands into everything.”

Debracey Productions’ show features battlefield-style jousting inspired by the 13th and 14th centuries, a slightly earlier historical period than the story that Renn Fest tells each year regarding Henry VIII and his wives. The jousting they do is different from the Maryland state sport of ring jousting, which doesn’t involve the competitors hitting one another. Debracey Productions’ story gets told over the course of three shows throughout the day, featuring elements such as full-contact jousting, ring tricks and chariots.

Though jousters might play the same character or wear the same colors throughout each show, other details of the story get changed each time. Debracey Productions wants audience members to get different experiences if they see the show more than once. The jousters are both performers and athletes, competing to come out on top while also exploring the backstories and motivations that brought their characters to where they are now.

“We don’t spend a whole lot of time on dialogue,” Burch said. “People came to see horses running, so we spend a lot of time running.”

The cast includes about seven full-time members as well as a revolving cast and crew of an additional 10-15 people. Maryland’s cast is Debracey’s biggest, and the chariot show takes a minimum of 13 people to run comfortably.

The community surrounding the jousts is large. Some people have been helping for years. Debracey Productions has a program where people help in exchange for being taught how to ride. Other jousters not affiliated with Debracey Productions have come out to teach the cast different things, and Jung and her fellow speakers help keep an eye on things from above.

“I don’t think there’s a better joust group in the country,” said Jung. “They’re wonderful to work with, very accommodating.”

Debracey Productions also works with a lot of volunteers. Some volunteers might have the job of opening and closing doors, while others might just come in to help look after and pet the horses.

The jousters make sure the horses are doing what they love. If the horses don’t enjoy something, then they don’t have to do it. One of the horses doesn’t like to be ridden, but it loves pulling chariots.

“You can’t blame him, because the chariot horse only works about three minutes a day,” Burch said.

During the joust, the horses are free to move in whatever direction they want. Burch’s horse Copper is a retired racehorse that loves to run fast, so Burch will often wait until his fellow jouster takes off in order not to pull ahead. The headgear they use keeps the horses from feeling anything, so the jousters can hit each other as hard as they want without the horses feeling it.

“They really get depressed if they don’t go in the horse trailer and get to go to the show,” Burch said.

This year, the Maryland Renaissance Festival will run from 10:00am-7:00pm on weekends from August 23 through October 19, featuring many other events, performances and vendors in addition to jousting. To learn more, go to www.rennfest.com.