How the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire turned into a nightmare for its volunteer performers

Ammie Hague, 50, is a professional fairy. She’s spent 20 summers of her life in colorful skirts, a tight corset, and a crown of flowers. Once she straps her wings on, Hague becomes Fairy Princess Lolly, a staple performer of the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire.

For attendees, Renaissance faires are a type of frivolous, immersive fun. Part entertainment. Part education. Dress up, eat a turkey leg, watch a joust, get locked up in the stocks, learn how to make period-accurate fiber goods, flirt with the King of Spain. Wash it all down with a flagon of mead.

To make it all come to life, faires depend on a mix of paid staff, paid performers, and hundreds of passionate volunteers. Usually, the people making the faire possible stick around for years—decades even. This kind of dedication is what started Washington Midsummer in the first place and what has kept the faire alive since its founding in the 1990s.

Hague was a volunteer. She performed as Fairy Princess Lolly at Washington Midsummer and other faires in the Northwest Renaissance faire circuit. She eventually launched a fairy apothecary business connected to her performer persona and did well enough that she quit her job at Washington Mutual. Being Fairy Queen Lolly and peddling wands, quills, and fairy experiences became her whole life. Similarly, her faire friends—the people she worked alongside in the dry summer heat and then slept beside in the campground outside the faire during its annual three-weekend run—became her family.

“It just becomes part of your life really,” Hague says.

The life Hague created for herself was threatened when, according to police records, her partner was allegedly attacked by another faire volunteer whom Hague had been living with and in a romantic relationship at the time. Hague said this volunteer threatened her as well. Then, two years ago, it ended completely when, according to Hague, the faire failed to sufficiently address her concerns in response to the incident—allowing the alleged attacker, who claims he was acting in self-defense, to remain as a volunteer despite the fact that she had filed a restraining order.

Hague and many others who have worked and volunteered at Washington Midsummer believe that dismissive behavior from management is not an isolated incident. According to 10 performers and volunteers interviewed for this story, something is rotten in the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire: Poor labor conditions, bad actors, and business-over-people decisions by the board of directors are sapping the Renaissance faire of its magic.

Meanwhile, the faire, which has recently grown from three weekends to five, is only getting more popular and more expensive. Turkey legs are $20. Ticket prices jumped from $27 to $40 in the last year. The nonprofit that runs it, the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Arts & Education Society, or WRAES, earned over $9 million in the last three years with a net revenue of $1.9 million, according to public filings. Two board members each earned six figure salaries in 2023, the last year for which records are available—and that’s not accounting for the joint $300,000 consulting fee they paid themselves, according to tax records. Many performers and merchants are still making pennies—if they’re making any money at all.

Many longtime workers have left. As the faire loses beloved acts and merchants, while growing at a breakneck pace, can it get back to what it once was?

WRAES and its founders’ 2018-era for-profit company, Wandering in Time Productions, also operate the Oregon Renaissance Faire and the Oregon Celtic Festival. They have operated the Northwest Pirate Festival in the past. Faire management did not answer any specific questions about its actions, or the allegations raised in this piece. Rather, Wandering in Time Productions, which took control of all performer and guild contracts in 2024, issued a blanket statement that rising costs have impacted ticket prices and resulted in a more selective vendor process. Additionally, WITP stated it responded quickly to concerns about anyone who acted out of line with their community values as soon as they learned of inappropriate behaviors.

When you enter the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire in Monroe, you are actually walking into the Village of Merriwick, a fictional town populated by merchants and guild members, or “guildies,” as they refer to themselves. The guildies schlep in all of their own tents—billowing reds, yellows, and creams.

Among the tents in Merriwick, you’ll find two ionic columns adorned with blue roses. This is the Blue Footed Booby Brothel. Before you enter between the columns, a busty maiden reads you the rules: A sense of humor is required for entry, from the bodice to the bloomers is a no-touch zone, and no liquid libations are permitted here.

Buxom mistresses guide you through the Booby tent by tent, cracking bawdy jokes in their pastoral old English twangs. In the aviary, an ivy-covered tent lush with fake greenery, you’ll find tits—in the avian sense. Toy birds chirp in cages. The maidens will even teach you how to “choke your chicken” if you’re lucky. Of course, they’re referring to a rubber chicken. The spooning area is full of wooden spoons. The screw room, another tent, is often closed due to crab infestations, according to the sign adorned with plastic crabs. You can play with the brothel’s wood—wooden blocks—or even get a blow job—a squirt of air from a pirate manning a small bellows.

It’s silly fun, and it’s no longer at Midsummer because Joy Knight-Richards, 42, the woman who ran the Booby and two other mainstays in Merriwick, pulled her guilds out of the faire last year.

Knight-Richards grew up in faires. She started puppeteering with St. Wolfgang’s Bavarian Guild in Oregon at 8 years old. Her mother was a puppeteer, so naturally Knight-Richards and her sister became puppeteers, too. She joined Washington Midsummer back in 2000 after she graduated high school.

At the time, the Washington Midsummer was run by Ron Cleveland, whom Knight-Richards describes as a “grumpy Scotsman,” and his wife. “They were your typical Renaissance people,” Knight-Richards said. That meant they were great at all the intangibles that made the faire magical—but, according to some people who were there at the time, the faire experienced operation troubles.

In 2008, Washington Midsummer became a nonprofit: the Washington Renaissance Arts & Education Society. Shortly afterward, two of its board members, Theresa “Tracy” Nietupski and David Day, took control of the faire from Cleveland. They brought a different energy.

Nietupski, a former nurse, previously volunteered at the turkey leg booth. Day operated a coffee stand in faires up and down the West Coast and later became Midsummer’s site director. From the start, the two seemed eager to become more than food vendors, Knight-Richards said.

Under the direction of Nietupski and Day, the faire grew. It moved from Gig Harbor to Bonney Lake, where it stayed for many years. In 2023, the faire relocated to Monroe. Beyond the location, many participants say, the essence of what the faire was began to change.

For Knight-Richards, that change recently became impossible to ignore.

It started with the guilds: the backbone to these faires. They are, as one guild member who wished to stay anonymous described, “little self-contained community theater organizations.” The fairies have a guild, the German landsknecht have a guild, the pirates have a guild. So do the nobles, the military reenactors, the fire troupes.

There are around 15 different guilds that have participated in the faire on and off over the years. And there’s a dizzying variety to them—what they do, how they operate, and how they’re compensated. What is true across the board is that most members are volunteers. Usually, the faire will give guild leaders a stipend each weekend to cover costs. These stipends vary from guild to guild depending on their expenses. No one is making any real money off of these stipends, Knight-Richards says.

Some groups earned as little as $300 a weekend. Others made $2,500, according to Knight-Richards. Many guildies work 10- to 12-hour days. The faire organizers did not respond to a request for comment on guild salaries. WITP did, however, address rising production costs in its statement.
   
        “Putting on a high-quality event that welcomes approximately 10,000 visitors daily takes time, effort and significant financial resources. Like many businesses across Washington, the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire has felt the impact of rising production costs.”

Historically, Midsummer plied volunteers with perks. They got free lunch, free passes for themselves and friends and family. In recent years, free lunch disappeared. Now, passes for volunteers aren’t for peak faire days, but for Sundays. Family and friend passes still exist, but they aren’t free, just discounted.

“There is no reason for any of what they’re doing except that it’s money and it is power and it is control,” Knight-Richards says.

The faires Knight-Richards grew up in were vastly different from what Midsummer is becoming. The Shrewsbury Renaissance Faire in Oregon and Ye Merrie Greenwood Faire in the Tri-Cities were community faires.

Knight-Richards watched for years as the Washington faire changed, but she stayed on “to try to bring this back to being a family community where people are being taken care of,” she says. “I watched other faires die because they lost that.”

Last year, Knight-Richards tried to improve working conditions and pay for the guilds.

“I literally had spent the last year fighting for financial equal rights for everybody across the board, for all the performers, all the stage acts, everything,” she says. “And it began a huge thing where basically we were unionizing.”

Ahead the 2024 faire, WRAES management made guild stipends a uniform $1,000 per weekend across all guilds. This bumped up some groups’ stipends and bumped down others’ pay. But standardizing guild pay did not necessarily make it more equitable.

“You can’t do that to performers who actually are needing insurance to do black powder or fire or armed combat, because that might be how much their insurance costs,” Knight-Richards says.

Meanwhile, in 2023, Nietupski and Day earned $103,730 and $100,156 respectively. Public records also state that WRAES paid them as individuals a joint $300,000 consulting fee, according to the annual reports WRAES sent to the Internal Revenue Service. Those funds are connected to WRAES, the nonprofit which also recorded over $5.9 million in net assets in the last three years. It’s unclear how much the for-profit company the two started in 2018, Wandering in Time Productions, earns each year. Day and Nietupski did not respond to a request for comment about how, if at all, funds are shared between WRAES and Wandering in Time Productions.

Faire workers believe Wandering in Time Productions is taking on more and more faire responsibilities each year. For the first time in 2024, all faire contracts came from Wandering in Time Productions.

Ralph Huntzinger, a career librarian-turned-magician, thinks the faire is headed toward more of a “theme parky” identity, one that values spectacle over interaction. That’s a tough thing for a nonprofit with a stated goal of teaching historic arts and immersion.

“They’re creating a great spectacle. A great thing to see. A little bit to participate in. A great thing to buy,” Huntzinger says. “Are there arts? Is there education? Is there that other component? That costs money. That’s a revenue sink not a revenue generator.”

Generally, Day handles everything on site at the actual faire, and Nietupski handles operations. Day is known for being fiery, and rolling up in his golf cart at the faire to yell at people, says a guild member who wished to remain anonymous.

Faire workers refer to Nietupski as the “Grande Dame of the Board” behind her back. Shana Casey, a former salaried faire worker, says that when she questioned Neitupski about the impact of raising ticket prices on lower-income patrons, Nietupski said, “We don’t want those Walmart people here anyway.” Other former faire workers confirmed they had heard her say this as well.

Nietupski did not respond to a request for comment about whether she used this term to refer to patrons. But in its statement, WITP wrote the following: “WITP and WRAES look forward to welcoming all our guests this summer, especially those who have attended for generations, to create magical and memorable experiences together.”

Josh Gonzalez and his wife, Cindy Muñoz, were faire patrons before they became vendors. While visiting, they had an idea: Wouldn’t it be great to play Dungeons & Dragons in their ren faire costumes? To make it happen, they cofounded Cleric Games, which instantly became a wildly popular Dungeons & Dragons booth at Midsummer.

The D&D story they offer features Merriwick and many of its mainstay characters. “It’s a large persistent world,” Gonzalez says. He adds to the story every year. Cleric Games charges $10 per game and sells out of daily games regularly on each faire day by noon.

Despite their success, throughout their time at Midsummer, Gonzalez says, Day and Nietupski consistently took issue with them. Gonzalez and Muñoz had frequent run-ins regarding drinking and partying in the camp after fair hours, or smoking marijuana off-site during their breaks. However, Gonzalez felt his team was singled out by management.

In 2022, while Muñoz was undergoing chemotherapy, Day and Nietupski wouldn’t let the couple run an air conditioner in the faire campground where workers sleep due to preexisting camping rules.

“She [had to administer] injections into her uterus to put her into menopause to try to crash her estrogen levels as fast as possible because she had estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer,” Gonzalez says. The treatment triggered hot flashes for Muñoz, and she would often overheat.

Packed like sardines among the guild and volunteer tents, Gonzalez angled to park his trailer somewhere convenient to hook up the air conditioner for his wife. When he plugged it into his backup generator, he says, faire management told him to turn it off.

A different year, while setting up their booth in the morning, they had driven their car on the faire grounds to unload. Only, Muñoz lost the keys. Gonzalez went looking for the keys in the back of their booth. Having a car in the middle of a historically accurate Renaissance faire was a problem.

In front of their booth and in view of at least six other booths, Day confronted Muñoz about the car parked on the scrubby grass.

“He gets in my wife’s face, and he starts screaming at my wife,” Gonzalez says. Another woman who worked for Cleric Games stood up to defend Muñoz. According to Gonzalez, Day “told her to shut her mouth and sit her ass down.” Nietupski stood by and watched him do this, according to Gonzalez. Another faire worker, who was visiting a nearby tarot booth, witnessed the altercation.

Minutes later, Muñoz found the keys. They moved the car in time to not disrupt the faire. Gonzalez, having heard about the altercation but not having participated in it, sought out Day to discuss what had happened. Day avoided him. They never had a conversation about it. By the time Midsummer ended that year, Gonzalez heard through the grapevine that Cleric Games wouldn’t be invited back. However, the years of infractions regarding alcohol and marijuana use could have played a role in this decision.

Day and Nietupski did not respond to a request for comment on their interactions with the Cleric Games team. In its statement, WITP wrote that it “remains committed to creating a safe, respectful and welcoming environment for all.”

Despite everything, Gonzalez applied to join Midsummer again this year. According to Gonzalez, his application was rejected with no explanation. “I called [Day], no response, no contact, nothing,” he says. “We’re literally one of the most famous attractions at the whole faire.”

While immersive and fun vendors like Cleric Games are leaving, so are the historically accurate ones that used to make the faire what it is. Christine Helman, the leader of the sixteenth-century fiber arts guild, believes WRAES has lost track of the educational aspect of its nonprofit identity.

WRAES is still providing artistic presentations and performances. The historical accuracy is where Helman believes they’ve forsaken their original values.

“They depended on the guilds, such as mine, who was one of the very few who offered educational demonstrations,” Helman wrote in an email, adding that her group demonstrated sixteenth-century fiber arts, “working wool and flax to spin and weave. We have historically accurate equipment, and our costumes were some of the most accurate found among the cast.”

WRAES canceled Helman’s contract last year for speaking ill of the faire. Day and Nietupski did not respond to a request for comment regarding Helman’s contract cancellation.

“I was becoming more and more disheartened by the board’s greedy behavior,” Helman wrote.

She described how WRAES spent marketing dollars on a new after-hours party but didn’t spend any energy recruiting new cast, guilds, and crew. Then, they announced they were expanding the faire from three weekends to five in the 2024 season. Guilds found out about the expansion via social media, not from WRAES directly.

Demanding additional weekends is a strain on the workers who make the faire run because they often work other faires and festivals during the summer. There’s a social contract in the ren faire community that you don’t step on another faire’s weekend, according to Knight-Richards. Plus, many merchants book their booths months ahead of time. Some had to pull out of the faire entirely because they couldn’t do five weekends, Helman wrote.

Expanding to extra weekends also complicated WRAES’s liquor license situation. Their special occasion license covered 12 individual day events annually. By expanding to five three-day weekends, the special event license attached to WRAES wouldn’t cover the last weekend of faire. To keep serving alcohol across the longer period of time, Midsummer attached a special event liquor license to West Coast Equestrian Arts, a horse-related nonprofit registered to Elisabeth Day, David Day’s wife. Day and Nietupski did not respond to a request for comment regarding this new liquor license.

Helman griped about these concerns in what she thought was a private conversation with the Wandering in Time entertainment director. But she says the director told Nietupski and Day.

“In our contracts we are forbidden from saying anything negative about the faire or the board to cast, crew, staff, or vendors,” Helman wrote. “The punishment if we do is to have our contracts canceled, and that is exactly what happened.”

She learned her guild’s contract was canceled via an email that cited the section of the contract stating faire workers must refrain from “any behavior, communication, or activity which may impair positive public perception of Wandering in Time Productions, its productions, and its cast/crew/staff/merchants” as the reason for termination. In 2022, then-Gov. Jay Inslee signed a law barring non-disclosure agreements in employment contracts in Washington state.

“There are groups who have left and merchants who have left because they are tired of being punching bags,” Knight-Richards says.

The final nail in the coffin for her, however, came early in 2024 when a high-up person in the faire was arrested in a child sex trafficking sting and charged with attempted commercial sex abuse of a minor.

Richard Kirton, the director of Kitsap 911, an organization that provides emergency communications to Kitsap County, spent decades in the faire and ultimately became a manager. At the time of his arrest, he worked as WRAES’ merchant coordinator, a role in which he oversaw all of the vendors. Kirton pleaded not guilty to the charges. His case will go to trial at the end of May 2025.

Kirton was beloved—especially by Knight-Richards.

“Richard had been my personal friend since I was 17 years old,” Knight-Richards says. The two of them worked at the faire together when Cleveland ran it. “My sons were trusted with him. My community was trusted with him.”

Then, in early 2024, Kirton was arrested in a sting operation. According to MyNorthwest and court documents, Kirton had been using the dating app Grindr to communicate with what he thought was a 16-year old. Although the teenager’s profile stated the user met the minimum age requirement of 18, Kirton was told the boy was 16.

“That works for me,” Kirton allegedly typed and sent the boy $100. It was actually a Bellevue police officer. Kirton was arrested at a Woodinville hotel.

The arrest horrified Knight-Richards because of Kirton’s actions, but also because of WRAES’ response, which many deemed lackluster. According to multiple sources, Day and Nietupski failed to issue a statement about Kirton’s arrest.

“When the situation came out, WRAES never released anything,” Knight-Richards says. “They never said anything. They never went to their private community and said, ‘We are aware of what’s happening.’”

Then, more stories came out. Kirton’s actions, it seemed, were already a kind of open secret in the faire.

One volunteer, a 15-year-old boy at the time, had been warned about Kirton. According to the boy, who wished to remain anonymous, he was working under Kirton one summer building sets when another young man told him to keep an eye out for the older man. None of the volunteers spoken to for this article alleged that Kirton acted inappropriately or unlawfully with faire employees or volunteers; Kirton denied making any inappropriate comments to or having any relationships with underage faire workers or attendees.

Kirton was subsequently fired; according to some faire volunteers, management should have acted sooner. Day and Nietupski did not answer questions specific to Kirton’s situation. However, they addressed it in general terms in their statement:

“WITP is also aware that, in past years, a small number of vendors, staff and entertainers have acted in ways that do not reflect the values of our community. When concerns were brought to our attention, WITP responded quickly and decisively based on available information.”

Two months before the June 2024 Oregon Renaissance Faire, which is also operated by Wandering in Time Productions, Knight-Richards pulled her guilds from participating. Without her company, Gypsy Realm Productions, there would be no jail, no brothel, no Wytchwood, no goblin village.

Sexual harassment and sexual assault situations are not uncommon in the ren faire world. But Knight-Richards had been striving for something different. She operated the brothel at Midsummer intentionally to prevent sexual harassment.

According to a source who wished to remain anonymous, months after Kirton’s arrest and after his subsequent firing from the faire, he was still living on the same property in Monroe that hosts the faire. It is not clear whether faire management, or anyone else, authorized Kirton to stay on the property that hosts the faire after Kirton’s arrest. Kirton says he rented an RV spot on the property through June of 2024, but moved “well before the 2024 faire.” The faire does not own the property it uses. Kirton says he had no involvement with the faire since his termination.

“It’s not the faire it was when it first started,” Knight-Richards says.

The Kirton situation was the last straw. So she left behind the life she had known since she was 18, alienating close friends in the process. Divorcing herself from Midsummer made her suicidal, Knight-Richards says.

“It makes my soul hurt because these are people I grew up with and these are people who basically are an adoptive family for my six kids.”

Hague, a.k.a. Fairy Princess Lolly, lost her faire family too back in the spring of 2022.

Hague, who is polyamorous, participates at faires with her primary partner, Michael Cowan. He regularly assists with her production. In 2021, Hague brought her other partner of four years, John Switzer, to Washington Midsummer for the first time as a volunteer. Everything seemed good. Maybe he would join again next year.

However, according to court documents, in the spring of 2022 John Switzer allegedly became violent. In a petition for a protection order, Hague claimed that Switzer had been drinking and attempted to drive away from the house the three of them shared in a pickup truck. She intercepted him in the cab. According to police and court records, Hague alleged Switzer then threatened to drive into a wall and kill her if she didn’t get out. Switzer denies this. He said he wasn’t drinking and didn’t threaten Hague.

Switzer says all of this started because Hague had unplugged the garage freezer holding $400 worth of meat he had just purchased.

“I smelled death,” Switzer says. “I blew up.” He says he got angry and tried to drive off when Hague stopped him and wouldn’t let him leave.

According to her petition, when Switzer left the car to physically pull her out, Hague snatched the keys. Switzer allegedly then went inside the house to find his spare set. That’s where he ran into Cowan.

“I had to struggle to get into the house because Ammie called [Cowan] and said, ‘Don’t let him in,’” Switzer says. He described Cowan as being 6 feet 2 inches and weighing over 400 pounds. Switzer measures in at 6 feet 7 inches and weighs 240 pounds, he says. During that struggle, according to Switzer, Cowan put his hands around Switzer’s neck which is what prompted him to attack Cowan.

Switzer allegedly shoved Cowan the ground and punched “with a closed fist” in the face eight times, according to Cowan’s report to police. Switzer claims Cowan slipped on “cat shit” in the hallway—Hague had five cats at the time—and fell.

As Hague pulled away in the truck herself to escape the situation, Switzer came out and jumped into the bed of the pickup. She called 911 and drove to a police station, where Switzer was arrested.

In a sworn declaration by Switzer, described Hague as vindictive, with a history of “doing things out of spite.” However, in an interview, he stated he still loves her.

Afterward, a temporary protection order barred Switzer from contacting Cowan or Hague, and Switzer was charged with fourth-degree domestic violence assault. But before the trial date, the Oregon Renaissance Faire, the start of WRAES’s season, rolled around. Hague heard that Switzer had signed on as a cast member. She reached out to the faire to ask what she should do—she and Michael were planning to work the event as usual.

“[Switzer] couldn’t come near me or within 1,000 feet of Michael,” Hague says.

She claims that WRAES board members failed to work out a suitable solution.

According to messages between Hague and a public relations representative for the faire, “the only way we would keep him out is for rape charges or something like that.”

“The faire told us because we had the restraining orders that we were the problem,” Hague claims. The faire representative wrote that adding protection orders in the mix would upset Nietupski.

“When things are easy, Tracy is cool with it,” the PR person wrote. “But now we’re talking about restraining orders and such… Which has put a bad taste in Tracy’s mouth. Because we are all very busy this year, it’s something they ‘don’t want to even think about.’ So maybe, you coulda [sic] left that part out.”

Hague believes that despite a paper trail of Switzer’s violence towards Cowan and her much longer history with the faire, WRAES sided with him. According to her, they even used his image on the poster promoting the faire’s pirate weekend, she says. The pirate weekend occurred months after Switzer’s charge. Switzer believes Hague was blacklisted from the faire for her own behavior.

In a Facebook message discussing the situation included in court documents, the faire’s public relations person told Hague, “If we turned everyone away because they did something wrong we wouldn’t have anyone to volunteer with us.”

Hague says WRAES’s actions and the implied “bad taste” in the board’s mouth deterred her from participating any longer. This meant Hague felt she could no longer participate in any WRAES events including the Oregon Renaissance Faire, Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire, and the Oregon Celtic Festival. And, due to the close knit nature of other similar local events, she felt blacklisted far beyond WRAES’s reach, Hague says.

The faire she’d known and loved for two decades chose Switzer over her, Hague says.

“I now am ostracized from what was my event,” she says. “I’ve lost all my faire family and all of my friends. And I just can’t go places…. How am I supposed to go there and see him and know that they just let him in knowing what he’s done?”

The person who brought Switzer on to perform at the faire that year was Knight-Richards. According to Knight-Richards, Hague had a negative reputation at the faire that preceded this incident. (Hague denies this.) Knight-Richards believes Switzer’s side of things.

Switzer petitioned for a court-monitored deferral so long as he received mental health treatment. A judge approved this petition. He is no longer performing with Knight-Richards’s group.

The faire folk are, for lack of a better word, a bit messy. Their lives are often completely wrapped up in the faire. Tensions run high. Personalities clash. Both Hague and Knight-Richards believe the worst of each other. The Cleric Games founders got in trouble for smoking marijuana and being drunk on the campsites regularly. Their personal issues and behaviors aside, they all have something in common: They believe they were failed by faire management.

And the characters Hague and Knight-Richards brought to Midsummer for years will no longer be there. Nor will the popular D&D booth. Many other familiar faces have left WRAES events, according to guild members. Last year saw a mass guild exodus. In 2025, it seems even more longtime acts will be leaving. Without the people who give it its spirit, is Washington Midsummer the same faire it was back in 1996? Is that kind of faire what management wants? Is it even what your average faire visitor wants?

Influenced by television, movies, and an endless social media feed, people may have different expectations for Renaissance faires than they did back in 1996. Plus, with more expensive tickets, they may want more bang for their buck, may want to be wowed. Huntizinger, the librarian-turned-magician, says that he expects WRAES to fork over cash for national headliners at the expense of local acts.

Community faires like Midsummer used to be breeding ground for local talent. Huntzinger himself trained under a magician at the Greenwood Faire in Tri-Cities. Other performers may not get that kind of opportunity now. When the guilds are forced out, he says, the faire loses their “bulk and color, energy, creativity, and unpolished authenticity.”

To the guildies, to the people who make the faire and love the faire, it’s supposed to be an act of democracy—an act of community. It’s supposed to be for everyone. It’s a taste of another world, another life that people can sample a few days each year.

And, beyond the patrons, it’s a place that values the weirdos and eccentrics who flocked to faires originally because this was where they fit in best, where they found their people. For decades, the Washington Midsummer Renaissance Faire cultivated a community of maidens, jugglers, sword swallowers, fairies, and fifteenth-century leatherworkers who lived alongside each other for weeks on end during the summer. It built lifelong bonds that in turn made the faire into something even bigger than what happened those few weekends a year.

It doesn’t seem like Midsummer will ever be what it once was. Instead, guildies are moving their tents to newer faires like the Whidbey Ren Faire and the Canterbury Renaissance Faire in Silverton, Oregon. And some may turn to the events being put on by their former brethren.

After months of suicidal ideation and depression she attributes to leaving the faire, Knight-Richards is finally moving on, she says. She is taking her production company to Anacortes this summer where she and one of her performance directors are planning to make a small festival that will be what she calls a “goblin day camp.” She aims to keep it small.
        Hague, meanwhile, spends her time now running her Fairy Apothecary metaphysical store in Fremont. She is also putting on her own fairy festival this summer.