Photo by Patrick Rhone:
My friend Patrick took this photo on Saturday. It was an amazing weekend at the MN Renaissance Festival. Huge crowds and the perfect fall weather.
Only two more weekends before our magic kingdom vanishes into the mists of time like Brigadoon.
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Photo Lady Kae:
Today is our son Gabriel’s 20th Birthday. I am blessed to have both a great son and remarkable daughter, but my greatest blessing is a beautiful wife, who I credit for raising our children to be the extraordinary adults that they have become.
The joy of a father’s love for his son is like no other experience in my life.
Happy Birthday Gabe!
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Photo by Lady Kae:
This picture of Liza as a baby captures the beginning of Rosie and my journey of raising our family on the road. Like fairground entertainers throughout history we traveled from festival to festival, while carving out a family life in our home on wheels.
We now live full time in Minneapolis but the road often calls out for us to return.
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This festival season Kae Lynn Durham Caston has been posting to Facebook some great vintage MN Renaissance Festival photos, including this one at The Feast of Fantasy. I remember that day she was attempting to take our picture when she became part of the show. Rosie snatched Kae’s camera out of her hands and turned the lens on her.
I love this picture because of that memory.
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Photo by Marc Norberg:
I wear many hats. I love to perform, but I also love to write, direct, and teach. Some days I feel like a juggler in a plate-spinning act struggling to keep everything in the air.
Life is Good.
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I first saw this picture in a box of photos submitted to the MN Renaissance Festival annual photography contest. Later this same photo showed up in my dad’s collection, which is a little bit of a mystery.
When he was alive my father never told me that he entered a photo he took of me in a contest, but I’m honored if he did. What ever the truth is it beautifully captures a moment in time at Witchwood Stage.
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Photo by Warren Brant:
After performing at The Children’s Theatre Company I caught the performance bug. My father who had been encouraging me was not happy with my career choice in the beginning. Pictured here is the first time my dad ever came to see my show. It was the summer of 1979, which marked the beginning of my full-time career in the performing arts.
When I started the show my dad vanished from the area. I went through the performance a little heart-broken that he didn’t stick around to see me. Little did I know that he had positioned himself behind me for the best angle to photograph my show.
Another moment in time captured by my father.
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Photo by Warren Brant:
In 1970 I was in my first play at CTC. I’m pictured here as a crippled boy holding a crutch in the play, Jerusalem, about the tragic story of the children’s crusade in the Middle Ages. My father saw an audition notice that read, “Wanted long haired boys” for a play at Minneapolis’ Children’s Theatre Co. He asked me if I was interested in trying out. I said yes, and after successfully auditioning my father began driving me across town for countless rehearsals all winter, and performances all spring.
Although legally blind my dad never had trouble passing the eye test when renewing his driver’s license. Looking straight ahead and reading a series of numbers and letters in diminishing sizes, had nothing to do with his inability to see after sunset, or his limited peripheral vision that dramatically decreased as the speed of his moving vehicle increased. We took the freeway. All the rehearsals began before sunset, but regularly ended late into the night. It was an adventure, and I was having a ball. My father was always visible sitting in the theater, patiently waited for my rehearsals to end.
The director John Clark Donahue was an artistic genius that had earned a national reputation. Years later this famous director was arrested for molesting boys exactly the age I was, when my father was patiently waiting in the theater, never leaving my sight.
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Photo by Warren Brant:
My fondest childhood memory is dressing up in costumes. This character was patterned after Gabby Hayes the comic sidekick of Roy Rogers on TV. My mother let me to dress up anytime I wanted, and allowed me to pretend to be my imaginary characters at anywhere. I was walking downtown St Paul with my mother in this costume with a red plastic soap bubble pipe clenched between my teeth. I remember a hobo, or as they say today homeless person coming up to me, and placing a single grain of fresh tobacco in my pipe while my mother held my hand without fear. That night I kept that red plastic soap bubble pipe with that single grain of tobacco by my bed while I slept.
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