A brief introduction

The fair was established in the late 1970s and is located in the rolling foothills of a sleepy bedroom community situated between two major highway corridors in the northern Great Lakes region.  The fair operates from the middle of summer through the beginning of autumn, and according to recent posts by fair officials on various online and print venues, boasts over 250,000 attendees annually.  A casual bystander might get the impression that the fair is a small town operation--but they would be wrong.  With ticket prices hovering at just under $20 per person, it has become a multimillion-dollar operation.

Like many people, I began attending the fair from an early age and became instantly enamoured of it--the whole concept of becoming another person by donning a costume--playing "dress-up", essentially--was still something I enjoyed and carried over from childhood.  Once I was in my early 20s and able to afford to go to the fair on my own, I realized that it was a dream of mine to become one of the actors.

But even as a young adult, I was still very naive to the ways of the world.  I had absolutely no clue that behind the brightly painted and festooned facade of the Midwestern Renaissance Fair, there existed a highly stratified society that fostered big egos as well as big costumes.  Not knowing how entrenched this subculture was, I naively set out to become one of them--but failing to realize, until it was too late--that I could never be part of the clique.