7QUESTIONS+PLUS
Ann-Elizabeth Shapera, otherwise known as Jane the Phoole, is now appearing at Bristol Renaissance Faire, which is open every weekend now through Labor Day. Today she gives us the lowdown on her best friend the Queen, she reveals her knight in shining armor and admits that not even she could stand living during the Rennaissance.
Ann-Elizabeth Shapera will now take your questions ...
How did you get involved with Bristol Renaissance Faire? In 1990, I was a BFA candidate in the acting program at Northern Illinois University. One of the MFA candidates in the program was Patti Lahey, who was performing at the Bristol Faire back then as Belinda Bailey, wife of Bristol's Lord Mayor Richard J. Bailey (and, later, mother to their sweet kids Hailey Bailey and Barnum N. Bailey). Shortly after she met me, she said, "You — YOU — really need to audition for the Bristol Renaissance Faire." And she was right! I've been there ever since.
What dirt can you give us on the Queen? Ha! What kind of Queen's Best Friend would I be if I dished on Her Majesty? And yet the public must be satisfied. At the present moment, in July of 1574, Her Grace is on Progress from London to see and be seen by her people, whom she loves very much, and who return that love and loyalty. She has told her Courtiers, "Let those who can keep up, keep up; and let the rest remain behind." So 200 of her hardiest and most devoted Courtiers have accompanied her across the South of England to the Port City of Bristol, which is the third largest city in England at present. You know, of course, that she is unmarried. The Virgin Queen dotes on Sir Walter Raleigh, but she doesn't discourage any of her other suitors — she never says "Yes!" but she never says "No!" either. Sir Walter might improve his chances by keeping his compass trained on Her Grace, but his coordinates keep wandering to a certain Mistress Elizabeth Throckmorton, and that can only end in tears.
Of course, Monarcho, another of Her Majesty's Fools, says that he himself is King of the World, and that Her Grace only rules because he lets her. So I suppose it's all up to him what happens!
Who is Jane the Phoole? Historians tell us that Jane Bede, Lady LeGrande is a Fool retained by Her Majesty.
Originally a Fool in the household of Her Majesty's late sister Mary (of bloody memory), Jane is a ridiculous idiot, blurting out the first thing that pops into her head, regardless of company or situation. She is frequently sickly, and her head is shaved as bald as an egg. For different occasions and celebrations, she paints designs on her bald head: flowers for Spring, suits of playing cards for gaming, stars and mistletoe for Christmas. Jane the Phoole wears castoff clothing from the rest of Her Majesty's Court, although she does own two of her very own gowns AND a horse — a first for a female Royal innocent. Her husband, Sir Nicholas "Xit" LeGrande, is a 2-foot-tall dwarf who originally served as a Groom and a Fool to the late King Edward VI (of blessed and fond memory). One day, Xit and Jane will, mysteriously, bear a seven-foot-tall son.
To make Jane the Phoole someone who's accessible to our audience, I play her more as a witty hostess and Mistress of Revels, while retaining that idiotic license to blurt out wildly inappropriate things. Because our guests at the Bristol Renaissance Faire think of Jesters as the jokers on playing cards, Jane the Phoole tells terrible jokes all the time, and her motley is a blend of an Elizabethan Court Lady silhouette with the dagges, bells and diamonds the audience expects a Jester to have. Jane is the Queen's Best Friend, and she's the only one who can be relied on to tell Her Majesty the truth at all times. She delights in turning the world upside-down, topsy-turvy, and helping everyone get just what they deserve
Do you ever wish you could just be taken seriously? One of my heroes, Eddie Izzard, says, "Comedy tells the truth." I don't require my audience to have any particular attitude of seriousness — I hope my messages will get through regardless of how I'm viewed. And doesn't Shakespeare speak of tricking into learning with a laugh?
How is Jane similar or different from your real-life personality? Jane has no filters, and she has no notion of consequences. As a teacher and a director (I'm also the Director of Street Theatre for the Bristol Renaissance Faire, as well as a Street Theatre instructor for the Bristol Academy of Performing Arts), I really have to consider the impact and reach of my words, but Jane can just spout whatever first comes into her bald li'l head. Also, Jane is immune to pain and physical injury — at the end of a 10-hour performance day, I'll suddenly discover a hundred different bruises and strains, but I'll have no idea where I got them. Jane got them for me! She doesn't care about hunger, sunburn or heat exhaustion, either, which can be dangerous, but by building in a lot of water-drinking and feasting as daily activities, I manage to survive.
What training do you need to be such a character? I studied movement — mime, Commedia Dell'Arte, fencing, stage combat, juggling, and physical comedy — with the amazing Bill Lengfelder, and I trained in Linklater vocal technique with Claudia Anderson, who now teaches in Chicago. Linklater's work is all about freeing the natural, Shakespearean voice, and without it I don't know how I'd be able to overcome the challenges of seasonal allergies and share my voice with the large crowds we get at Bristol. Add to that the training I've received through the Bristol Academy of Performing Arts — street theatre, Elizabethan customs and manners, Elizabethan dialect and speech, history, costuming, improv, characterization -- and my musical experience (pipe, tabor, recorder, the required bits like that) and it all sounds terribly impressive, but the end result is fun silliness, so don't be deceived by how serious it all sounds.
How do you not drop dead from heat exhaustion? I drink water constantly, graze small meals throughout the day, guzzle electrolytes when I feel I need them, pace myself (small crowds = more intimate moments, denser crowds = more ridiculous craziness), follow my water buddies' directives to "Drink!" and — and this is most important — maintain momentum. If I spend my entire day with our audience, having fun, speeding from encounter to encounter, I survive more heartily.
What do you enjoy most about the Renaissance Faire? It's a community of people living the way people should live — celebrating together, supporting each other, knowing each other. People in our culture live in a kind of desperate isolation — we don't get to know our neighbors, because they might covet our goods or threaten or inconvenience us in some way. We don't talk to each other; we don't interact with humans. We live in boxes, work in boxes, travel in boxes, and get all of our information and entertainment from boxes. The Bristol Renaissance Faire community is box-free. While there is a division of labor, and there are different troupes and entities within the show, there's a sense of community there that you just cannot find anywhere else in our culture.
What do you do when you’re not performing at the Renaissance Faire? I perform at a wide variety of events, from large parties to parades to festivals to early-music concerts to dances to whatever would like to have a Phoole present. I teach street technique, vocal technique, ways to overcome stage fright, public speaking, and comic characterization. I write two-minute plays for the modern attention span. I produce and direct for Explosive Acts!, my Milwaukee theatre company, which is currently looking for a space for our next Bay View Theatre of the Airwaves 1940s "live radio show." I spend time with my brilliant, talented and cute husband, Tom Charney (aka Fasso Latido and Captain Joseph Cotton). To make ends meet, I also do admin work at Milwaukee's City Hall.
What does the municipal jester for the city of Milwaukee do? I perform in City festivals and parades. I collect jokes from citizens who are out walking downtown on weekdays on their lunch breaks. I juggle, but not so well — I'm just practicing that, really. I try to find ways to share humor and the truths about our city at the same time. Milwaukee is a world-class city — Milwaukee deserves an extra-fancy Jester!
Do you find yourself listening more to medieval music or modern music, and what bands do you listen to? Dad, if you're reading this, skip the next paragraph, OK? My Dad, Daniel Shapera, is a professional jazz bassist and has played with all the greats; I was raised on bebop and on orchestral music; when I was a kid, I developed my own tastes for baroque, Renaissance and early music, and the Romantic era, as well as early American orchestral composers, and big band and swing.
High school and college saw me finally getting into what everyone else my age listened to, so while I'm always trying to expand my horizons in what my father would call "good music," I must confess that I'm a hopeless slave to whatever's current in the club scene and hot on the charts, particularly in the UK. I lived in L.A. for a short while, but while I was there, I was at nightclubs five or six nights a week, so I became a freak for electronic music: house, downtempo, trance, melodic trance, all that. Still am.
On random on my Nomad right now: My dad playing with the Condoli Brothers; Orbital; Mika; Groucho Marx; Ministry of Sound 2007 Annual; Gilbert and Sullivan operettas; Baltimore Consort; and a chapter of a Doctor Who audio book read by David Tennant.
Do you think you really could live during Renaissance times, given all of the advances today? Certainly not. I could probably fake it for about five minutes in 1574 London, but my dialect would seem to them wondrous strange. My husband's diabetic, so he never would have survived past the age of 14; and a bout of cluster headaches I suffered about 10 years ago probably would have ended my life in an extreme bloodletting and purging, or at least driven me mad, without the benefit of modern painkillers.
What from the Renaissance age do you wish you had around today? Elizabethan people didn't have the physical and vocal inhibitions we have today. Technology and wealth make rigid barriers between individuals and between socio-economic classes — Elizabeth's subjects didn't have those barriers. People experienced emotion the way infants do today, but they continued to experience it that way throughout their lives — emotion translated instantly into passionate, whole-voice speech and immediate, full-body action. People weren't heads on sticks, the way people are today. I wish we still lived in our bodies, the way people did prior to the Industrial Revolution; and I wish we still lived in communities, sharing seasons, celebrations, disappointments, challenges, and victories with each other, the way people are meant to. The human animal simply isn't meant to handle the rapid-fire stress, constant fear and panic, and personal isolation served up by our economy and culture.
If you could ask Robin Hood anything, what would it be? I'd ask him how he handles the casualties of making difficult choices. Sacrifice is always necessary in doing the right thing — how do you forgive yourself for not being able to rescue absolutely everyone, all the time? That's a lesson I think I could learn from Robin Hood.
Who is your knight in shining armor? My husband, Tom Charney, is my real-life knight in shining armor. In the literal sense, he portrayed Sir Ralph Sadleir, Secretary of State under Henry VIII and the wealthiest commoner in Elizabethan England, for many years, and is the Sadleir family genealogist today, and he has his very own extremely fancy suit of armor, in which he looks fantastic. But he really is a superhero. Although he's been an insulin-dependent diabetic since he was 14 years old, he takes very good care of himself, manages his chronic health condition well, and somehow has enough spirit and strength left over to cope with my madness and to be a friend, a spiritual pillar of strength, an artist, a craftsman, an amazing performer, a star of pirate festivals and Renaissance faires, a mentor, a teacher, the funniest person I've ever met in my life, a more-than-reasonable facsimile of Johnny Depp, and the best husband in the world.
