[Ansteorra] Bardic At Feast lurkers

[barrett1 at cox.net]

Not only is empathy for the audience an issue in feast performances (or any other time), but the performer has difficulties as well, even if they are amazingly fun with a ton of talent and people love to hear them.
I've been lucky (very lucky) enough to hold an audience during a feast, and even with complete attention and silence, the clatter of flatware and mugs multipled by 20-40 tables is a cacophony, not to mention the servers needing to ask questions while seeing to everyone.

The only feasts I have good memories of were;
A.) smaller affairs, feasts of less than 3 dozen people, and 
B.) I was asked to perform. 

Standing on your own in the larger feasts of today is seen by many as an unwelcome intrusion, a version of "attack barding" that comes with large amounts of cheese and herbed butter.

Feast performance used to be considered the baptism by fire, the test of a "true" performer, that if you could entertain a feast, you were a performer to be reckoned with. Now it is considered the sign of a newer performer, still trying to find their style and confidence.

I would love to see more entertainment at feasts, in the form of visuals, like acrobats, fire-eaters, dancers or magicians, or more atmospheric entertainment, such as our deeply loved musicians or a choir, even a single singer, might provide.
A solitary vocal performer who needs the audience to listen in order to be effective should consider more acceptable venues.

These are my opinions, born of my experience. Some of that experience consisted of sitting in trees with a bottle of whiskey admiring corsets from a unique vantage point, but the rest helped me arrive at this conclusion.

~Finnacan

---- Tim McDaniel <tmcd at panix.com> wrote: 
> On Fri, 25 Mar 2011, Angus MacKnochard <glnn_jhn at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > If someone is interupting what I am doing to perform TO me, with
> > out my consient, that is altogether different.  I concider it being
> > Bard-napped. Much like kidnapped but more painful.
> 
> I think the usual term is "hostage dinner theater".
> 
> Daniel de Lincolnia
> -- 
> Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com
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