[Sca-cooks] Overdocumentation

[David Friedman]

>The proper way to handle out of period conversation IMO, is not to 
>panomine, but to say, The seers tell me or I had a dream that in the 
>21st century they will have this, do this or whatever.  Making a bit 
>of joke of the thing...  Not to be deliberately dense or hard to 
>deal with.  I rarely serve obviously out of period or really 
>Americana foods for SCA stuff, even just to family at war.  When I 
>do there are always comments of:  "I just found this wonderful root 
>from the new worlde.  It is called a potato."  Every one giggles, 
>and gets the joke...
>
>Personally, I find persona an essential part of the art.  It is part 
>of what gives the SCA its charm for me, and makes the thing less of 
>a costume party ;o)  I do talk mundanities, especially about docs, 
>but now will feel a bit less guilty about it.

...

>Samrah

Now let me disagree from the other side. Making a joke out of 
persona, in any of the versions you describe, simply makes it harder 
to make persona work when you do want it to.

The best solution to the problem, in my view, is to explicitly drop 
out of persona in order to have the conversation. If possible, I 
prefer to take advantage of some symbolic dividing line--move to the 
edge of the feast hall, or move outside the boundary of our 
encampment. If I am teaching a class on in persona story telling and 
want to start in persona as a sample, I can put my glasses on, or 
take my turban off, to mark the switch from being Cariadoc to being 
David.

In other contexts, you simply have different conversations at 
different times. Years ago our group did a cooks symposium. The 
classes were out of persona, so we could talk about sources and 
stuff. The feast and revel afterwards was in persona. This list is 
out of persona too.
-- 
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com