Hail, Bhakail!

The Feast of Fools on the University of Pennsylvania’s campus went well yesterday, though the weather really dampened attendance and forced scheduling changes.

There were mummers, music, games, carnival food vendors, facepainters, a magician, Penn dignitaries wearing borrowed Baronial garb, Penn professors giving short, amusing lectures on the history of The Fool, on the history of the joke, on the meaning on The Holy Fool, reading funny poetry from different time periods and cultures and commenting on it, etc.

There were many student group presentations: the Doowop group sang 50’s music with modern, naughty lyrics; the Penn Stand-up Comics made us laugh with their bits; the Gilbert & Sullivan group did stuff from The Gondoliers; the Classics club performed an Aristophanes play; the Persistent Fabulists told stories featuring a trickster figure from early Islamic myths; the Shakespeare club did a scene from a Midsummer’s Night Dream; the Penn jugglers did their amazing feats of juggling fire and multiple items, et alia.

I would like to publicly thank the following gentles for their help with the Society for Creative Anachronism’s participation:

Lady Judith the Confused for the loan of lots of wonderful Gold Key;
Lady Sabine Kerbriant for the loan of period noisemakers and ankle bells;
Lady Grainne & Arglwydd Dafydd for the loan of dance CDs and instruction book;
Baron Lorcan for the loan of a Commedia del’Arte book;
Madame Brunissende for the loan of a boombox and CDs and the donation of jester hats;
and milord Pavel, milady Andrea, Madame Brunissende, Lord Calogero, Lord Christoph, Lord Kenneth the Glass Painter, & milord Ian the Lesser for attending and adding Renaissance color to the festivities.

Thanks again, everyone! We received a lot of thanks from the Penn Humanities Forum, which sponsored this festival as part of their year-long study on the topic of “Belief”.

– Philly
Friday, April 2, 2004