Auckland Museum Demo

Summer Nights fencing demonstration - Planning Notes

Monday, Thursday, Monday: "Show and Tell"

• Eleanor, Emrys, Ludwig, William de Wyke?
• arrive 5:00-5:30pm (earlier on Thursday if you're fencing too)
• on display to the public from 6:00-8:30pm
• chat to hoards of children and adults about weapons and armour - no formal presentation, just see what people ask about

Thursday: Fencing Display

• Eleanor, Emrys, Martuccio, Ludwig, William fighting
• Emrys, Martuccio, William marshalling
• Katherina talking, crowd control
• Beatriz crowd-control, armour display
• arrive 4:30-5:00pm
• performance 5:30-6:00pm
• lots of fighting, minimal talking to cover necessary gaps between bouts

Details - Show and Tell

Who is doing what on which days for Show and Tell?

 The museum's advertising suggests that this should be interesting for people of all ages, but with a target age of about seven.

Nicola will bring several pairs of cotton gloves. If you ask the kids to put them on before they touch anything it will limit the numbers are handling equipment at any moment, as well as protecting our gear and, hopefully, encouraging all to handle it with respect.

We'll be in garb for this. What garb doesn't really matter - it's something that tells the public we're there to talk to them, and we're in charge of the gear.

Though it's not the main purpose of the demo, this is still a good opportunity to advertise the SCA. We'll try to have some flyers/cards/bookmarks available on the table at the show-and-tell; and have a few at the fighting display. We will also have the Martuccio-banner by the table.

Gear we'd like:

Run all of this past Nicola?

• a couple of helms that kids can try on
• some other interesting stuff that's hard to damage, and can be handled - bucklers, gauntlets?, other armour
• at least one each of: longsword (ideally, William's flamberge and one of Emrys's), simple cross-hilt sword (Ludwig's?), rapiers (preferably several hilt-styles), dagger (preferably several - small kids can hold these)
• some mail

Things to check with museum staff - [answered at Friday meeting]

• Where will we be? - [Weapons room]
• Where can we get changed? - [There is a class room available from 4:30 on Thursday, and from 5pm on the Mondays. On Thursday we'll be sharing with Auckland Sword and Shield]
• Can we have a long table and three chairs? [Yes, set up in weapons room from 5pm]
• Parking and unloading? [Yes, parking in underground carpark - collect an exit-ticket before you leave; unload outside atrium]
• Can we leave gear in a safe location at the museum between demos? [Yes, Rachel will confirm details]
• Garbed? [Yes, please]
• Can we put up the Martuccio-banner, near our table? [Yes; flyers etc are fine too]

Details - Fencing Display

The aim is to provide a near-constant display of fighting for half an hour, such a way that someone watching will see interesting variety whether they stay for 5 minutes or 15.

NOTE: we will be sharing the area with Auckland Sword and Shield - us at one end, them at the other.

We will cycle through this format:

• one bout with single swords
• one or two bouts with something other than single swords
• one melee (2:2 or 3:1)

. . . repeating this as many times as required, varying the details.

At about 3 minutes per bout, we'll fit in about 10 bouts if we keep things moving quickly.

Please fill in the blanks (or ask Nicola, Katherine or David to do so for you).

There are slots for 30 fighters, and there are 5 people fighting, so each person will do about 6 bouts. I have slots for 12 bouts, and we have three marshals; so each marshal will need to cover about 4 bouts. Emrys, William and Martuccio will be very busy - thank you!

I expect we'll get through bouts 1-8; we may or may not get to 9-12. We will try to finish with a melee.

I think it would be entertaining if the single-sword fighters did a bit of talking too - challenge each other to a duel. Keep it short and child-friendly, but make it fun?

Weapons and weapons-combinations it would be nice to see at some point:

• rapier and dagger
• longsword
• case
• rapier and cloak
• rapier and buckler

Fight in any style you like - just make it look good (and deciding in advance is probably sensible)!

Ludwig requests that we try to match weapons at least some of the time (i.e. longsword vs longsword; or sword-and-buckler vs. sword-and-buckler).

We can make last-minute swaps and substitutions on the day if we need to.

The format of the bouts:

Katherine will announce the fighters, using SCA first names (Emrys, Eleanor, William, Ludwig, Martuccio) - no titles, no surnames. We will have a marshal on the field at all times. The marshal will call "lay on", and announce the winner, but we won't have any other SCA litany (no called salutes, etc - feel free to quickly salute your opponent as you begin). We'll keep the fighting going, but takes turns with Sword and Shield in the talking.

Keep it moving quickly.

Number of fights in each bout? 3? Or 3, unless it seems to go on too long?

Cutting Demonstration? - UPDATE: we've decided not to do a cutting demo - too hard to manage safely with not many of us, and unknown numbers of kids.

Are we having cutting demonstrations?

If we are, I suggest this format:

• Set up 2 lists, back-to-back, with fighting in one, and cutting in the other
• Set up the cutting displays during the fighting, so we can move quickly between them
• Insert cutting displays immediately after the melee, in the table above
• Several cuts, minimal talking, for a total of about 3 minutes, then back to fighting; repeat

That way we don't lose time for set-up, the fighters get a breather, and all of us (fighters, marshals, etc) can be extra crowd-control during the cutting display.

Things to ask museum staff: [answers from Friday meeting]

• Exactly where will we be, and how much space can we have? [immediately outside the museum entrance; backing onto the building]
• Can we put pegs into the ground? [yes, though Rachel will double-check]
• Can we have a couple of staff members as extra crowd-control? [yes, there will be two security staff as extra crowd-control]
• Do they want a cutting demo? [not this time]
• What is the wet-weather plan? The soggy-ground plan? Who makes this call, and when? (We could do fencing inside - will need them to rope off an area for us - or on the bitumen in the loading area if the grass is slippery. We should check the state of the ground on Friday). [Rachel will make a call about the weather at about 4:30. If it's wet, or slippery, we will do the same show inside, in the atrium, where we did the Acqua display; they have suitable inside-ropes]
• Will we be using a microphone? [yes, outside; we will share with Sword and Shield]
• Parking? Dropping off gear? Changing room from 4:30? [Park in the underground car-park, get an exit-ticket from Rachel; there will be a changing room available from 4:30, which we'll share with Sword and Shield]
• How to manage the transition from fighting display to show and tell: do we start show-and-tell at 6:15, or have someone already there? can fighters shower at museum before going on to show-and-tell? [Katherine will go upstairs immediately after the display, at 6pm; Eleanor, Emrys and Ludwig will follow when they are ready]
• Can we put up the Martuccio banner? [Yes, flyers are fine too]
• Will it be filmed or photographed? If so, can we have a copy?

Other stuff:

We pondered having Bea or Katherine carry a banner on a pole, on Thursday, for a little extra pageantry. Katherine will see if this is feasible on the weekend.

Do we want to display archery gear? It's interesting, but easier to break.

It's probably worth thinking about what other things we think we could do really well for the museum - it can't hurt to propose the things we think we'd do well, and would like to participate in.

Who is collecting and bringing list ropes and poles?

Who will print out details of fight-order and bring on day?

This is a summary of the doubtless-imperfect notes I took last night. If something is wrong or incomplete, please fix it. If in doubt, ask Eleanor.

- Katherina