Carolina Renaissance Festival
| Carolina Renaissance Festival | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Renaissance fair |
| Dates | October – November |
| Location(s) | Huntersville, North Carolina |
| Inaugurated | 1993 |
| Attendance | 195,000 (average) |
| Stages | 12 |
| Website | |
| www |
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The Carolina Renaissance Festival is a Renaissance fair held annually on Saturdays and Sundays in October and November. The festival is located just north of Charlotte, North Carolina between the towns of Huntersville, North Carolina and Concord, North Carolina near the intersection of 73 and Poplar Tent Road.
Set in the fictional village of "Fairhaven," it is one of the largest Renaissance festivals in the country. The festival brings in an average of 195,000 visitors during its fall season and had 210,000 for the 2016 season.
Major attractions include the three daily jousting tournaments featuring the stunt group Aventail Productions and the Ancient Art of Falconry presented four times daily. Other attractions include professional entertainment acts on 12 stages. Stage shows feature live music, dance, comedy shows, and performers with circus variety skills such as juggling, sword swallowing, acrobatics, and sideshow antics. Musicians perform with traditional instruments such as the harp, bagpipes, or other, more obscure, "period" instruments. Roaming the "lanes" of the festival are a variety of nationally traveling professional street performers who engage visitors to help create an interactive performance experience.
The Carolina Renaissance Festival also operates an in-house performance company featuring over 100 costumed characters who also interact directly with visitors at the fair, in an attempt to create a more authentic feel of a renaissance-era town and to help bring the "village" to life. Individuals in the company develop characters such as "The Village Baker," "Tavern Keeper," etc. A "Singing Milkmaid" trio, a Town Mayor, and the fictional Royal Family that has come to visit the shire are other examples. The company is primarily composed of people from surrounding communities, including Concord, Greensboro, Raleigh and Charlotte. Auditions are held June of each year.
Other notable characters are the Greenman (a large walking tree) and Twig (a faerie).
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