Paula Pickett, Lee Williams High School stagecraft teacher, center, worked with more than 180 students to organize an inaugural Renaissance fair at the school. There were many worlds to visit in a short amount of time. Photo by Aaron Ricca
KINGMAN – Fairies, sword fights, Shakespeare and baked treats.
Lee Williams High School stagecraft students, with the leadership of their teacher, Paula Pickett, put on an inaugural ‘Lee Ol Renaissance Faire’ Friday.
More than 50 students, teachers, parents and other spectators set up camp in the school’s grassy common area adjacent to the cafeteria to show off months of building sets and rehearsing acts as part of a fundraiser for the drama and stagecraft classes.
The idea sparked before summer break in May and by July, the fair started to form.
As part of the stagecraft curriculum, Pickett teaches the kids about power tools, building sets and learning how to piece the event together.
“Those are part of the standards of what I teach,” she said. “With all the hard work they put together, they get to display it and show what they’ve done with it.”
LWHS Drama Club falls under CTE (Career and Technical Education) and the students get credit for technical skills.
Pickett wanted the kids to be loud, kooky and crazy. That they were.
There are more than 180 students passing through Pickett’s six stagecraft classes.
She’s gotten plenty of experience to lead the effort.
She’s been teaching stagecraft at LWHS for two years. She started immersing herself in stagecraft, theater and Renaissance fairs at the age of nine and it just kept growing from there.
Pickett started in battle pageant building props, doing hair and makeup and fighting with real swords (not the foam stuff used in many Renaissance fairs), moved on to cosmetology in high school and eventually working at Disneyland as a hair and makeup artist and helped Disneyland with Broadway-level productions such as ‘Frozen on Ice’ and ‘Mickey’s Magical Lamp’.
She moved to Kingman in 2022 and took the helm from there. Friday’s fair included.
The students were running their own activities such as apple bobbing (instead of ducking their heads in water (bobbing for apples was sounded a bit unsanitary, but the students found a way around that) apples were hung from a tree and competitors had to reach on tip-toes for a bite), a ‘fortune teller’, the Faerie Guild, Ladies in Laundry (a small skit that involved audience participation and sprinkles of wet laundry being flung into the audience) and an act of William Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ inside the cafeteria after light rain and a few gusts of wind started taking down the outdoor sets.
LWHS junior and drama club member Hayley Snelling has been involved in the stagecraft class for almost a year. The energy of the theater community got her hooked.
“I was having so much fun in stagecraft that I decided to join drama club,” she said.
Snelling might not take those theater skills somewhere far in the future but doesn’t rule out playing around in that community for fun.
Beale Street Theater has their annual Halloween ‘Ghost Walk’ tours coming soon and the girl might take a crack at it. LWHS will be having their own Halloween escapades in October.
“Its another event we can do that month,” Snelling said. “I was thinking about it but I’m not sure if it will overlap with our own maze here.”
Pickett and the students get plenty of learning and fun out of the fair.
“Doing the Renaissance Fair is just fun,” Pickett said. “The kids get to be silly and be themselves. It’s neat just to see them put on and event like this and bring something cool, interesting and different to the community.”
The event was schedule from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Late summer weather decided on cutting the celebration short shortly after 1 p.m.
Good spirits charged on.
Pickett and her students are aiming for another fair again.
“Next year we will do this bigger and better,” she said. “And, of course, no rain.”
Aaron Ricca
