| Chris Barnes | |
| by Jerry Eakin | |
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| author's note: Before I get started I just wanted to say that Chris has been a friend of mine in and out of Faire for a few years now. As you may be able to tell this interview happen over the course of several conversations. Chris is a great guy and a great friend, I'm glad to have the opportunity to share this with everyone. I hope you enjoy it - Jerry |  |
| Jerry Eakin : What's your name? | |
| Chris Barnes: Christopher David Barnes | |
| JE: Favorite color? | |
| CB: Indigo. For clothing, black. | |
| JE: Complete the following statement: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern _______ | |
| CB: ROCK! - then they die. | |
| JE: How many years have you been performing? | |
| CB: I got on the stage the first time when I was 5. I sang Daisy - the song Hal sang in 2001. | |
| JE: What drew you to performing at ren faire? | |
| CB: It was a total
fluke. I had no idea I was going to be performing at a ren
faire. I was doing a show at a performance art club in Hollywood, called
the Lhasa Club. The show was called The Trial of Tuna Christ, or Annihilation
by Deliverance. I played Felix. Pontious Pilate's wife's sex slave. My costume
was bright yellow pajama bottoms, a burgundy smoking
jacket, and nothing else. Anyway, the author of the play, a brilliant man named D.J. Carlile came to see the performance. He asked me to audition for a production of Faustus he was directing. I got the part, and he said, "We're doing it at the Renaissance Faire. I said, "Great. What's that?" Fifteen years later, here I am. Most of it seemed to make some kind of sense at the time. No, I'm lying. It never made any sense, but it sure has been fun! |
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| JE: Is there any character you've played that you are really close to? Really enjoyed playing? | |
| CB: One character that I really enjoyed playing was McDuff in a Dogs in Doublets comedic production of Mac Beth. I was disappointed that the show never went up. I also love playing villains. Claudius in Hamlet was one of my favorites, so was Belardo in A Fool's Tale. | |
| JE: Is there any one moment that sticks out in your mind as a favorite (that you can share) | |
| CB: 2 words - plausible deniability. Faire has been so full of spectacular moments, it's hard to pick one. It's been a glorious surrealistic blur. I've been hanging around in the world of the surreal so long, that I've realized I have no sense of the bizarre anymore. I just don't know what's weird. I was talking to my friend, Bonnie Morgan one evening, and we were both wondering why all these passers by kept staring at us. After about 20 minutes of folks gawking stares, I finally figured out what it was. Bonnie is a contortionist, and she was hanging from a tree branch from bun gee cords with her legs hanging over her shoulders like a huge, human spider. It took me an entire 20 minutes to realize that there was anything remotely odd about this. It was at that point I realized I just have no guage any more. That's what I love about faire. It's chock full of those amazing surreal moments, and incredible people. I couldn't imagine a richer life. | |
| JE: How many instruments do you play and what are they? | |
| CB: Instruments.... First was my voice. For years I picked up instruments and put them back down again in frustration. About 3 years ago, I picked up the Mandolin, and I actually took to it. So now I play the Mandolin, and other instruments like it - Mandola, Octave Mandolin, Banjolin, Irish Bazuki, etc - oh, and of course, the kazoo. | |
| JE: What is your favorite Faire song? | |
| CB: It changes as I discover new songs. When I first started Faire, I heard a catch in Linda Underhill's Songs of the Times workshop called When My Dame a- Hedging Goes. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world at the time, because it was a round where each verse individually was completely innocent, but when it was sung as a round, the words combined to make the song just filthy. Right now, I think my current favorite Faire song is Twa Recruiting Sergeants - a Scottish rocker that the Stark Ravens started performing this last season. I'll probably have a new favorite by next year. | |
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JE: When people see you out side of faire, do they every expect you to be in character? |
| CB: I haven't thought much about it. I'm kind of always myself. I think I'm pretty much the same flirtatious rogue in & out of faire. I guess I'm not quite the party fiend outside of faire. That's the party time for me. When faire is not going on, I'm either busting my ass with the rest of the Ravens working on the next show - rehearsing acting, or music, or building props or sewing costumes. The rest of the time, if I'm not at my day job (whatever the current one is), or working on my glowee jewelry or some other art project, I'm usually just chilling by myself at home. So much for the glamorous life of the actor. | |
| JE: If you could give any advice to someone thinking about performing at ren faires (or outside of them for that matter) what would it be? | |
| CB: I've always looked at Ren Faire as a sort of acting boot camp. If you can command an audience's attention in the heat wearing black velvet & wool, competing with hawkers, and parades, with the wind blowing dust down your throat, you can absolutely own any theater you walk in to. I remember the first time I auditioned for a show in a regular theater after performing at faire for a while. I opened my mouth, and my voice bounced off the back wall, hit me in the chest, and knocked me off balance. In my opinion, there's no better training ground than the faire. I guess my advice would be, if you want to act on stage at a faire, get in with some of the groups that do street gigging to sharpen your chops & to get known by the various stage directors. Some shows still audition at the beginning of workshops. The thing to remember is - just go for it - don't worry about making a fool out of yourself. First of all, there's no place, I think, on the planet, where you'll find a less judgmental crowd, and if you do make a total fool of yourself, there's no better place for it! As far as outside faires goes, there's TONS of community theatres out there where you can act. If you want to perform, there are plenty of venues out there. Check out Backstage West (at better newsstands) for all sorts of auditions. If you actually want to try to make a living at this, you're just plain nuts! I know this because I'm trying to make a living at this. Case closed. | |
| JE: Performance wise, what have you done out side of faire? | |
| CB: Oh god, tons of stuff. I've done everything from public service videos, to all kinds of plays, to radio ads for Cost Plus, TV ads with Steve Young for a Utah bank, extra work on various movies & TV shows. I even did 6 episodes of a sketch comedy series called Laughing Matters. MTV, Comedy Central & HBO were all thinking of picking up the series. Then the executive producer (literally) went crazy, and the whole project fell apart. It's a weird business, and with all your talent & drive, you have about as good a chance of stardom as you do winning the Lotto. You have to do this because you love it, and you just can't see yourself doing anything else. If you're in this for anything else than the sheer joy of doing it. Forget it. You'll go crazy. | |
| JE: Is there anything you have yet to do at faire that you would like to? | |
| CB: Make money? Wait, did you say "anything" or "anyone"? | |
| JE: "Anything" (laugh) | |
| CB: Next! (Laughs) | |
| JE: So Chris | |
| CB: Yes? | |
| JE: You currently are doing shows with both troupes, Stark Ravens, and Dogs in Doublets respectively. For one thing how do you cope with doing two shows, and second how is the experience with these shows? Does it take different ways to mentally prepare for them or is it more of a "I'm in performer mode now" sort of thing? | |
| CB: Both experiences
are very different. Doing a Dogs show is like being in the winter Olympics,
skiing down some crazy mountain. Someone once said directing the Dogs
is like herding cats. The shows are created
out of this chaotic creative maelstrom. It's where I perfected the
art of Theatrical Proctology (the ability to pull an entire show out of your
ass.) Genius comes out of the unexpected, and I live for those
moments. The Ravens is more of a - more like doing a magic ritual. Everyone is focused on a common goal of creating those moments of magic. I guess that's it. One is like surfing a monster wave, the other's like doing a circle with Merlin - to mix a very strange pair of metaphors (sorry, similes). |
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| JE: So I am not fond of doing the "toot our own horn" questions. But I have to ask this one. First of all, my first memory of really talking to you was at Northern REC faire in 99. We offered you a pretzel and you checked it before you ate it and said something like "Just making sure it's not a pin." What is your first memory of Looped pestering you guys? | |
| CB: There was a first time? Haven't you guys just always been there? | |
| JE: Laugh some times it feels that way. I think we were at every Dogs in Doublets performance in California in 1999.. | |
| CB: I think my fondest memories of L.O.O.P.E.D. I loved hanging with you folks during the week between the 2 Valhalla weekends up in Tahoe! That was a grand time, oh & getting pelted with a million pretzels when Eric said "Pretzel?" in Hamlet.:-D | |
| JE: Dan said that the pelting with pretzels was one of the things that revived some of his interested in faire. | |
| CB: It was a lovely moment.:-) | |
| JE: We were actually afraid we were going to piss you guys off by doing it, but it was such a LOOPED thing and it was just a perfect moment that just called us to do it ;-) | |
| CB: I have a story. | |
| JE: Oh? Do Tell. | |
| CB: You know
the Ravens often do gigs outside of Faire. Well we were doing this
gig for Phyllis in Sacramento. We did a medicine show, variety act, gold
rush era show for the California's sesquicentennial (150th Birthday).
It was us & Annie Lore, and 3 different professional little girl actresses
taking turns at playing Lotta Crabtree (kind of the gold rush era's Shirley
Temple). One girl had a stage mom like Gypsy Rose Lee's & one had just
flown in from a Mickey Mouse Club callback in L.A. She'll probably
be Brittany Spears in ten years. Anyway, Phillis, who's always been
a big fan of realism & authenticity, noted that audiences of the time
would often throw produce at the acts they didn't like, so she brought
Chase (who was the M.C. and Huxter for Tinxture of Saturn) a couple of
heads of cabbage, so he could pass out cabbage leaves to the audience.
So I'm out in the audience (I was playing a filthy miner 49er who volunteers to take part in the show) sitting next to The Lotta who just jetted in from L.A. as Chase starts passing these cabbage leaves out to our first audience - by the way, did I mention that this first show was on a Friday, and our audience consisted of about 500 5th graders? This 8 year old girl turns to me and in a perfect deadpan says, "Oh, THAT'S a mistake.". I think I just about peed myself laughing. So Chase is standing there leaning out over these eager kids handing out these cabbage leaves, trying to explain how if they didn't like an act, they were to throw these leaves - no - not now - not yet - not now, as tons of these droopy purple things were raining on his head & all over the stage around him. And I'm laughing at him from the back of the house until I realize that in about a minute or two I'm gonna' be up there on the stage with him & will have to deal with this somehow. So I do the "Pick me! Pick me! Nobody EVER picks me!" bit when Chase asks for a volunteer, as my mind is racing, trying to figure out how I'm going to deal with this situation. Fortunately, the "YEEEEEEEEEHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!" I let out as I raced around to the stage was ear piercing enough to paralyze the kids for a moment, and when I got up there & started interacting with Chase I kept my eye peeled for the first cabbage leaf out of the corner of my eye. When I saw it coming in, I snatched it out of mid air & jammed the nasty thing into my mouth & chewed it up & swallowed it down. There was this huge "EEEEEEEEEEEWWWWW!!!!!!" from the audience, and they all loved me from then on & stopped throwing cabbage at the show. Of course the girls were about to come out as The British Blondes to do the Can Can on a stage covered with slippery cabbage leaves. Laura waved me to her in the wings and said "What are we going to do? Someone is going to break their neck!" Now Annie Lore always goes all the way with great set pieces & props, and she had decorated the stage with this big, beautiful silk fern in a pedestal-like-woven-white-wicker-basket-stand. That I would place in front of chase whenever he started to make an announcement to the audience. So I grabbed the thing & turned it upside down - holding the Fern from the back so it wouldn't fall out - and used the whole thing like a big broom. The audience howled & the sage was swept clean in a few moments. I thought Annie was gonna' die, "I paid $80 for that fern!" I just said, "Hey, it worked!" [I] still don't think I'm one of Annie's favorite people after that (Laughs) |
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| JE: Stark Ravens did the Fringe Festival this year in San Francisco. How did you guys enjoy that? Were you well received by that audience? | |
| CB: SF Fringe was a blast! We did Alice in Wonderland there. We were kind of an odd fit. Even though Lewis Carol is definitely surreal & has its place in counterculture, we were essentially doing a kid's show at a festival that is known for being extreme & out there. While other shows had warnings in the bill like "Caution: Flying Sperm" and "Blood, Fire, Nudity." Our only warning was, "Contains pepper & dancing lobsters." Despite that, we were very well received. We sold out 3 of our 4 performances (the other was right after 9/11), and they created a new costuming award just for us! We had an awesome time. Those folks at the Fringe are great! Logistically it was a real challenge. The shows at SF Fringe are back to back and go on, ON TIME no matter what. We had 15 minutes to load in all those costumes & props & the backdrop & set it all up. & 15 minutes at the end to break it all down & pack it out. We did it though. Chase came up with a brilliant backdrop design that we could put up & take down in no time flat, and break down to fit in the back of his pick up. | |
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JE: Any advice on Hecklers? |
| CB: Follow them to a dark alley & beat them within an inch of their life. That usually discourages them. | |
| JE: Any words of wisdom you'd like to share with our readers? | |
| CB: Suuuure, I'M the guy you look to for wisdom. Well, OK, I'll give it a shot. No matter if you believe in an afterlife, reincarnation, death as the end or whatever, one thing is true - you will only be this person in this life once, so you might as well live it to the fullest. My mom gave me a piece of wisdom that I try to take with me & live by. She told me, "In life you are going to have regrets, there's no avoiding that. Just make sure that you regret what you did - not what you didn't do." I try to live my life like that, because you can get over regretting something you did, but something you missed out on - that will haunt you forever. She also tells me every time things get rough (which is often), "Things always work out.", and she's right. They do. | |