FAQ’s
What’s the Virginia Renaissance Faire like?
- We’re a small faire, about 20K total in attendance over our five weekends.
- We have four stages and only run acts from 10am to 4:30pm, which is a subtle way of saying we don’t have a lot of slots and it’s rare to get a full run. This also means it’s possible that you’ll be scheduled at more than one stage. Good news, our site isn’t that big, so you won’t have to hike miles.
- We are a non-profit and our staff and cast are all volunteers – so our budget is small, and while we try to be as professional as possible, we are fitting this into our spare time, so sometimes you need to be patient with us.
- We are an educational foundation and put a lot of time and effort into training our cast to interact with patrons. That means that while some acts may play in the lanes in addition to their stage time, we are not looking to book lane acts. That also means that you may be asked to perform on stages where the point is not for you to attract a big audience but to have quality interactions with just a few people.
- We do have amplification at each of the stages except our smallest, however it is truly just to help acts over the noise of the crowd.
Acts we’re not likely to book at Virginia Faire:
- Acts that can’t work an entire weekend.
- Acts that are excessively bawdy – PG13 is fine if your humor/language relies on innuendo. But we don’t have a performance area that is limited to adults only at this time, so your language needs to be clean, as it tends to be problematic words caught by passers-by, rather than bawdy concepts/jokes that cause a problem. Not sure where you fall? Let’s talk about it.
- Character actors that do not have a stage show
- Acts that require serious amplification – we’re a small show, so while you can use amplification we’re going to ask you to use it to boost your sound, not rock out the entire site.
Accommodations?
We don’t book hotel rooms for you, so please consider that when you quote your rate. We do offer primitive camping at no charge. You can set up a tent or park your RV. There are no RV hook-ups; we have portapotties and a water spigot, which is a long walk while carrying a water jug or short drive down the lane. We will allow you to hook into our generator for electric – there is a small fee for each weekend to cover the cost of fuel and generator maintenance. The generator only runs Friday evening through Sunday evening and RV’s will be asked to stage their appliances so as to not blow the fuse by running microwaves and air conditioners at the same time. RV spots are limited.
You’re welcome to camp during the week, but you’ll need to have your own generator, if necessary.
There’s also a KOA, Christopher Run campground, and camping at Lake Anna State Park nearby if you’d like something less primitive. And we can point you toward the closest hotels that offer good deals and decent rooms.
How do I know if I’m booked?
After you submit the application, you'll recieve a copy of the application via email. This does not mean that you are booked for our show. When you are booked, you will get an e-mail from us with the header: Booking Confirmation. If you agree to the details in the Booking Confirmation (dates, rate, etc) we’ll get you a contract shortly afterwards.
We’ll get back to you as soon as we can, but please understand that it will take us a while to get all of the acts booked. If your availability changes, or you’re trying to decide whether to work our show or another one and you need a firm commitment to us, let me know. We’ll do our best to accommodate your urgency. But to be clear, if we have not sent you a booking confirmation, you’re not booked. Don’t give up another job to hold yourself open for us! While we appreciate the thought, we’re not going to accept responsibility for you losing out on another opportunity because this season we can’t book you for the full run, or at all, or whatever it is that you expected. Budget changes, Production direction changes, customer requests, all of those factor into our booking decisions and our limited hours and stages mean that we can’t always book the same acts for the same duration, year after year.
Contact Information:
Primary Email for Entertainment: Dallas Valley at entertainmentatvarf@gmail.com
Other:
Meredith Eriksen
General Manager
301-367-2958
Meredith.eriksen@gmail.com
E-mail is preferable (please use Virginia Faire in your e-mail subject line!) or text, understand there may be a lag in responding.
Faire Location:
5621 Courthouse Rd, Spotsylvania, VA 22551
Website & Social Media
www.varf.org – our official website. Directions, accommodations and other information.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Virginia-Renaissance-Faire/213104435383276 -- our official facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/groups/varenfaire/ -- our fan site. Once you’re booked, feel free to build excitement there. If you haven’t been booked yet – please refrain from posting.