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Well it’s all starting to come together already, although there’s still a lot of hard work to be done in the next 3 months if we’re going to make this medieval fayre better than last year. Everybody’s pitching in though and we’re getting offers of help from far and wide – seems we created enough excitement last year and now the word’s getting out there so hopefully we’ve created a monster. Almost all of the crew that were involved with last year’s fayre will be back again this year so we’ll have all the same exciting stuff as last year and a lot more new things too. Watch this space, as things are confirmed i’ll be letting you all know about it here and on the Magic Stunts website

Well it’s almost time to do it again. Those of you who were with us last year know how much fun the first one was – this one will be twice as big and three times as good. Plus it’s right before the 2010 football world cup so if you’re planning to be in Africa later in the year, this is something you shouldn’t miss.  We’ll be hosting the armoured tournament again this year with hopefully even more fighters than the 12 we had last year. We’ve rescued the burnt down amphitheater to a degree and will be hosting most of the fighting in there. At the back on the rugby field we’ll be having a jousting show and archery displays. There’s a paintball field at the fayre this year too, and the guys and gals from Mediaeval Adventures will be back so there’s plenty of interactive entertainment to keep everybody busy.

A knight in armor at the Mediaeval Fayre

Some of the Medieval costumes at the Mediaeval fayre

We’ve also allowed ourselves a lot more planning time this year, and have a years extra experience at this kind of thing so this year promises to be something not to be missed. Don’t miss it.

Find out more about medieval times

Last years fayre, being the first, had quite a few hiccups and quite a steep learning curve for all of us involved. Although i think we can call it a success, there were a lot of things we could have done differently and better.

Two knights fighting at the mediaeval fayre

We did manage to provide all the entertainment we promised, the fighting knights in armor, the tent-pegging displays, the live stunt shows, the food and the beer tent were all there as promised. We did fire dancing and drumming, archery, and a whole lot more stuff.

Around 2,000 people came to the last one so let’s hope for a better turnout this year.

It’s been almost a month since i’ve written anything on this blog, mostly because we haven’t had any fire dancing gigs. We haven’t been able to take any on because we’ve just been too busy running the West End Theatre. The theatre is finished with the last show for the year now so we’ll be focusing more on the fire dancing for a while over the festive season, There’s usually a big demand for fire performances at year end corporate functions and christmas parties.

Alan fire dancing with one staff

So anyway, focusing on the fire dancing means writing about it I suppose so let’s fill in a little background first. Last year (2008) Magic Stunts tried to host the first National Firedance competition. Ha! first of all we discovered that firedancers are a particularly uncompetitive bunch, although we still think we would have had enough competitors/performers to hold an actual competition, but we were relying heavily on venue infrastructure under someone else’s control and they turned out to not quite as honest as we thought, so Magic Stunts had to pull out before any of our fire dancing friends in the community got ripped off, as so many young models and dancers do every year.

Although the experience left a bit of a bitter taste, we made a lot of really nice friends along the way and discovered a lot of new (to us) performers, both amateur and proffesional, most of whom are still friends. The idea of a national championship has not altogether dissapeared but had to be put aside for a while due to us being so busy with other stuff

Really long poi type fire chains

What the competition did for us and a lot of other fire-dancing teams though was to kick business into a higher gear because of the increased exposure. Suddenly everybody wants a firedancer at their party and no more mediocre half hearted stuff is acceptable. This is great for fire dancing in general as everybody is stepping up a notch and challenging themselves, techniques are being shared, safety improved and new things developed. Exciting times for the fire dance community lie ahead, i’m sure.

‘Cast and crew’ is the usual way of putting things, but because this is my blog i’m gonna start with the technical crew and introduce the ‘Crew and cast’.
Last year when we found the theatre, unused and slightly broken down at the old Pretoria showgrounds (now Tshwane events centre) my soontobe wife Carol and myself couldn’t resist the opportunity to give it a go and took a lease on the place.
That was about the last time i remember having a Saturday morning to myself. When word got out that the venue was up and running again it wasn’t long before we were approached by At Meyer of the National Youth Developement Trust about running a junior stunt and entertainment educational programme at the theatre. Next thing i knew i was knee deep in kids calling me ’sir’ and wanting to learn stuff.

Carol is a dance choreographer and real good teacher so off she went with the girls (mostly) and started teaching them to dance which left me with the wannabe D.J.’s and stunt hooligans, all of them wanting to do dangerous stuff – well you did say STUNT school didn’t you sir?

We abseiled, learnt fight coreography, fire danced, set the kids on fire (really), taught them how to use a stage, trained up some technical crew (o here he goes again) and generally had so much fun sharing knowledge with young enquiring minds it’s still amazing. A year later some of those first kids are still with us. When i figure out how to put photos on the blog, i will. (next week)

Theatre (or theater, if you like) is the branch of the performing arts defined as what “occurs when one or more persons, isolated in time and/or space, present themselves to another or others.” (Bernard Beckerman)

By this broad definition, theatre has existed since the dawn of man, as a result of the natural human tendency for storytelling. Since its inception, theatre has come to take on many different forms, utilizing speech, gesture, music, dance, and spectacle, combining the other performing arts, often as well as the visual arts, into a single artistic form.

The word derives from the Ancient Greek theatron meaning, “the seeing place.”

The West End Theatre at Tshwane events centre in Pretoria, South Africa, formerly known as the Piet van der Walt theatre, built in 1964 and currently being managed and revived by Magic Stunts is indeed a “seeing place”.

Since May of 2008, the management of the West End Theatre has been dedicating every Saturday to education through entertainment by hosting a junior entertainment school project, teaching kids from all walks of life to perform in various disciplines and giving them the opportunity to learn about the operation of a real theatre. The theatre has hosted workshops in dance, voice training, poetry, drama, fire dancing, percussion, stunt and movie set safety, technical rigging and sound engineering to name only a few.

Throughout the ages, the arts have always been closely linked to education. Entertaining subjects will always hold the attention span longer and generate more interest from a student. Over the next few weeks we’ll be introducing our crew, the extended family we’ve adopted over the past year.

You can see more of what we do at the Magic Stunts website