The Texas Renaissance Festival opens its gates this weekend for its 50th Anniversary season. Tickets and event information are available at its official website.
Founded in 1974 by “King” George Coulam, the Texas Renaissance Festival paved the way for the modern renfest industry across the nation. It is the largest Renaissance festival both in physical size (70 acres) and visitors (half a million). The event runs every weekend from October 12 to December 1, where it will sign off with a Celtic Christmas celebration. Other themes include Pirate Adventure (November 2-3), Barbarian Invasion (November 16-17), and Highland Fling (November 23-24).
This year, beer and mead take center stage at the festival. Saint Arnold Brewing Company has partnered with TRF to provide King’s Fest Ale, a malty drink available exclusively on faire grounds. Not to be outdone, Karbach Brewing Co. is selling Dunkels & Dragons, a dark lager. Traditional meads from Texas Mead Works and exclusive, Norse-themed wines from Haak Winery will also be available.
The Texas Renaissance Festival is well known for its performances, hosting 21 stages and literally thousands of acts over its history. This year, a Golden Anniversary Celebration gathers past performance for a massive variety show paying homage to faire’s past. New acts this year include the street-style stunts of the Accidental Acrobats and Carnival of Sound, which showcases folk dances from around the world.
The celebration comes at a moment of tremendous media scrutiny of the Texas Renaissance Festival. A popular HBO documentary series, Ren Faire, laid bare the backstage dealings for control of the festival, as well as the capricious and sexually driven nature of its founder, Coulam. Around the same time, a podcast series, Crime Waves, highlighted a history of violence and date rape occurring on the grounds.
This has led TRF to distance itself somewhat from the HBO documentary. A statement from the festival after it aired maintained a neutral stance regarding the production, neither denying nor confirming its content aside from the participation of several chief members of the management team.
However, general manager Jeff Baldwin says that the HBO documentary has actually done TRF a world of good, despite its sometimes negative portrayal. He told the Houston Chronicle in September that ticket sales were up 45 percent over last year, saying that the series had made people curious about the TRF experience.
Despite those high ticket sales, the future for the festival is very much up in the air. A family of food vendors who attempted to buy the festival from Coulam in the HBO documentary only to have Coulam pull out, are currently suing Coulam in Grimes County to compel him to sell. Another group of vendors, who hold around 7 percent of the company, are also suing Coulam for a variety of alleged civil offenses like breach of contract and poor fiduciary management, the Houston Chronicle reports.
None of this is likely to affect the festival’s 2024 run. For now, the mead and merriment flow as it has for the past half century.