The Problems of the Great Dickens Christmas Fair
Please note — this article discusses racism and sexual assault.
An article has been making the rounds about the “radical” roots of Renaissance Faire events in America and there has been much celebration of the venerable institution. At the same time, one of it’s most lucrative spin-offs, San Francisco’s “Great Dickens Christmas Fair” — an event founded by and still run by the family who created the original California Renaissance Faires — has been scrambling to keep it’s horrific behind the scenes difficulties quiet. Not always successfully,
In 2021 the proverbial caca hit the fan. Finally, after years of complaints about marginalization of folks who were not white and rampant sexual assault by both audience and fellow cast members with no recourse from management, several groups formed — the London Solidarity Network and Londoners of the African Diaspora — which called for a strike of both performers and audience members that was resolved, seemingly, a few weeks ago.
Please note, if you know someone who has worked at this event anytime between late 2021 and November of 2023, they. are. a. scab. And this is probably the worst kind of scab, one who LITERALLY pays their employer to be allowed to work there and make said employer money while their friends are out fighting to make the place safer for everyone.
Nevertheless, some sort of agreement has been reached with a lot of people questioning — due to the fact that the event seemed to have enough scabs to function this year — if the agreement has any teeth.
Time and the potential for a few more assaults will tell.
Here is my experience of the Great Dickens Christmas Fair. These incidents have stuck with me.
When I was first brought to the event well over a decade ago, I was charmed. The environment is quite enrapturing. While the shows are really more wallpaper to serve as a background for the patrons’ wanderings, they were being served up with gusto — inaudible gusto as all sound in San Francisco’s Cow Palace is pretty well swallowed up by its cavernous metal ceilings after a few feet without significant amplification which the event didn’t bother with, but you could tell that those people on-stage were really into it, whatever they were doing!
But something was… off.
Eventually I realized that I was walking through a fantasy reenactment of a period where every non-white person was a servant or a distrusted foreigner. Those were the only roles available to them.
I asked someone there about it and they told me that it was for historical accuracy. I pointed out that this white person in character in front of me at the time had eyeglasses with extremely obvious and complex machinery that could not have been made in Dickensian times, to which they replied, “Well, we can’t make her change her glasses! She needs them.”
To which I replied, “I think it would be easier for her to find period appropriate glasses to achieve historical accuracy than for a black person to take off their skin!”
I’ve had this discussion many times with performers at this event and it always goes just this way.
Children are allowed to participate at this event. They are usually required to take classes and perform to a certain level, but, as if in a Dickens novel, they are offered no labor protections or, certainly, any pay, and can be there upwards of 12 hours a day amongst the often extremely inebriated patrons. (Note, California allows this kind of labor practice, generally, if a parent is somewhere at the venue.)
(Update: California passed a law that forbid the practice of employing people without pay for extended amounts of time. This meant that just about everyone at the Fair was suddenly getting a check. Somehow, in a very Republican-esque move, the owners of the Faire convinced participants to lobby their local representatives to try and REPEAL this law that benefited them.)
It is worth mentioning, when talking about kids and labor at this event, the “crud.” The crud is an illness that most performers will get at one point or other during a Dickens’ Fair run. It seems to be related to spending really long periods in an enclosed area where there is substantial particulate fecal matter in the air. (There’s a reason the venue is called the “Cow Palace.”) The employees of the Fair came up with the name.
The first time I was taken backstage at a show at the Fair, my host and I first walked through a strange, dark, area with an extremely soiled mattress and small, empty, pint bottles of hard alcohol strewn about the floor. Evidently a single person used this area for something my guide was reluctant to describe to me. A few years later, the person indicated was asked to not return to the Fair, after, I was told, over a decade of this behavior. It must’ve been just as bad as it looked.
Then we walked into another active area where performers were dressing and there were lines of cocaine on mirrors being ingested with some glee before the actors walked out to perform the children’s pantomime they were performing. (I was offered some. I said no.)
Some years later, I saw someone I knew return from a performance at the Fair, seemingly in shock. When I asked what was wrong, she told me that one of the female performers at the fair had been assaulted by two patrons.
Warning, this is about to get graphic.
She had been attacked by two men, one of whom held her against the wall by her throat while the second thrust his hand between her legs and spewed verbal filth at her. Appalled, I asked what happened after that.
I was told that the woman, dazed, went to the main offices on-site and asked to call the police. The woman was told, by a member of the family that runs the event, that they should not call the police. They didn’t want the police backstage.
Later when I asked about this story again, some of the same people who had mentioned it to me originally — who at that time had been horrified — seemed to have undergone some sort of attitude adjustment. “Oh that’s just whatshername… “ they tossed off. As if the event had perhaps been wholly invented.
The woman in question moved away from the United States within a few years.
In the last several years, The Great Dickens Christmas Fair has been dealing with labor issues related to both racism and the safety of performers. As mentioned at the beginning of this short piece, some of the organizations consider the strikes settled and have returned to the Fair this season. The chorus your will hear from the former strikers in social media is, “There was little in the way of direct solutions to the problems offered, but the company that runs the Fair, Red Barn Productions, has taken a few steps, particularly as to inclusivity and diversity, and will be attempting to make further progress along the way.”
I have been told that Red Barn has admitted no wrong doing at all.
Do with this information what you will.