Sydney had a Queer Medieval Faire on Saturday. That’s it. That’s the headline.
Wares at the indoor market. Photo courtesy: Robbie Mason.
Entering the Queer Medieval Faire, you fall out of time. You lurch sideways, sidestepping hetero-normative LARPing tropes, and vault over the rocky terrain of early-stage social awkwardness, bypassing judgement with the aid of cheerful performers and stall merchants. You pause for a moment, steadying yourself amid over-stimulation. Then, you tell yourself fuck it and dive headfirst into the unbridled frivolity of Sydney’s queerest medieval realm.
With tarot card readings on offer, sword fighting, blacksmithing demonstrations and Chinese calligraphy lessons, it wasn’t so much a question of what you could do at Sydney’s Queer Medieval Faire as what you couldn’t do.
I can’t say I expected my weekend to involve an indoor smoke ceremony from a local elder in a renovated former church/eco-friendly sharehouse in Sydney’s Inner West before a crowd of queer elves, e-goths, bards and tavern-core wenches. But sometimes you catch lightning in a bottle.
The faire was an unabashed celebration of eccentricity, a sidequesting bonanza with the highest density of elf ears per square metre that the city has ever witnessed.
The indoor market was packed to the rafters. Instructors from the Old Sword Club offered free lessons in a roped-off ring during daylight hours. Attendees held hands and danced to whimsical wind instruments and a hurdy-gurdy outside. (Donated) mead was flowing.
Beans – magical beans, I assume – from the potions stall function as a tradable commodity at the faire and the catalyst for an interactive quest.
“Talk to the NPCs and find out what adventures await,” the alchemist-quest-giver at the potions stall explained.
(Marlena Dalí, a key organiser of the medieval carnival, later recounted to me that “a socialist guild formed by the end of the night and started their own press. They really seized the beans of production.”)
Levi, a blacksmith, working a medieval forge on Saturday. Photo courtesy: Robbie Mason.
Levi, a blacksmith with a medieval forge set up in the courtyard at Greenhouse Studios, told me that he’s always had an interest in medieval history but it wasn’t until he saw a blacksmithing demonstration in person as young’un that he found his passion.
While other blacksmiths focus on the trade’s practical side, Levi said that he prefers to hammer out swords, work on films sets and make custom items. While chatting, he passed me a recent commission proudly: a kink face mask that looked somewhere between a knight’s helmet and the prow of a ship.
Aforementioned kink mask made by Levi. Photo courtesy: Robbie Mason.
It was common theme at the faire: finding your tribe. It’s not an easy task for those with niche hobbies but events like this go a hell of a long way to building a sense of community for otherwise dislocated groups.
A member of the Old Sword Club told me that it was his long-standing passion for knives that led him to discover the sword-fighting club on the internet during a COVID-19 lockdown.
As day switched to night, the event moved into more playful revelry with an aerialist act about Mangkukulam (Filipina witches) and a peepshow run by queer sex workers.
Later, over email, Marlena explained their inspiration for the festival: “I’ve always been fascinated with the realm of medieval fantasy. That specific space in our imaginations of the past is fervent with mysticism. A pre-British Empire time. A seemingly dark time that was actually vibrant and in some ways more free than life under capitalism. A time when a world-wide view of gender was connected to spirituality and community roles more than assigned sex at birth. There’s something about medieval fairs and Halloween that allow us to play outside our reality.”
If one thing defined the unwieldy array of activities and queer performances on the weekend, it was radical acceptance.
If you want a place to practice conversational Shakespeare in a mock British accent or you simply want to relate to the experience of your Skyrim character, Sydney’s Queer Medieval Faire is the place for you. It’s a space where the hobbies of e-freakz – often discovered, learned and practised in cyberspace – colourfully and loudly occupy public space.
In Marlena’s words: “we allow for a world-building creativity the cis-heteros do not have. Because we’re outsiders, part of being queer is creating our own worlds, so we’re experts.”
