Hanlon-Lees Action Theater
Ride Fast, Hit Hard!
I have seen Hanlon-Lees Action Theater at two fairs: the Carolina Renaissance Festival and the Georgia Renaissance Festival. They are the best. Entertaining, talented, daring and just plain fun. As a company they are Americas’s longest-running theatrical jousting company. Wild West reenactment, fight choreography, film stunts and jousting are just the tip of the ice berg for this group. They do outdoor stage combat and outdoor theater in settings all over the country but obviously in this article we are going to be focusing on their jousting shows.
Hanlon-Lees shows are fun. I know that is not a hugely descriptive word but they are fun. It is melodrama on a horse. It is bawdy and funny, daring and bold. They create characters and get people involved and caring about the outcome of the battles that they are staging. The term they use for their style of show is theatrical jousting. This is just what they do. It is a theatrical show but it is also jousting. They are mounted and adding that level of difficulty in controlling a show while they are on horse back. While they are not participating in tournament style jousting, that matters very little. They are telling a story and getting the crowd involved in a show. They are staging a boxing match on horses. Think professional wrestling with horses and you have something close but not nearly as beautiful as what these guys do three times a day at most fairs.
The shots in the slideshow are from the Carolina Fair:
No trip to a Renaissance Fair for me is complete without going to a joust. It is nothing for me to attend all three and enjoy them as much as I do all the rest of the shows. I love the pageantry. I love the test of arms. The suspension of disbelief that they are actors is not difficult. I want to see one of them take a fall of the horse. I want to see them squabble about why they are going to have the next joust. I want them to taunt the crowd. I want to take in the Three-Stooges-with-swords style play that is going on before me. If you loved the movie A Knights Tale then you have to go to a joust. You will cheer on the knight that your section is rooting for and scream them on to victory.
I have seen other jousting companies. They are good but Hanlon-Lees is one of the oldest and in my opinion one of the best.
-Bobaganush the Pirate
