LANCE is a growing troupe and, as you might imagine, it takes a whole lot of effort from a whole lot of talented individuals to create the best opportunities for our members. With that in mind, I'd like to spend this post telling you about LANCE's committees.

LANCE committees exist to support the troupe in various areas and to help us develop over time. There are many ways to lend a hand, and so there are a bunch of committees that cover a broad range of interests. Let's talk about 'em!

Michael "Nella" Corinella chairs the Safety Committee. Affectionately known as "Safety Dad" by the troupe, Nella and his committee's jobs are to keep our troupe safe. They keep a sharp eye out at Training to make sure everyone stays hydrated, takes breaks, and wears the appropriate training attire. The Safety Committee also maintains our med kits and brings water for the troupe to share. If you're injured or even just not feeling so good, talk to a member of the Safety Committee, and they will take care of you. If you're not sure if a particular move or technique is safe to incorporate into your fight, the Safety Committee will work with the Training Committee to ensure you're in the clear.

​Are you a Caretaker type? Do you relate to Bubble Boy on a spiritual level? The Safety Committee might be a good fit for you! Contact Nella to join!

​The Training Committee, chaired by AJ Harrett, has two subcommittees. Yes, we love fighting at LANCE and stage combat is a big part of what we do, but character work and improvisation are also integral to our performances. We have, therefore, two kinds of Trainers at LANCE: Character Trainers and Combat Trainers.

Combat Trainers teach our stage combat classes and workshops as well as help develop the LANCE Training curricula. They have a good bit of experience fighting with our troupe, and they've probably got a weapons specialization or two under their belts. Questions about stage combat safety, technique, and aesthetic can go to Combat Trainers, all of whom are also on the Safety Committee. 

You might think that Combat Trainers have all the gumption, but it's the Character Trainers who are truly dauntless. Character Trainers teach improv, character development, and other acting workshops, and they're excellent at coaxing even the most timid fledgling performers out of their shells. With just a few workshops under your belt, you can really tell a difference in your confidence as a performer. That's the magic of making a fool out of yourself in public!

Interested in becoming a Trainer? Any member of the troupe can voice their desire to become a Combat or Character Trainer to any member of the Training Committee. If the Training Committee Chair thinks you're ready, then you'll attend Trainer Training and get signed off to start teaching students in classes and workshops of your own. If it's decided that you need some more time to gain experience, the Training Committee Chair will talk to you about the best way to go about achieve your goal to become a Trainer with LANCE. Let AJ know you'd like to be considered for a Training position! 

Marissa Kraatz is our Documentarian, and she has many minions. You might have seen them taking pictures and recording video. You might even have had them help you scribe your fights. Archivists go about the business of documenting LANCE's memories with phones and cameras, editing and archiving everything for posterity, and occasionally shouting "MURDER BUDDIES"  at showcase. Scribes learn LANCE formatting and abbreviations for writing fights out and help transfer handwritten fights to our online database. The Chronicler of Arms keeps track of the histories of our weapons in our online Armory. In short, the Documentarian and members of her committee are the guardians of LANCE's culture. Sound like something you'd like to be a part of? Contact Marissa now!

Our Quartermaster is Charles Hale. The Quartermaster and his helpers care for and catalogue LANCE's properties, weapons, and costumes. Proper storage is hugely important, not only to keep our property safe and organized, but also to ensure that the Florida heat and humidity doesn't rust our weapons or mold our fabrics. Charles and his committee members ensure that everything is in its proper place. The Quartermaster also orders our weapons and other necessary items for LANCE.

​If you are a natural organizer, if expanding LANCE's assets is important to you, or if you just really love to clean, consider contacting Charles about lending a hand with Quartermaster duties!

Amy Bowman is the Chair of the Outreach Committee, which means she spearheads a ton of awesome projects for LANCE. She and her merry band of committee members run LANCE's online presence, including all social media platforms as well as the LANCE website. In fact, our social media presence is so far-reaching that we have a subcommittee dedicated to it, the aptly-named Social Media Subcommittee.  If you a Facebook Fanatic, an Avid Instagrammer, or want to help out with any other aspect of our social media, let Amy know!

Outreach also handles all fundraising and marketing for LANCE, so if you've ever wanted to get in on helping to spread the word about LANCE or raising money to help us out at events or at Training, then this is the committee for you. Free-Spirited Creatives and Detail-Oriented Planners will both have a great time with Outreach because there's a whole lot of opportunity to dream big, and then make your ideas a reality with a team of awesome people behind you.

The other amazing aspect of Outreach is the Activities Subcommittee, led by Liz Burke. Activities organizes member outings, parties, and learning opportunities. Have great ideas for fun stuff LANCE members could do? Liz is all ears! Join the Activities Subcommittee to help grow and strengthen LANCE as a community!

Songs frequently heard at a Renaissance Faire vary from traditional and melancholy to modern and downright dirty, but no matter what the words or melody, half the fun of hearing faire songs is singing along with them! With that in mind, and with the knowledge that much of the cast for this year's living chess match at The Orlando Renaissance Festival are new to RenFaires in general, I have compiled a Spotify playlist of my favorite tunes for your listening pleasure!

You see, it is a long-standing tradition among many stage combat troupes to choose a final song to sing together to signify their bond at the end of a show. After all the rehearsals, after the bruises and aching joints from running fights for the hundredth time, after accidental stabbings with pins while slaving away over costumes, after getting to know dozens of characters and interacting with them for days at a time, after stumbling over lines and forgetting blocking and coming up with brilliant one-liners on the spot and laughing and yelling and stage fright and inside jokes, there is an end. And when we as a cast reach that end, it feels important to mark it somehow, to put a stake down in our memories and say, "This was it. We were here together as one thing, and after this moment we part as something else." That is what a final song is for, and that is what The Parting Glass will be for LANCE Orlando. 

It took us a long time to choose a final song we felt was worthy of our troupe. When we finally did, it seemed fitting to begin our version of this tradition after our biggest show ever, the living chess match at ORF. 

​No one has to sing, of course. Sometimes it's just as powerful to listen. But in case you do want to give singing our final song a go, there's a version in the playlist by The Wailin' Jennys, and below is a version by Ed Sheeran (my personal favorite), another by Glen Hansard, and another by fan favorite The High Kings. I've also included the lyrics LANCE will be using below. Enjoy!

What's your favorite faire song? Share it in the comments section below! If it's not on the playlist already, I'd love to add it!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy listening to the playlist! See you at the faire!
--Casey, Webmaster

We'd like to take some time to recognize these individuals for their achievements these past few months. Through a whole lot of hard work and sheer effort of will, they have accomplished their goals and gained a few new skills in the process. We are so proud of our graduates, and we look forward to training and performing with them for a long time to come!

May 1st, 2016
  ♜  Zach, Vinh, and Sean tested out of Basic Unarmed!
  ♜  Robby and Ash test out of Basic Quarterstaff!
​
June 4th, 2016
  ♜  Heidi tested out of Basic Sword!

June 12th, 2016
  ♜  Heather tested out of Basic Sword!

July 31st, 2016
  ♜  Tony tested out of Basic Unarmed!

Great job, everyone! See you at training!
-- Casey, Webmaster

​Greetings from your Friendly Neighborhood Documentarian!  As part of LANCE's ongoing efforts to record as much of our activities (and antics) as possible, we've recently completed an overhaul of our photo storage system.  As an awesome side benefit, this means that the photos we have are now freely viewable by all of you! 
 
Collected below are all of our photos from 2015, organized by date.  Albums of note include the first official LANCE event at the Jewett School of the Arts and the first full tournament held at the Cloak and Blaster. 

• LANCE Orlando 2015 Albums

 
And here we have all of the photos so far from 2016 so far, again organized by date.  Pictures from the Valentine's Tournament at the Cloak and Blaster are here, as well as photos from the LANCE outing to the Bay Area Renaissance Festival. 

• LANCE Orlando 2016 Albums

 
Of course both links also have all of the pictures from our training days, too, as well as other miscellaneous events.  Check it out!

-- Marissa, Documentarian

We'd like to take some time to recognize these individuals for their achievements this past month. Through a whole lot of hard work and sheer effort of will, they have accomplished their goals and gained a few new skills in the process. We are so proud of our graduates, and we look forward to training and performing with them for a long time to come!

April 3rd, 2016
  ♜  Ritchy and Robby tested out of Basic Unarmed!
  ♜  Amy and Darren tested out of Basic Staff!
​
April 10th, 2016
  ♜  Heather tested out of Basic Unarmed!

April 16th, 2016
  ♜  Ash and TJ tested out of Basic Sword!

April 23rd, 2016
  ♜  Nella tested out of Trainer Training: Basic Unarmed!
  ♜  Marissa and Nella tested out of Basic Quarterstaff!
  ♜  Ric and Tim tested out of Basic Sword!

Great job, everyone! See you at training!
-- Casey, Webmaster

Our members are like family, and we're like the sentimental aunts who make a big fuss over every holiday and birthday. It shouldn't come as a surprise, therefore, that LANCE revels in the opportunity to celebrate memberversaries, the date that a member became part of the LANCE community.  

We recognize memberversaries with different gifts each year. For example, a member's first year is celebrated with a paper gift. Their second is celebrated with cotton, their third with leather, and so on. (We're traditional like that.) We'll give each member a shout out through Facebook on the actual date of their memberversary, but for now, here's everyone who's got a gift coming to this this month!

April 28th, 2013
  ♜  AJ Harrett — 3rd Memberversary (Leather)
​  ♜  Charles Hale  —  3rd Memberversary (Leather)
  ♜  Olivia Lanham  —  3rd Memberversary (Leather)
  ♜  Ric Garcia  —  3rd Memberversary (Leather)

You'll notice that these four seem to have a couple years' head start on the rest of us. That's because these are unique memberversaries. These four LANCE members conceived of the original idea of LANCE. They are the creative minds that set out to begin our troupe, and they're the reason we have this thriving community and all of these exciting opportunities laid out before us. Thank you to Ric, Olivia, AJ, and Charles for their drive and vision! We all appreciate it more than you can ever know!

We can't wait to celebrate with these LANCE members, and we look forward to commemorating their memberversaries for many years to come!

Many Happy Returns, LANCErs!
— Casey, Webmaster

We'd like to take some time to recognize these individuals for their achievements this month. Through a whole lot of hard work and sheer effort of will, they have accomplished their goals and gained a few new skills in the process. We are so proud of our graduates, and we look forward to training and performing with them for a long time to come!

March 6th, 2016
  ♜  Tim and Ric tested out of Basic Unarmed!

March 26th, 2016
  ♜  TJ, Heidi, Chris, and Darren tested out of Basic Unarmed!

March 27th, 2016
  ♜  Mark-Evan tested out of Basic Unarmed!

Great job, everyone! See you at training!
-- Casey, Webmaster

​LANCE members are constantly looking for ways share our culture with our fans and supporters. We are also a growing troupe in need of more weapons as our membership flourishes. We have come up with a fundraiser that combines our desire to share with our ambition to grow, and it’s called Sword for Hire.

Sword for Hire is a long-term, ongoing fundraiser that allows donors to help build LANCE's armory as we evolve as a community and performance troupe. You can choose from several weapon types and donate the price of the weapon (including a little bit extra toward its upkeep), thus adding another weapon to LANCE’s armory. In exchange, we offer you naming rights for the weapon and the ability to track its progress over the course of its life with LANCE. 

Every year on the anniversary of your donation, we will send you a complete update on your weapon, including pictures, write-ups on any events it participates in, and quotes from the performers who wield it. If your weapon is damaged, we’ll let you know what what’s being done to repair it, and if--Merlin forbid--we are forced to retire your weapon, we’ll deliver the news to you as delicately as we can. 

We even have a member of the troupe dedicated to recording the history of our armory, the Chronicler of Arms. Her name is Marissa Kraatz, and she doubles as LANCE's Documentarian, so you know she knows her stuff. No one is more excited to get this new fundraiser off the ground than Marissa, who believes in the important role Sword for Hire plays in enriching LANCE's culture (as well as bolstering our armory). Every new weapon added to our armory is another opportunity for our performers to learn and grow with the troupe, another combat performance that will surprise and entertain our patrons, another story for the Chronicler of Arms to tell. Who wouldn't be excited about that?

Below you can watch Sword for Hire's promotional video featuring the President of LANCE Orlando, AJ Harrett!

We hope you'll consider donating a weapon to the cause, but if you can't participate in Sword for Hire directly, that's okay! Help us out by sharing our posts on Facebook and telling your friends about LANCE Orlando! Thank you so much to all of our friends and supporters! We are the troupe we have become because of your tireless encouragement and kind patronage! 

Until next time,
-- Casey, Webmaster

LANCE hasn't been around for long, be we have enough of a grip on our cultural identity to know that the average "Happy Birthday to You" song just isn't going to cut it. We think that LANCE members deserve a little something extra from their birthday wishes, and so I present to you The Birthday Dirge:

The lyrics vary widely, but there are a couple of sites that have gathered many of the more popular verses together into one place for your perusal and amusement. PunkWalrus.com and FAQs.org both offer an excellent selection of verses. Here are just a few of my favorites:

Burn the castle and storm the keep
Kill the women, but save the sheep

You've one lesson yet to learn
First you pillage, then you burn

May the cities in your wake
Burn like candles on your cake

I'm sure the creative-minded members of LANCE can come up with some good verses as well. If anyone's got a new verse to add, especially one that's themed to LANCE, leave it for us in a comment below!

Anyway, you get the idea of the song: doom and gloom and happy birthday, you burly old coot. That's exactly the sort of quality ditty LANCE members have come to expect from this troupe, and The Birthday Dirge rises to the occasion beautifully.

Welcome to your new favorite birthday song, and thanks for reading!

--Casey, Webmaster

P.S. Happy birthday, Ian!