Anchorage Daily News

You'll find no shortage of characters at the Three Barons Fair, the annual summer Renaissance festival that turns the Tozier Track sled-dog racing trails into pathways to the past.

There's Samak il Gefilte and her husband, Ahmid, who often can be found hanging out around Akbar's Haggling Hut -- "Avoiding bankruptcy since 1607."

There's Master Jack, the young ne'er-do-well whose idea of fun is swiping things from the Blue Baron. There's Piotr Urbanski, the Polish alchemist who also runs the Krakow Puppet Theater.

None of the above are real people, of course. Beneath the cloaks, tights, furs, turbans, costume jewelry and occasional puffy shirt are people who live regular lives 361 days of the year.

Samak il Gefilte is really Erin Dagon Mitchell, the marketing manager for business services at UAA. Master Jack is really Billy Worthy, who works at an Anchorage funeral home. Urbanski is really Mel Kalkowski, a spokesman for UAA.

The weird thing is, even if you know any of these people in real life, they assume their medieval characters so completely it sounds perfectly normal to hear olde English staples like "thou" and "thy" come out of their mouths.

"A great many of us are actors by trade," explained Wayne Mitchell, aka Akbar the Haggler. "Once thou slippest into the (character), it's almost harder to speak normally when it's over."

Mitchell's sister-in-law, Erin, slides easily into the persona of Samak il Gefilte, and seldom speaks in her 21st century voice when she's in costume.

Sometimes, she said, the performers get so enmeshed in their roles that when the fair shuts down for the night, they persist with their accents and their 16th century vocabulary.

"We'll be breaking down the booths and someone will say, 'Wouldst thou hand me a hammer?' We have one cast member who always reminds us to drop the fair-speak," she said.

"You try not to do it at the office on Monday morning, when your boss asks you to do something and you say, 'Aye, my lord!' "

Not everyone is so in-sync with their medieval counterparts. Worthy, who at 21 is one of the younger of some 200 performers, said sometimes he struggles to stay in character.

"It's hard for eight hours a day," he said.

On Sunday, though, he was immersed in his role of Master Jack, a member of the Red Baron's court who had just swiped the court bells from the Blue Baron.

"I did steal these bells," he told a passerby. "I did lure them from the Blue Court, and Sansu will be in trouble with Captain Ali, for I do have his weapon and the court bells."

"What are court bells?" someone asks.

"Honestly? I know not," he said.

Worthy has been coming to the renaissance fair since he was 11. It exposed him to the world of theater, "and the theater community has changed my life," he said.

"I think everyone likes to make-believe," he said, "and you feel less weird if you're part of it."

By the time he was in high school, Worthy was a regular at the Three Barons Fair, something that made for some interesting moments when his non-theater friends on the Bartlett High football and wrestling teams got wind of his activities.

"I was a total jock in school, and all of a sudden I'm out here with all my nerd friends," Worthy said. "They would see pictures of me in tights."

Worthy and everyone else has one more weekend of make-believe; the Three Barons Fair continues next Saturday and Sunday at the Tozier Track on Tudor Road.

When it's all over, the performers will pack up their tents, weapons and costumes and return to life in the new millennium, minus ye olde accents and affectations.

"The ale be not in the wagon then," Wayne Mitchell said airily, before dropping his voice half an octave. "The beer's in the pickup."

Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.

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