STERLING - Gary Izzo doesn't want you to know what you're getting at the Sterling Renaissance Festival.
Jason Rearick / The Citizen
Gary Izzo is the artistic director at the Renaissance Festival in Sterling.
Gary Izzo is the artistic director at the Renaissance Festival in Sterling.
As artistic director of the festival for about 25 years, Izzo has worked with its cast to ensure that the experience is different for every person who enters. Izzo labels this living, breathing reenactment of Elizabethan England as improvisational environmental interactive theater.
“The audience has as much to do with the outcome of a scene as the actors,” Izzo said. “It's very powerful, people get quite moved.”
This unique and unpredictable atmosphere is largely responsible for the festival's remarkable level of popularity. Izzo recalls only a few hundred people attending its first two summer runs, but in subsequent years the festival has amassed a steady following of frequent visitors.
“Unlike any other festival, if you come back the next day the show ends differently,” Izzo said. “People get hooked on it.”
Izzo joined the festival when its organizers were looking for someone to direct a Shakespeare troupe. He was recommended by the outgoing director, a faculty member at SUNY Oswego, where Izzo was a performing arts student at the time.
Virginia and Gerald Young, who would eventually own the festival, saw in Izzo the creativity and talent they wanted to help build the event into the immersive experience it is today.
“Gary and I have learned together because there's nothing like this in the country,” Young said. “He's one of a kind.”
As Izzo started to soak in the festival setting, he saw an opportunity for it to evolve beyond a traditional dramatic format.
“I said, 'Wow, what a nice-looking woods; wouldn't it be nice to have a troupe of Elizabethans acting like they're living and working there,'” he said.
Other Renaissance festivals had treated spectators as anachronistic visitors with “mundane” dress and manners. The Sterling festival instead assimilates the audience into its setting. Izzo oversaw the hiring of 35 professional actors who could create this illusion with the utmost charm and conviction.
“No other festival in the country hires professional actors,” he said. “It's an expensive proposition.”
The investment has paid off. The wily actors quickly turned the human chess match, the beggar's feast and the sheriff's dunking stool into popular attractions at the festival because of their live quality. Along with crew like stage manager Dean Wick, Izzo prepares the actors with not just a few archaic terms or a cheap accent, but the mindset of a person actually living in another time.
“The actors I've been in touch with since leaving have spoke of this as one of the most enlightening experiences in their lives,” Wick said. “The cast is versed in history, mannerisms, customs and an understanding of the various political and religious concepts of that time, which differ greatly from ours.”
Izzo also started another major festival staple in the mud show, in which actors perform classic theater while using a pit of mud as almost another character in the play.
“It's been wildly successful; everyone likes to play in mud,” Izzo said. “Getting mud on you becomes like a badge of honor.”
Unlike participatory theater, where an audience member may be asked on stage to play a predetermined role in a story, Izzo's style actually lets them steer the ship in the open environment of the festival.
“You're granting the audience member a role by letting them add whatever they want, and the skill of the actors is to work the situation around them,” Izzo said. “It's a lot more tough than plugging the audience member into the script and telling them what to do.”
For 13 years Izzo took his talent for improvisational environmental interactive theater to Disney, with whom he helped develop the live action shows of MGM Studios, Epcot and eventually Animal Kingdom.
The corporate hierarchy made any changes or costly additions to the shows difficult. Izzo recalls the lengthy period of time it took to purchase yellow trenchcoats, fedoras and Tommy guns for a Dick Tracy show. But he enjoyed having the chance to usher in changes at the parks.
“It was very fun convincing them to hire actors and to let them improvise,” he said. “They'd say, 'OK, but where are the scripts?'”
In his off-time from the summer festival season in Sterling, Izzo has also authored two books - “The Art of Play: The New Genre of Interactive Theater” and “Acting Interactive Theater: A Handbook.” The latter book is used across the United States as a textbook of sorts for the genre with which Izzo worked as artistic director of the Renaissance Festival.
Theater wasn't always where Izzo's artistic ambitions pointed. While in college, he performed stand-up improvisational comedy in many Syracuse clubs, but the pitfalls of the scene eventually soured him on it.
“Steve Martin said 'Comedy isn't pretty,'” Izzo said. “The whole culture of nightclub comedy - having to be 'on' all the time, worrying about others stealing your jokes - it was really kind of crappy.”
At the Renaissance Festival, Izzo still must contend with one important aspect of comedy: not offending his audience. He has found that festival-goers expect a bawdry brand of humor from its actors.
“During my first Disney years, we cleaned it up, but we got complaints,” he said.
On select occasions Izzo has seen that there is a line not to be crossed, but he has been surprised to learn where that line runs. Jokes about male anatomy and even a gag where an actor used mud to fake-defecate were met with laughs. But humor about female anatomy or homosexuals are not so popular with audiences.
“I tease people to work to the top of their intelligence and make comedy out of character and action rather than dirty jokes,” he said.
With the festival still up for sale after five years, Izzo is uncertain whether this will be his last summer of working to amuse audiences in Sterling. Should someone buy the attraction, he couldn't see himself continuing to work with its actors as he has for almost 30 years.
“It's like a family - as dysfunctional as it is. It's your family,” he said. “So if it changes, you don't know if there's a reason for a lot of people to stay.”
Staff writer David Wilcox can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 245 or david.wilcox@lee.net
If you go
What: Sterling Renaissance Festival
When: From 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Aug. 19
Where: Sterling
Cost: Adult and seniors $22, children $8
For details: Visit www.sterlingfestival.com
“The audience has as much to do with the outcome of a scene as the actors,” Izzo said. “It's very powerful, people get quite moved.”
This unique and unpredictable atmosphere is largely responsible for the festival's remarkable level of popularity. Izzo recalls only a few hundred people attending its first two summer runs, but in subsequent years the festival has amassed a steady following of frequent visitors.
“Unlike any other festival, if you come back the next day the show ends differently,” Izzo said. “People get hooked on it.”
Izzo joined the festival when its organizers were looking for someone to direct a Shakespeare troupe. He was recommended by the outgoing director, a faculty member at SUNY Oswego, where Izzo was a performing arts student at the time.
Virginia and Gerald Young, who would eventually own the festival, saw in Izzo the creativity and talent they wanted to help build the event into the immersive experience it is today.
“Gary and I have learned together because there's nothing like this in the country,” Young said. “He's one of a kind.”
As Izzo started to soak in the festival setting, he saw an opportunity for it to evolve beyond a traditional dramatic format.
“I said, 'Wow, what a nice-looking woods; wouldn't it be nice to have a troupe of Elizabethans acting like they're living and working there,'” he said.
Other Renaissance festivals had treated spectators as anachronistic visitors with “mundane” dress and manners. The Sterling festival instead assimilates the audience into its setting. Izzo oversaw the hiring of 35 professional actors who could create this illusion with the utmost charm and conviction.
“No other festival in the country hires professional actors,” he said. “It's an expensive proposition.”
The investment has paid off. The wily actors quickly turned the human chess match, the beggar's feast and the sheriff's dunking stool into popular attractions at the festival because of their live quality. Along with crew like stage manager Dean Wick, Izzo prepares the actors with not just a few archaic terms or a cheap accent, but the mindset of a person actually living in another time.
“The actors I've been in touch with since leaving have spoke of this as one of the most enlightening experiences in their lives,” Wick said. “The cast is versed in history, mannerisms, customs and an understanding of the various political and religious concepts of that time, which differ greatly from ours.”
Izzo also started another major festival staple in the mud show, in which actors perform classic theater while using a pit of mud as almost another character in the play.
“It's been wildly successful; everyone likes to play in mud,” Izzo said. “Getting mud on you becomes like a badge of honor.”
Unlike participatory theater, where an audience member may be asked on stage to play a predetermined role in a story, Izzo's style actually lets them steer the ship in the open environment of the festival.
“You're granting the audience member a role by letting them add whatever they want, and the skill of the actors is to work the situation around them,” Izzo said. “It's a lot more tough than plugging the audience member into the script and telling them what to do.”
For 13 years Izzo took his talent for improvisational environmental interactive theater to Disney, with whom he helped develop the live action shows of MGM Studios, Epcot and eventually Animal Kingdom.
The corporate hierarchy made any changes or costly additions to the shows difficult. Izzo recalls the lengthy period of time it took to purchase yellow trenchcoats, fedoras and Tommy guns for a Dick Tracy show. But he enjoyed having the chance to usher in changes at the parks.
“It was very fun convincing them to hire actors and to let them improvise,” he said. “They'd say, 'OK, but where are the scripts?'”
In his off-time from the summer festival season in Sterling, Izzo has also authored two books - “The Art of Play: The New Genre of Interactive Theater” and “Acting Interactive Theater: A Handbook.” The latter book is used across the United States as a textbook of sorts for the genre with which Izzo worked as artistic director of the Renaissance Festival.
Theater wasn't always where Izzo's artistic ambitions pointed. While in college, he performed stand-up improvisational comedy in many Syracuse clubs, but the pitfalls of the scene eventually soured him on it.
“Steve Martin said 'Comedy isn't pretty,'” Izzo said. “The whole culture of nightclub comedy - having to be 'on' all the time, worrying about others stealing your jokes - it was really kind of crappy.”
At the Renaissance Festival, Izzo still must contend with one important aspect of comedy: not offending his audience. He has found that festival-goers expect a bawdry brand of humor from its actors.
“During my first Disney years, we cleaned it up, but we got complaints,” he said.
On select occasions Izzo has seen that there is a line not to be crossed, but he has been surprised to learn where that line runs. Jokes about male anatomy and even a gag where an actor used mud to fake-defecate were met with laughs. But humor about female anatomy or homosexuals are not so popular with audiences.
“I tease people to work to the top of their intelligence and make comedy out of character and action rather than dirty jokes,” he said.
With the festival still up for sale after five years, Izzo is uncertain whether this will be his last summer of working to amuse audiences in Sterling. Should someone buy the attraction, he couldn't see himself continuing to work with its actors as he has for almost 30 years.
“It's like a family - as dysfunctional as it is. It's your family,” he said. “So if it changes, you don't know if there's a reason for a lot of people to stay.”
Staff writer David Wilcox can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 245 or david.wilcox@lee.net
If you go
What: Sterling Renaissance Festival
When: From 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays through Aug. 19
Where: Sterling
Cost: Adult and seniors $22, children $8
For details: Visit www.sterlingfestival.com
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