Overview
Green College were having a ball, with a medieval theme. They invited Wychwood along, in exchange for free entry to the ball (all-you-can-eat-and-drink). Four of us went.
What We Did
Wychwood performed three 20-minute sets, with 10-minute breaks between each set.
1st Set: Weapons Display
Various pairs of weapons were shown: sword/sword, sword+spear/sword+spear, spear/spear, sword+saex/sword+shield, daneaxe/sword+shield, axe+shield/axe+shield, knife/knife. Also a few two-on-two fights, swordwall/swordwall and spearwall/swordwall. Some bits were scripted fights (from the Oxford Castle show, most were free fights. Bunni gave a bit of commentary over the top, but mainly it was people hitting each other. Fun!
2nd Set: Sir Pretty Hands
An experiement with a narrative. Started with Dom dragging a screaming Freya through the college, then Bunni + Ross leaping to her defence. Fight! Ross goes up against Dom first ("let me prove myself, sire!"), and dies. Then Bunni goes, pushed to floor, says he will do anything if Dom let's him live- sing a song? do unspeakable sexual acts? tell a story?
Cue the Tale of The Kitchen Knight
3rd Set: Weapons Display
As before, but with less commentary. Because Bunni's voice was giving up, and none of the audience really cared about the commentary.
Afterwards
We then generally hung around the ball, eating pig and chocolate fountains and drinking cocktails and going on bouncy castles and doing the Wychwood Skank in their disco. All in costume, of course. People liked our costume, and had photos taken with us or stroked Dom's chainmail or whatever.
Reflections
The 1st and 3rd Sets were fairly well-received. Especially things that made lots of noise, people hitting shields lots. However they would have worked better if we had more Wychwooders, so we could have ensured rapid cycling- as soon as one fight finished, another could have begun.
Dialogue or explanation wasn't needed, just fighting was fine.
The 2nd Set's narrative was lost on the audience. They weren't there for narrative, they were there to chat to their friends and drink, with us in the background. A captive audience would have liked it, a ball audience less so.
On the other hand, Dom's abduction of Freya at the beginning was popular. Dragging her through the college whilst she screamed and screamed and screamed = highly effective at getting noticed.
We looked fucking ace. Dom in the bucket helm and full chainmail was especially scary.