Another uprooted faire?

[TabithaAnne]

This was posted on another site I am on.

Red Barn Productions

February 8th, 2005 (Shrove Tuesday, time to party!)

Dear Faire Participants,

We have some important and exciting news to report as well as the schedule for our 2005 season! Introducing Red Barn Productions, the new home of The Heart of the Forest Renaissance Faires and The Great Dickens Christmas Fair! All assets of As You Like It Productions are being purchased by Red Barn Productions, a new special events company based in Novato California. Red Barn Productions was founded by Mark Solum, a 20 year Faire veteran, with additional financial support from investors who have long standing relationships with the Faire. Red Barn will now be the Production Company behind the Heart of the Forest Renaissance Faires, The Great Dickens Christmas Fair and other spirited, high quality events in development. The first of these events may be a new multi-weekend Renaissance Faire in Oregon this fall, (see below)!

Red Barn Productions will be offering seasonal positions in all areas of event management, performing arts, and production to experienced individuals. Kevin and Leslie Patterson have already been hired to provide key management duties.

As You Like It Productions was forced to close its doors after 5 years due

to mounting financial difficulties resulting from the huge costs of restarting the Renaissance and Dickens Fairs followed by the lack of attendance at its Santa Barbara Renaissance Faire and the steady decline of the corporate special events market in the post dot-com/911 era. Red Barn will now continue what As You Like It began. With the purchase of As You Like It's physical and intellectual property, Red Barn will focus on successful events such as Marin, Tahoe and Dickens, and unfortunately, drop Santa Barbara while possibly picking up a great market opportunity in Oregon.

Here are the specifics as of this Shrove Tuesday (party on):

Announcing the 2005 season of celebration!

The Heart of the Forest Renaissance Faire at Camp Richardson in Tahoe

Two jam-packed weekends of fun in the forest!

June 4 & 5, 11 & 12

The Heart of the Forest Renaissance Faire at Stafford Lake Park in

Novato

Six glorious weekends of "wildly authentic revelry"

July 9 & 10, 16 & 17, 23 & 24, 30 & 31, August 6 & 7, 13 & 14

AndŠ.we are in negotiations for, but have not signed agreements for

The Renaissance Pleasure Faire ® in Oregon (yes, we own the tradename)

Location: Just off Hwy. 5, (between Eugene and Portland)

Four weekends, including Labor Day

August 27 & 28, September 3 & 4 & 5, 10 & 11, 17 & 18

The Great Dickens Christmas Fair at the Cow Palace, Daly City

Five Weekends for our fifth year (Yes Virginia, we can open before

Thanksgiving)!

Nov 19 & 20, 26 & 27, December 3 & 4, 10 & 11, 17 & 18

VENDORS:

Applications for all of our California events will be going out

later this month and will include a short questionnaire for those interested in the possible Oregon Renaissance Faire. Once the Oregon Faire is confirmed, we will send applications to all interested parties.

If you participated as a vendor in 2004, you will automatically receive an

application package. Please fill it out completely and return it ASAP along with your application fees.

* We will jury for all of the eves in early March and mail acceptance packages with contracts by March 15th.

* 50% of the fees for the Tahoe event will be due upon receipt of the contract, so if you are applying for the Tahoe Faire please be prepared to make this payment in March.

ENTERTAINERS:

* A call for entertainment proposals for the 2005 season will go out in mid March.

The As You Like It Productions office is now closed. Please direct your communications to:

Red Barn Productions

PO Box 1768 Novato, CA 94948

Phone (800) 510-1558 Fax (415) 892-4039

You may contact the Red Barn team at the following email addresses:

General Info- office@R...

Vendors- vendors@R...

The websites have not been updated yet, please be patient, we will get to

them soon.

Here's to a great new, new year!

Mark Solum Kevin Patterson Leslie Patterson Cat Taylor

Kathy Kingman

Cat Taylor

Missive Maven

Director of Entertainment for the Dickens Christmas Fair

Finance Director Emeritus for As You Like It Productions

http://www.themeevents.com/

http://www.forestfaire.com

http://www.dickensfair.com

This was the response that was given.....

Speaking as one who works for the Pattersons and has been with AYLI since

its inception: there is probably no need for excitement over this. Mark

Solum and Kathy Kingman have been on staff for some time, as Head of

Ops/Security and Costume Mistress, respectively. The Patterson are part of

the staff of Red Barn. And the proposed schedule for 2005 is what we were

expecting already.

The name of the new company is also suggestive of tradition, for veterans of

Black Point.

[Diego Santana de la Vega]

We are waiting for Red Barn to get back to us to allow us a chance to work a couple of the scheduled weekends in Novato. Hopefully on each side of San luis Obispo and we can do three back to back to back and only lose two of me weeks of five vacation weeks I have available.

[Rumba Rue]

Nothing against the faire itself, but I refuse to go anywhere near anything that has the Patterson's hands on it. Not only very personal, but their mis-managing has cost more than one faire to go belly-up.

Rumba

** **

[lorien_stormfeather]

Any one heard any more details about rumored New Oregon Faire run by this outfit?