Storyteller Dons Many Roles at Faire’s After-Hours Show

It is a scene that most residents of Agoura Hills will never see. After visitors to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire leave the grounds on Saturday and Sunday nights, the villagers--an encampment of nearly 1,000 actors, artisans, assorted minstrels and their attending broods--come out to play.

Princes and damsels, knaves and knights, freebooters and merchants, and wizards and gnomes begin to swarm through the hills like goblins on All Hallows Eve. Clutching flashlights and lanterns, they wander up the road of Ye Celts, through Glaziers Row and Gaming Hill, past Cooks Court and Potwobblers Way.

They gather at the Washing Well, and then continue their journey through Merchants Glen until, finally, they wind to their ultimate destination: the Lydian Grove in mystic Witches Wood. There at exactly 8 o’clock, storyteller Mark W. Lewis casts his spell.

“The first time I heard him was a magical moment for me,” said Phyllis Patterson, who has worked with thousands of performers since she founded the fair in 1963. “ ‘The storyteller’ has a fan club; there’s no doubt about it.”

During the hours the fair is open to the public, Lewis, 34, is a man of many faces--all of them scoundrels. With his full beard, bandana-capped scalp, black gloves and flowing maroon pantaloons, he cuts a striking figure as the pirate Dirty Jack. This erstwhile “first mate to Sir Francis Drake” inspires loathing scowls from the queen and her court when he arrives at Maybower Theatre with his hunched pirate’s waddle and treasure chest clutched to his breast.

“Shift your cargo, dearie, show me the starboard side, har har,” the lecherous Jack chortles at passing maidens.

Plays Many Roles

Lewis’ other characters are also of dubious socially redeeming value. He plays Rounce Robble-Hobble, the embodiment of winter, a carrot-nosed devil who is vanquished by Jack O’ the Green; a French actor named Roland de Hay in a loose and ribald retelling of “Richard III”; Sanson, the mute, black-hooded, ax-wielding executioner; and the vile El Capitano De Gruso Prosciutto.

When he’s not on stage at the fair, Lewis, who lives in Pasadena, can usually be found holding court from the scarecrow’s roost at Dirty Jack’s wharf--a splendid clutch of cannon, carts, ropes and flags, treasure and sabers, iron shackles and sun-bleached skulls.

But his most important role, one he has played for 15 years, is the storyteller.

Lewis first came to the fair in 1971, when he was a student at Pasadena City College. Within a few years word spread of the actor’s campside tales, and his audience grew. Before long, hundreds gathered for these impromptu sessions after the fair had closed for the night.

Last Saturday night, nearly 400 people huddled in the evening chill, waiting for Lewis to arrive. “Mark’s a tradition,” said Veronica Nice, a raven-haired singer and “boothy.” “If you worked here and missed storytelling, you’d be missing the fair.”

“Mark is one of our many treasures,” said Billy Scudder, an actor who launched a successful career after performing at the fair. (Scudder spent years honing his Charlie Chaplin improvisations in Agoura Hills before IBM sent him around the world to film some 90 TV commercials as the Little Tramp.) “Imagine if you lived in a village where there was only one television, and everyone gathered around it at night. Well, Mark Lewis is our TV.”

The savoring of such cultural traditions is bittersweet, as this year may well be the swan song for the fair, which closes June 5. Last month the Los Angeles County Regional Planning Commission approved a developer’s request to build 160 luxury homes on the site.

As Lewis took to a small stage nestled beneath a trio of 80-year-old oaks, the crowd erupted in a prolonged screech that would put a “Tonight Show” audience to shame. A few dozen children of the villagers crowded up on the stage around Lewis, one of the principal paid actors at the fair, as he perched on a bale of hay. His face, framed by a shock of hair and beard, glowed in a single beam of light.

“I speak in word pictures,” Lewis said, “which means I don’t want you to think about what I’m saying. I want you to see it. I give you all permission to use your imagination.”

Lewis has created a few dozen fanciful tales over the years, and on this night, he picked one of his favorites. “This is such a favorite that I named my daughter after the girl,” he said. The throng, obviously familiar with the story, roared its approval. “It takes place in fantasy time, a land of swords and dragons. It’s called ‘Mical: The Dragon’s Daughter.’ ”

Lewis launched into his tale at full throttle, action already under way: “The battering ram struck home as the hinges to the castle door screamed in pain,” he boomed. “Gaston the blacksmith shouted to his men as the doors heaved a splintered scream. The townspeople swarmed through the castle door like sand through the narrow neck of an hourglass, coming to rescue the princess from the dragon. It had been 20 years since she was stolen away. Their torches and lanterns throw shadows of their pitchfork weapons and hoes on the bricked hallways . . . “

Lewis churned and crashed with special effects. He portrayed a host of characters, including the Princess Mical, who does not really need rescuing from the loving dragon Grinnand because he saved her from an evil, murderous king when she was just a baby.

“Over by the fireplace, a puff of smoke spreads out in long fingers above the overstuffed chair,” Lewis continued. “A shape stands up in the darkness and turns. It’s 12 feet tall! It walks into the light and it’s the dragon .” Lewis jumped to his feet, striking a sophisticated pose, like that of some elegant playboy.

“He’s wearing a long blue silk smoking jacket with a black satin collar.” The crowd laughed. “He has a black smoking cap with a tassel on the side and slippers on his feet. He sets a brandy snifter down on a table as he turns to the townspeople. He has a pipe in his hand but he never puts it in his mouth. He just smokes .” More laughter.

For nearly an hour, Lewis continued to spin his “word pictures.” He portrayed yelping dogs, a flying dragon, a piggish queen, a mad king, an evil prince, a loving nurse, a talking fire, a flock of wretched courtiers and townsfolk.

Kids and adults screeched with each thrashing development. Finally, after the evil prince was “caught between two fists of flame,” the dragon and Mical lived happily ever after.

“My stuff is real active and visual,” Lewis said after the show. “A lot of storytellers are laid back, like Garrison Keillor. I’m more like special effects.

“Storytelling is ageless and it always works. It’s been around forever. My goal is to reawaken the art of storytelling in the world of now, which has forgotten the world of then, and to reintroduce the world to its imagination.”

Lewis, who has already performed in a show called “Myth, Movement and Magic” at the Pilot Theater in West Hollywood, hopes eventually to launch a one-man show of “Storytelling for the Real World.”

“I’m a storyteller by trade. Everything else I do for money,” he said. “Everything else” includes recent roles in TV commercials for Taco Bell and Moosehead Beer. “I have a beard so I’m not sent out on too many auditions, but when they need a beard, I go.”

Lewis works in industrial and educational films, and for a number of years he performed in troubadour shows at Los Angeles schools and taught “Imagination and Storytelling” as an artist in residence at the Los Angeles Music Center in 1985.

Until recently, he worked in the concepts division of Alchemy II, the toy company that created Teddy Ruxpin, where he designed and created games and toys. “But they ran out of money and laid me off a couple of weeks ago,” he said, “so I’m wondering, what does a pirate do now? Har har.”

Lewis has written a few dozen stories and movie treatments and “has some stuff brewing--you know, ‘Hollywood talk.’ ” One of his stories, “Kaliban’s Christmas,” was published in book form by Tor Books last year. But his greatest love will always be storytelling at the fair.

“I love the fair,” Lewis said. “It’s in my blood. I grew up here. It’s like ‘Brigadoon.’ It rises up every year. It’s amazing how many marriages and divorces and children spring from all the different people who move in and out. It’s a microcosm.”

Lewis met his wife, Colleen, at the fair 12 years ago, and courted her for seven years before they were married. “We met in the 16th century,” Colleen quipped, “and we’re actually married in the 18th century. Unfortunately, all too often, we have to live in the 20th. It’s a tragedy, but this is likely to be our last year here.”

Mark and Colleen’s daughter, Mical Shannon, was born two years ago--during the fair. Said Lewis: “I would love for my baby to grow up here--just like I did--but the developers are looking at only one thing, the great god money, and that’s sad. But then, if that’s the way they make their money, who am I to say it’s bad? But I hate to lose the oak trees, the land . . . and this life.”