St. Louis Pirate Festival Will Shiver Yer Timbers With Entertainment Booty

There’s still time to sample a pirate’s life and worry about booty being plundered, as the sixth annual St. Louis Pirate Festival concludes its weekends-only stint 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at in .

For the festival, various pirate factions have holed up on the Caribbean island of Tortuga, where military presence is non-existent and lawlessness reigns. The French, English, Spanish and Dutch all had pirate factions on Tortuga. The Festival represents "the golden age" of piracy from the mid-1600s to the early 1700s.

"There’s probably more diversity at this event than what we’ve ever had at a Pirate Fest before," said Bob Stanza, president of the board of directors for Renaissance St. Louis, which coordinates the Pirate Festival.

The point, Stanza said, is there will be plenty of action for festivalgoers to see because pirates from diverse countries and cultures won't get along when they share space on an island.

"The French didn’t necessarily like the English, even as pirates," he said last Saturday from the festival site. "So it does give us the ability to play the different pirate groups against each other as well."

In past festivals, conflicts would be between the military and the pirates.

"Now what you’ve got is the different pirate factions," Stanza said.

While kids can enroll in a pirate school conducted twice a day, this festival is all about having fun.

This event is probably geared a little more toward kids, Stanza said. "We’re trying to find the right balance for (adults) as well, because obviously 8-year-old kids don’t come out here on their own," he said.

Still, kids and pirates go together like pieces of eight and treasure chests.

"Kids are enamored with pirates now," Stanza said. "It’s odd for me. Kids loved clowns when I was a child and were afraid of pirates. Now kids are afraid of clowns, and they love pirates. I don’t quite get how that came about, but the kids just light up when they interact with pirates."

Children can attend pirate school, offered at 1:30 and 4 p.m. daily, to learn to talk, swagger and fight like pirates. At the end, they are certified as genuine pirates. However, the adults aren’t left out of the fun.

"In the back of the Spanish quarter, we have probably the more bawdy entertainment that people are more accustomed to if they would go to a renaissance fair or a pirate festival," Stanza said. "Our events have always been pretty tame by comparison to what you’d see nationally if you went out to similar events, for instance. We’ve tried to set up some things that are geared toward the adults who are coming in without kids, or to give the parents some fun entertainment that they can have a good time with while bringing their kids."

Five stages will be going all day long, with singers—pirate and otherwise—plus dancers, acrobats, comedy acts and more.

"We’re trying to put on more stage entertainment by the actual cast," he said. "So we’re doing a version of Romeo and Ethyl, which is basically a knockoff of Romeo and Juliet that’s done to a pirate theme."

The cast, 110 strong, will have quite a presence. They will staff the pirate school and roam the entrance area as the Terrible Troubadours of Tortuga, a singing group. Even Stanza gets into the act, portraying a character named Felix Miller, whose father was a miller who refused to pay taxes.

"So the king’s men burned the mill down and sent ‘im to Australia," Stanza said, dropping into character and adopting an Aussie accent. "I was born there, so now I’ve come back for some payback."

Miller, dressed in black pants, a dingy white shirt and tattered red vest, sports a scruffy beard and carries an oar while searching for the rest of his ship.

"Having a prop is always a good thing," he said.

Stanza was a double major in school—computer science and theater.

"I’ve always done what I’ve said was a right brain, left brain kind of thing," he said. "To me, this is one of those things where it makes you creative, it makes you think quickly. There’s nothing like improv to make you think fast."

Thinking fast is important in Tortuga, where a gun battle is likely to erupt at any moment, especially if it’s 5 o’clock and tempers have flared during the pirate poker game. Thinking fast also helps when dealing with the occasional visitor who tries to get a cast member to break character.

"I had one woman who was trying to get me to break character because she was just convinced I was here from another country. People will try and figure you out as far as what you are doing. Some of them will work pretty hard at it. The kids, they just believe. The adults will play along for a little bit, then they’ll break into, ‘Yeah, where are you really from?’ You get a lot of that," Stanza said, as gunfire echoed in the background from the poker battle.

"The pirates decided to get together and have a world championship of pirate poker," Stanza said, explaining the gunfire. "Things just kind of deteriorate through the day."

Daily tickets are $10.95 for adults, $7.95 for children 6-13 and free for kids 5 and younger. Military, police, firefighter and seniors age 65 and older receive a $2 discount at the gate. Discounts and coupons are also available online.

This last weekend of Pirate Fest many of the shows will include sign language interpreters for hearing-impaired guests.