Mid-Realm Bardic Madness XI Challenges

	Mid-Realm Bardic Madness XI Challenges

The purpose of today's challenges is to encourage the participants' creativity and artistic growth. They are not meant to be competitions - everyone who takes part can consider themselves a winner.
Your response to the various challenges may be in many different forms. Song or story are the most obvious choices; however juggling, magic, instrumental, or dance can also express an idea or tell a tale. All of these could be used to answer a given challenge (though perhaps not all at the same time :-). Our desire here is to be inclusive rather than exclusive. If you have something to share that doesn't quite fit or that stretches the definitions a little, then fire away.
It is our wish to create a "bardic safe zone" - a friendly place where you may feel free to experiment and try new things. If you've never performed before, now's your chance. You'll be hard pressed to find a friendlier and more supportive audience. We would be delighted to see lots of first time performers.

Please remember, in order to make sure as many gentles get a chance to perform as possible, we ask that you limit your performances so that they run less than five minutes.

Fyt the First:

Pass the Tale

All those who wish to participate get up together, and tell a tale from beginning to end. The challenge's patron will 'conduct' by pointing to the person whose turn it is to continue the tale, and deciding when it is time to end.

Hail to the Chief

A queen is often held as the inspiraton of all that we do. Regale us with a piece about (or for) your faviroite monarch.

Don't Piss Off the Goddess

Pick a pantheon - Greek, Norse, Roman, Celtic, or something else. Run ins with goddesses rarely go as expected. Tell us of an... incident.

Fyt the Second:

Stir Fry

Given a list of words, do something artistic with them.

Battle of the Sexes

Often it boils down t this - the guys vs the gals. Choose your side and make your case.

Period Piece

Perform a documentably period piece of music, story, or song (poetry, prose, and so forth are good too). Dig out those reference books, blow off the dust (try not to sneeze), and see what wonderful and magical treasures you can find in them. There is a staggering amount of fantastic material out there. Find something, be it silly or sublime, and amaze us with it.

Fyt the Third:

A Picture is Worth 1,000 Words

Members of the populace will draw pictures for this challenge based on the theme: a great journey (feel free to define this broadly). Participants will pull both a drawing and a song out of a hat just before the challenge starts. Write two verses and a chorus about the picture using the tune.

Form Challenge, Rime Royal

The rhyme royal stanza consists of seven lines, usually in iambic pentameter, set a-b-a-b-b-c-c. Geoffrey Chaucer used it often, including for four of the Canterbury tales, and James I of Scotland used it, perhaps inspiring the designation "royal" rhyme. It remained very influential among English and Scottish poets after Chaucer's death, finally falling out of fashion during the reign of Elizabeth I.

The rime royal and royal rhyme's the same
Good Chaucer liked it, as did James the First
An a-b-a-b tercet starts the game
Followed by b-c-c couplet versed.
If different parsing is to be coerced,
A terza rima with two couplets endowed.
But we'll say both are fair and both allowed.

Warrior Women

Joan of Arc led the French army, Penthesilea ruled the Amazons, and the Farmer's Wife defeted the Three Blind Mice. Tell us of a woman who bravely battled her foe, regardless of the size.

Fyt the Fourth:

Bard Scribe Illuminator

Given a subject in the morning, compose, calligraph, and illuminate a text on that subject. This may be done individually or as a team.

Toasting

Feast time is traditionally when we raise our glasses on high to honor the crown and other deserving individuals. Given a topic or person at random, create an appropriate toast for them.

Love & Madness

Each course of tonight's feast has a dish to inflict madness abd another ti relieve it. Little in life inflicts as much madess as love. Give us a piece about one, the other, or both.

Challenge General Rules

Challenges are not contests. You win by entering and striving to do the best you can.
Challenges are designed to encourage you to try your hand at something new, to stretch yourself, to enjoy, and to celebrate the creative spirit.
Read the guidelines for the challenges carefully, like most exercises, they are designed to help you develop in specific areas. Try to follow them as closely as you can, but stretching them in unexpected directions is good too.
Individuals are welcome and encouraged to give recognition to those performers whom they especially enjoy.
In order to allow the largest number of people to participate, challenge entries shall be limited to five minutes or less. Each person may enter a maximum of one piece in each challenge and a maximum of eight challenges.

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This page maintained by Cerian Cantwr, cerian@minstrel.com.

Last updated: 2016-05-07