MARYSVILLE Students at Marysville Middle School are going to get medieval on somebody, and they hope it will be you.
Torture, dancing, plays, skits, lessons, puppet shows, historical displays and other activities will be on the menu for the free event slated for Thursday, May 24, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
About 500 seventh-graders will be holding a medieval fair on
May 24, where they will demonstrate what life was like during the dark ages of Europe with costumes, skits, and lessons brought to life. Students from the entire class have been learning about this era during the this semester and they were pumped during a visit to the downtown campus last week.
Knights in shining armor, royalty in crowns, lords and servant wenches were prancing in the sun while they explained how rigid the social stratification was back in those days. Today we say that any body could become president or prime minister, but back then people were born into a class and there was no talk of bettering yourself. In fact, that could be called treason, and the upper classes kept their foot on the necks of the lower sorts as their God-given right, the students explained.
Cierra Shay is directing one of the plays that will show how people lived back then. One aspect of medieval life that made the most impact to her were the rigid class distinctions, Shay said. At the top of the pile were royalty, embodied in the king and queen of a nation or principality and then the land-owning lords, who often held a despotic sway over the lowest class, the peasants. Peasants did and the work and owned nothing, and often were at the mercy of their overlord, she explained.
He was really stuck-up cause he had all kinds of power and all he wanted was money, Shay said. When you were rich you got a lot more, but when you were poor you didnt have a lot.
Kim Wagner and Sierra Arbizu play two servant girls in one of the historical skits and they had lots to say about how women were treated back then.
Women were treated horribly back then, Wagner said. We were considered useless, that we were just there to serve them.
The double-standard was strictly enforced throughout hundreds of years.
Guys were top dog and they thought they were everything, Shay added. Women were lower than everything.
The fair will show other aspects of life, from small details such as the lack of silverware at the dinner table to larger issues, such as the huge loss of knowledge and information after the fall of Rome. Hundreds of years would go by until the Renaissance, and during that dark era even the church priests were allied to aid and abet the reigning powers.
It was probably dark and scary and sad, said Wagner.
History came alive for the students thanks to seventh-grade teacher Susanne Pearson, who found a way to get students to connect with their subject. They have been studying the medieval period for about six weeks, preparing their roles in the fair from the get go, and for Madison Pickard it has been a blast.
Im so sad that we only have a few weeks left. Pickard said.
Miss Pearson rocks, shes my favorite teacher, added Abizu.
We dont get taught out of a book, chipped in Shay.
She tells us the real stuff, Wagner seconded.
Every member of the group could recite historical dates from the very first day in class, and they said the history heads Pearson used helped them remember the people and personalities behind what would be otherwise an arcane history recital.
Shes always supportive of the stuff we do, said Cody Randolph.
This is the whole, unique, amazing class, Pickard said.
The Marysville Middle School Medieval Fair will be held on the football field at the school, at 4923 67th Street NE. The school PTSA will be selling food and beverages, but the far itself is free and runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. For more information the school phone is 360-653-0615.