‘Twelve Days of Boar’s Head’ begins online Jan. 1Date: 12/28/2020 SPRINGFIELD – There’s been no celebratory banner hanging from the majestic bell tower of Trinity United Methodist Church on Sumner Avenue this season. You won’t see the familiar animal trailers in the parking lot, nor see people streaming out of the church on weekend evenings in early January.
But that doesn’t mean the church’s iconic Boar’s Head Festival is not taking place this year.
When COVID-19 restrictions forced the cancellation of the in-person festival, which for more than 37 years has drawn scores of attendees to the church’s sanctuary each night of its performance, Trinity’s Boar’s Head Committee did what so many organizers have had to do in the face of the pandemic.
They reinvented the event.
“Our Boar’s Head Committee cannot simply walk away from the Festival! It’s too ingrained in our DNA after all these years,” Boar’s Head co-chairs Scott and Pat Woodward wrote in a letter to former Festival attendees. “So we are producing an online celebration called “The Twelve Day of Boar’s Head” beginning on [Trinity church’s] website Jan. 1, a lighthearted yet uplifting insight into the process of creating this huge production.”
“The Twelve Days of Boar’s Head” will unfold, free of charge, one video a day Jan. 1 through 12, 2021, on Trinity’s website, https://www.trinityspringfield.org.
Reminder Publishing recently spoke with Nathan Olin, who for many years has presided over Trinity’s Boar’s Head Festival as Lord Asbury – head of the Medieval village where the “festival” is taking place – about reinventing the annual event for this year’s online production.
“There’s a lot of creative people, lots of energy [and] a spirit that is undaunted by our current situation,” Olin said about the push to find a new way to present the Boar’s Head in January 2021. “We have folks who are quite excited about reengineering our tradition into something new for this year.”
Olin said the committee’s decision to spread the festival videos out over the first 12 days of January “harkens back to the 12 Days of Christmas [leading to Epiphany], and the Boar’s Head is an Epiphany celebration.”
The reinvention to an online celebration, Olin said, also reflects what Trinity has always tried to do with the Boar’s Head, which is at its essence the recreation of a Medieval celebration of this important point in the Christian religion’s calendar.
“What we tried to do not just this year but for the past number of years, is to emulate what folks in the 21st century might expect a 1400s Boar’s Head festival would look like,” Olin explained. “It felt even more [important] this year as we are in the midst of congregations and groups who cannot congregate, who cannot commune, who cannot get together. In the Middle Ages there were many plagues and diseases that made life difficult, but it then seems [they are] rising to the occasion and finding a way to be a community, and it fit straight into the message of the Festival, which is the success of light over darkness, which is the message of Epiphany.”
Olin said to create the dozen videos, many iconic scenes from the annual Festival were recreated and filmed in outdoor settings around the church
“What we are doing is re-acting some of the favorite moments in new settings, outdoors and socially distanced,” Olin shared. For example, he said those who have attended the Festival in the past might remember the Woodsmen’s Dance. “So on a beautiful Saturday in October they had choreographed a new version of the dance, involving lots of old men and young men and performed it in a socially distanced way, with masks on, and new costumes, in the parking lot of the church,” he said.
A similar process was repeated on subsequent weekends to recreate the scene with the Prioress “our music director, Becky Isaacson,” as well as scenes with the children’s choir, other singers and “scenes with the light, you may recall that’s a big part of the festival,” Olin continued.
Interspersed with the re-acted scenes from the Festival will be “new stuff” according to Olin. Viewers will get a chance to see “behind the scenes moments, [and] become acquainted with the Trinity church building,” he said. “Boar’s Head is a year-round thing; there are costumes that have to be maintained and updated, a props gallery, and a view of our organ loft; it’s one of the premier pipe organs in the area.
The organ loft viewing is “a fun addition – the audience does not usually get to see in our regular Boar’s Head Festival,” Olin added.
Despite all the work that has gone into the reinvention of the online “Twelve Days of Boar’s Head,” Olin reiterated that the daily videos will be free for the public to view.
“There is no charge [this year], and it’s a gift to the community as it always has been,” Olin said.
The loss of the annual ticket sales, however, will impact the work Trinity does with a host of non-profit partners in the area in the coming year, including “the mobile food bank, Open Pantry, Relay for Life, our own 501c3 urban potential, and the ministry of the church itself,” which Olin said is focused on social justice.
“We are asking, if you have been moved by the Boar’s Head Festival in the [past], if you are moved by the online videos released every day, if you re moved by the mission and message of Trinity Church and the work it has done with so many organizations in the Springfield area, please consider giving what you would spend on a ticket or two [to the festival] this year.”
|
