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Practicing Before the Court
By Patrick Tandy
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Attorney Lisa Sanders (right,
in pirate boots) giving a fencing demonstration with other members
of the Calvert-Arundel Swordsmen at the 2004 Maryland Renaissance Festival
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The driving force behind obsession
is seldom easy to explain.
Attorney Lisa Sanders understands
obsession. She’s had a few, and she will readily defend them – the
Scottish broadsword standing against the back wall of her suburban Upper
Marlboro office leaves little doubt of that…
♦♦♦
“I think most people really
do think that swordplay is lightsaber-type stuff,” explains Sanders,
who, along with her 11-year-old daughter Cecilia, has been mastering the
sport of fencing for the last year-and-a-half.
“It’s not really
swashbuckling, per se; it’s a lot more precise,” she adds. “I
saw a documentary once [about] James Brown and how every movement he makes
is a signal to his band for something else they’re supposed to do;
even though it looks to the audience like it’s all very spontaneous,
it’s actually all very planned-out. Fencing is a lot like that. That’s
why we spend a lot of time on drills: so that stuff becomes second-nature,
so that you don’t have to spend a long time thinking about it.”
Sanders’ interest in fencing
had actually originated a few years earlier (seven or eight, by her recollection),
following a fencing demonstration she had seen at the Maryland Renaissance
Festival (www.rennfest.com)
in Crownsville.
“I had thought about doing
it then,” Sanders admits, “[but] at the time I was living in
Prince George’s County, and it wasn’t nearby and I didn’t
know anybody else who did it.
“About three years ago,
we moved down to Calvert County. Last year, we went to the Southern Maryland
Celtic Festival (www.cssm.org),
and once again, the same group was there, doing a demonstration. It turned
out that they met at one of the elementary schools near where we live, [and]
I said, ‘This time, I’m going to do it.’”
The serendipitous group in question
turned out to be the Calvert-Arundel Swordsmen (http://www.houseofhate.com/cas/cas_main.htm),
an organization that promotes training in and knowledge of fencing, particularly
in an historical context. Now, twice a week, Sanders and her daughter hone
their skills in foil and sabre – the first two of three basic weapon-stages,
respectively, that define the sport (the third is épée). Last
April, they attended their first competition, the Cherry Blossom Open, hosted
by the US Fencing Association (www.usfencing.org)
at the University of Maryland, College Park.
“I just thought, ‘Hey,
let’s go see what it’s like,’” Sanders recalls. “‘Just
remember, we’re here to have fun; we’re not trying to win or
anything – which is a good thing. Cecilia, who was 10 at the time – she
came in last. She was the youngest person there. I mean, there was nobody
else under 12, and I felt really bad for making that her first experience.
But she was a trooper, and she had a good time with it. Most of the kids
there were college [age], so they were serious, you know? There were a smattering
of folks my age and up, some of whom had obviously been fencing for a long
time and were very good at it. [There were also] others who were just starting
out like we were.
“What I like about the
club that we’re with is that you don’t have to be into
the competition,”
Sanders admits. “If you just want to learn how to fence, you can just
learn how to fence. So much of the stuff now…if you want to take horseback
riding, they want to get you ready to show. If you want to dance, they want
to get you ready for competition. If you want to play softball, you have to
hit the tournament circuit or whatever.”
And besides, competition is not
the only route for the serious fencer.
“The core of the group
also do reenactments, so they’re more into learning classical fencing,
different time periods,” Sanders explains. “Some folks are interested
in medieval. Some people are more interested in Renaissance. Some like the
18th Century.”
As for Sanders herself, well…working
with the Swordsmen has earned her admission to practice before a court of
an entirely different nature…
♦♦♦
“I have this interest in
medieval and Renaissance English and Scottish history,” explains Sanders,
who has been making annual pilgrimages to the Maryland Renaissance Festival
with her family for more than a decade. It is an interest, she explains,
that was first sparked in earnest by the movie Braveheart, Mel Gibson’s
biopic on Scottish national hero William Wallace. “I had to know more
about that time period, and from that…it just kind of grew. I’d
read one book, and then I’d go,
‘Well, I wonder what happened after Robert the Bruce – what then happened
with Scotland?’”
Outside of reading, Sanders quenches
her curiosity by taking part in the Swordsmen’s annual recreation of
the Scottish Court (under the meticulous direction of Swordsmen
“maestro” Greg Davis) at the “Ren Fest”.
“It’s strict reenactment,
so it’s all very period-appropriate,” she notes. “Greg
likes us to do some research, pore over what people would wear. Reenactment
folks are very serious about being appropriate – like you can’t
wear polyester, because it didn’t exist. So you’ve got to go
get your natural fibers. Certain colors weren’t around.
“Two or three times during
the day we’ll have a fencing demonstration where we have to go get
out of [our costumes] and get into our fencing gear, then Greg goes through
the history of swords and sword-fighting and fencing. We do the little demonstration
on the stage, and then we go and put all our stuff back and put on our [hoop
skirts] again.”
However, participation in the
Scottish Court required a good deal more than tailored period costumes, or
even knowing how to fence.
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I'm originally from Toledo, Spain...
and for some reason I left Toledo to go to dark and dreary Scotland!
Lisa Sanders
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“We all have to develop
a character with a story that we can go talk to any patron at the Ren Fest
about,” Sanders explains. “When I first told Greg that I wanted
to do it, he said, ‘That’s fine – [but] you just have to
know [that] I really like things to be accurate, so it can’t just be
that you’re pretending you’re in the Scottish Court. You have
to have a reason why you, as a black woman, would be in the Scottish court.’ So
I did my research, and I came up with my story: I’m originally from
Toledo, Spain, the daughter of a family that converted from Islam to Christianity
more than 200 years previously. My husband was the youngest son, so he was
able to marry for love…and for some reason I left Toledo, Spain, to
go to dark and dreary Scotland!”
Beyond the reenactment, Sanders
saw additional value in assembling the back story of her alter-ego, Catherine
Gordon, wife of the seneschal to the Earl Marischal (Lord William Keith)
of Scotland.
“[It was] something that
my kids and I could research together,” she explains. “Now they’ve
learned something about it. In turn, we learned a little bit about medieval
Renaissance Spain, which we hadn’t known about. Now we’re spreading
it out into France, to learn a little bit more about France during the same
time period – trying to hook those two up. So we spend a lot of our
spare time on either reading history books or historical novels.”
Sanders also remarks on the growth
that she has seen of the Renaissance Festival itself.
“When we first went, [there
were] smaller crowds,” she recalls. “The crowds have grown over
time, so I think the word has kind of spread. The Maryland one is actually
considered one of the better ones in the country…because it is a mix
of enough family entertainment that people don’t feel that they have
to shield their kids’ eyes, but there’s enough of what I’d
call adult humor going on to [keep the adults] entertained.
“There are Goths who show
up…some people come dressed like Lord of the Rings. You see
a variety of little girls dressed like Snow White or Cinderella. You see
people come in everyday clothes who just kind of marvel at the whole thing.
I’ve noticed that the crowd has gotten a little more diverse, too,
with different ethnic groups coming. I used to go and everybody was of more
European extraction. Now, more people come because they realize it’s
fun. It’s more than,
‘Oh, let’s all run around and pretend we’re English.’”
♦♦♦
Since taking up fencing, Sanders
has developed a keener appreciation for the nuances of the sport: in competition,
reenactment – even in the movies.
“You look at [a movie]
and say, ‘Well, that’s not real – who told them [to do]
that?’” she jokes.
“Honestly, most of them are very serious duels, as opposed to fencing,
[but] you do pay a lot closer attention to what they’re doing.”
She punctuates her words with
a laugh. “It’s like watching a movie about the law: ‘Yeah,
like that would be taken care of in an hour!’
“In a way it’s like
practicing the law: coming up against an opponent that you may not have dealt
with before. Sometimes you learn something new, and sometimes you teach somebody
else something.
“I’ve always had
a few eccentricities,” she adds. “I guess it’s something
of the kid in me that wants to go play dress-up.”
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