“Well, at least a seed has been planted,” she said. When she heard that some audience members didn’t seem to grasp the larger social significance of replacing the king with a queen - and that some even wanted the king back - she seemed slightly crestfallen. She handed her dress and cloak to the woman in charge of cleaning costumes and pulled on an oversize Walmart T-shirt printed with an American flag superimposed over a white tiger. There weren’t many guests left in the lobby on this night, so her shift ended early. (She still teaches vocal technique and acting to children.)Ī year and a half ago, she saw a notice on a school bulletin board for a princess job at Medieval Times. Then she enrolled in acting school, and landed roles in some well-received local productions. Lerner got a job as the manager of a gelato shop.
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Her first credit was as a mean girl on “The Bernie Mac Show.” Instead of attending a high school, she was home schooled so she could dedicate herself to acting and writing music.
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Her father, Fred Lerner, was a stuntman, working in movies like “E.T.” and “Die Hard.” When she was a girl, he cracked his head open jumping out a window on the set of “Days of Our Lives.” The accident wasn’t his fault, she points out, but he was never quite the same after that.
It’s show business, and she has loved it as long as she can remember. She gets paid by the hour, and doesn’t mind having to do her own makeup at a sink near the toilet stalls in the locker room or to work the lobby before and after the performance. She had to make one more trip to lobby to sign autographs and perform any last-minute knighting ceremonies in the same formal, vaguely English accent all the actors are encouraged to use. Lerner drank some water, took off her microphone and found her Sharpie. “All I do is eat, sleep, joust, repeat.”Īfter the show, Ms. But he doesn’t spend much time thinking about it. “You do get a huge reaction from the females in the crowd,” Mr. The switch to a queen hasn’t made much difference, he said, except in the part of the show when she rebukes the sexist knight who defies her. “In my everyday life, I don’t see that I’m treated any different than a man,” she said, “but I know it happens.” His wife, Stacey Freeman, 34, thought the queen freshened things up. His daughter, Miakoda, 13, just shrugged. His son, John Jr., who is 16, said he was mainly there to watch the knights fight. “The king gives it a more powerful feeling,” he said. He was there celebrating his sister’s birthday. One Australian tourist allowed that it was a clever idea, but many audience members said they had no inkling - or didn’t care - that the show had changed.īy the time the performance ended, John Freeman, 38, had formed an opinion.
Lerner perform some preperformance knighting ($20 extra), questions about the social significance of the new show were largely met with blank stares. As guests wandered around with $17 souvenir schooners of beer and watched Ms. “It gives you the chills.”īut on a recent Sunday evening in the lobby of the Dallas castle, the #MeToo movement hadn’t shown up. “If it can help empower women and we can be role models for these young women and men and show you need to respect women, then it is very fortuitous timing,” Ms. She presides over a tournament to find the best knight in the land drama ensues when a knight who has been acting dishonorably challenges her authority.īoth see larger implications in their coronation. In the new script, the queen has taken over for her late father (presumably the king from the previous show). In the show’s old plot, the king had to fight off a challenger from another realm using a knight who bested five others in a tournament. By year’s end, a queen will reign in all nine of the castles in North America. It was rolled out in Lyndhurst, N.J., on Jan. The new production, with a woman wearing the crown, had its debut here last fall, then opened at the castle in suburban Chicago. And its peculiar brand of dinner theater - a sort of G-rated “Game of Thrones” - is taking on an unlikely resonance amid the national jousting over gender equality provoked by the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements. But the show, which draws an estimated 2.5 million customers each year, is replacing all of its kings with queens. For the 34 years Medieval Times has been in business, that monarch has been a man.