Sure, it makes sense for us to end the year with a brilliant celebration of our hard work and our mutual love that also serves as an ultimate expression of the freedom we have created for ourselves through our diligence and honor. But cataclysmic catharses don’t just happen because they make sense.

    Any of you who have put in time working for the student body will recognize the way Reed traditions grow and survive; original flashes of inspiration are brought to reality by collective effort and then passed down to the next generation; who expand upon them and toil to keep them alive in a sort of simultaneous preservation, resuscitation and evolution.

    This article, the first in a series, explores the beginning of that process. During its first decade, Linda Howard’s wholesome Renaissance Faire was built upon (and gradually diluted) by more and more of the recognizable components of today’s Renn Fayre. We’ve chosen 1977, the year of the first Renn Fayre Quest and the first softball tournament, as a cutoff for this edition, but that’s somewhat arbitrary. Like everything at Reed, Renn Fayre has been cumulative;  each year, everyone builds upon last year’s efforts. That means what you do this year might just shape its next forty-eight iterations.

Through Sunday the Festival of New Works is presenting five performance theses created by Reed seniors. Brianna Walker’s piece, “Looking for Leon”, opens the Festival by leading audience members from the second floor of the Performing Arts Building to the first. This floor-to-floor movement occurs throughout the festival as most of the performances are split up by their acts, the first act of one play being followed by the first act of another play before a return to the second act of the first play. This shifting back and forth between plays keeps up the pace of the festival. Five productions in one sitting might be too much to handle if there weren’t these moments of moving between floors and cliffhangers between acts of the productions.

Bowie. Lennon. Twiggy. What do these three fashion icons have in common? Jake Gonnella. Not sure why? We’ll explain. Drawing from ’70s style, Jake incorporates pieces from the decade into a distinct brand of contemporary men’s fashion. Although the pieces on their own call to a different era, Jake fuses retro with current by mixing textures, patterns, colors, proportions, and a coy pair of little striped pink socks. Details like these are what make Jake’s style all his own.