The North Florida Renaissance Faire takes place this weekend in Tallahassee. Shane Adams is one of the event organizers and is the owner and Captain of the Knights of Valor. He is also the former star of the History Channel show “Full Metal Jousting.” But Adams says he’s been interested in the activities of knights since long before that.
Adams described his childhood as “a little kid in Canada, with a dream of wanting to be a knight.” He says he used to think of Robin Hood as his idol, “but then I saw the Black Knight and the jousting, and it was like why shoot an arrow when you can actually get on a horse and hit somebody with a big stick.”
This dream later led Adams to create his show for the History Channel, “Full Metal Jousting.” It featured two teams of eight competing in full-contact competitive jousting. Prior to the show, Adams was already a known name in the medieval combat sport community, but his trajectory toward television started when “a writer from the New York Times contacted me, Dashka Slater, she said her editor was a big fan of jousting. And I’d been producing jousting shows and competing in jousting tournaments and representing Canada, all throughout North America, and what we did was real. So, she came out to one of the tournaments and did an interview with a lot of the guys that were there, and she painted me as North America’s most dedicated promoter and biggest jousting star.”
Adams says festival goers this weekend will get a taste of what he calls his “medieval circus.” The faire takes place at the North Florida Fairgrounds. “When people come up to the gate, they’re going to see a castle façade, they’re going to get their tickets scanned and as soon as they come though those gates, they’re transported back in time. Whether that be a historical age or an age of fantasy, every element can exist; you can be a barbarian or you can be a medieval knight.”
Adams was a guest on the most recent episode of WFSU’s podcast, The Warehouse.
You can hear more from his conversation with host Josh Johnson wherever you get your podcasts.
