To: lindahl@pbm.com
Cc: cley@juno.com, minstrel@pbm.com
Subject: Re: minstrel: Nature of Bardic Competitions
Message-Id: <19981004.163317.4791.2.cley@juno.com>
References: <199810041656.MAA19880@xkey.com>
From: cley@juno.com (cynthia j ley)
Date: Sun, 04 Oct 1998 20:46:18 EDT
Sender: owner-minstrel@rt.com
Precedence: bulk

>Actually, I'd like to defend that person, a little. Many people are
>interested in entertainment and not research. If so, they may end up
>either reading about authentic works in a book, or doing something
>modern. In that situation I try to flip through the book, and if it
>has what I think are flaws, I'll try to point out a better source, or
>try to explain what the flaws are, and maybe even explain a little
>about how to do better research. But I won't get upset by lack of
>research if the competition is not about research; if the competition
>is about entertainment but allows or requires documentation, waving
>a book is a lot better than nothing.

To some extent, I agree with you. However, this assumes that the judge
has the time to make such a critical analysis in the process of also
judging the entrant.

Granted, there are some books well known to be acceptable as sources,
such as the Oxford Book of English Madrigals. Then there are things no
one except the entrant has ever heard of, and teaching is part of the
task of a competitor.

This is not to say that I expect someone to come out into a performance
competition and waive their 300 page thesis at me. But I do expect them
to back their choices, to explain what they are performing, to give me
some kind of a cultural context, and to hopefully have done a little more
work getting there. Most of the bardic competitions 
in the U.S. part of An Tir expect that the entrants will have written up
a short (usually a page or so) bit about their work and their sources.

>> However, there are venues for research papers in competitions at 
>branch, regional, and Kingdom levels, and this opportunity should be
taken
>> advantage of if possible.

And that's where that thesis comes in.

>Actually, my kingdom and the other kingdoms I go to events in rarely
>have comptitions wtih a "research paper" category. I, being weird,
>occasionally hold "documentation-only" competitions, in which you
>submit any kind of entry you like, but only the documentation is
>judged.  I've also seen "research paper" categories which are arranged
>so as to exclude performing arts.

What seems to happen here is that those who are entering more generalized
competitions (such as regional and Kingdom A&S competitions)  take
advantage of the research paper category offered by such contests if
they're really into research. However, it is common practice for those
entering the performance contests at these more generalized venues to
write up findings papers to go along with their performance, and that the
paper and performance are judged as a whole.


						Arlys

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