The Bristol Renaissance Faire is a nine week role play festival held in Bristol Wisconsin. Open 10 a.m.-7 p.m. every weekend from July to early September, the Faire hosts hundreds of patrons every day. Many patrons come in full costume, ready to partake in the Renaissance era festivities, but even the majority of attendees who don’t dress up are able to experience performances, foods, and shops imitating life in 16th century England.

Hundreds of workers are employed by the Faire each year to run the stages, restaurants, and shops within the grounds.

The network of shops around the Faire, known as the marketplace, hosts upwards of 100 independent business every season. Individual shops are managed by different shop owners and craftsmen.

“I can’t go back to a regular job,”shop owner Shannon Morgan said.

Morgan has been a creating and selling leather masks at Renaissance Faires across the country for the last five years. Since 2015 owning her shop, Mischief Masks, has been her full time job.

“I get to do art for a living,” Morgan said. “Which is something I never thought I would get to do.”

Traveling across country and setting up her shop at multiple Faires, Morgan is able to support herself fully off her mask sales.

“I stay in a lot of Airbnbs,” said Morgan.”But [at] some Faires you can get living space.”

Faires sometimes take Morgan thousands of miles away from her home in Fresno, California, in which case she must find lodging within or near Faire grounds to stay for the weeks she is setting up shop. With the prices of living space on Faire ground upwards of $1,000 per season, Morgan often finds herself staying in her van.

“The fairgrounds are safe,” Morgan said. “So I feel safe staying there.”

With on site security teams, first aid, after hours restaurants and bathrooms, staying in her van on the grounds is Morgan’s preferred living space when she is away from home.

Getting to the Faire and having goods to sell aren’t the only concerns for a shop owner.

“I have to pay fees to the Faire,” Morgan said. “There is a booth rental fee, a faire booth fee, and a percentage of your sales goes to the faire.”

A chunk of the income she makes goes into paying the Faire for allowing her to sell on their grounds, her travel costs, the high prices of the materials needed to make the masks and to pay her own employees.

“I have about ten to fifteen employees,” Morgan said.

Each season Morgan employs workers to help her with the daily duties of running the shop; oftentimes Faires will have overlapping seasons, forcing Morgan to employ people to be in charge of Mischief Masks shops at different locations.

Many workers at the Faire are employed by the independent businesses on the grounds.

“I manage purchases,” Nora Klick said. “Stock and dust shelves, and answer any questions customers might have.

For the past two years, Klick has been working for the Clove and Hive company during the Faire season. Her job is to aid the shop owner and do miscellaneous tasks.

“I make $11 an hour,” said Klick. “Plus anything from the tip jar.”

The average marketplace worker gets paid an hourly wage of $11. Shop owners employ workers that are local to the area of each Faire, so there is no expatriation of travel expenses for their duties. Workers are not expected to pay any fees to the Faire for their employment.

“A lot of my friends worked at the faire before I was hired,” Klick said. “One of them told me the honey shop was hiring.”

The hiring process is a causal event handled entirely by shop owners. With a hundred different shop needing to hire workers, many shop owners rely on recommendations to find employees. For many shops, little to no experience is required as a prerequisite and most employees work for many consecutive years under the same employer.

“I love the people I work with; it’s like a family there,” Klick said. “I’m friends with the owners and employees of all the surrounding shops and we’ll all help each other out.”

Many of the companies and employees at the Faire have personal relationships with one another. Although not every employee personally knows one another, everyone is willing to help other shops or employees whenever they can.

Working at different levels at the Bristol Renaissance Faire has greatly varying expectations. Every individual employee must follow their own set of rules and requirements depending on who they’re being employed by.