One rainy Saturday morning, I found great treasure on Roosevelt Island.

Allow me to explain and spoiler I mean metaphoric treasure!

By the Mummers, a theatre company I’m a part of, was hired by a Renaissance-themed fall festival on Roosevelt Island. A troupe of 6 actors would perform interactive theatre with the guests and occasionally sing folk songs. Roosevelt Island is a funny little part of NYC that not everyone knows about. It’s an island in the East River, sitting in the East River sandwiched between Brooklyn and Manhattan. A New York adventure combined with the chance to run around playing wacky Renaissance pirate? Yarrr! I jumped at the chance.

Our group of Mummers journeyed to the isle of Roosevelt. The island is only reachable by subway or tram, that means next to no cars on the one street circling the border. It was a blustery day, wet and chilly, but our spirits were high and our makeshift cloaks warm enough. The festival was a blast! Roosevelt Island has such a community feeling. We entertained a lot of little kids. A couple little boys took quite the fondness to piratical me, getting pirate face paintings and playing “Capture the Pirate” (better known as tag) on the lawn.

Other parts of the festival included kite making, a clown making balloon animals, pumpkin painting, an abandoned castle (it gave off that vibe anyway), kids building castles out of cardboard boxes, and awesome views of the city!

Pretty kites on the southern tip of the island.

Pirate me! With my lame-but-safe-for-kids plastic sword and creepy abandoned-castle-like building.

Creepy abandoned building that used to be a small pox hospital back in the day!

Our crew! Wench, pirate, maiden, minstrel, maiden, wench! Or Benny and the Blondes!

See what I mean about the great views?

Who doesn’t love singing about Drunken Sailors and shipwrecks?

So much fun, me hearties! Thanks for having us Roosevelt Island and the Fall for Arts Festival. It’d be awesome if y’all “liked” By the Mummers on Facebook– we have some great stuff in the works!

When leaving the island I was super, super excited to take the tram. It’s this little box car that runs on a wire over the river! It’s so cool! I’ll tell you all about it next week! For now, I’ll leave you with a song- this is actually us performing! You can hear me trying out some harmonies.