A 30-Year Career Writing and Directing for Medieval Times

Author: Eric Grundhauser / Source: Atlas Obscura

In 1983, the first Medieval Times location opened in Kissimmee, Florida. Leigh Cordner, the dinner theater franchise’s director of show, joined the company 30 years ago at that original location, and has since risen to be the creative brains for all nine Medieval Times shows across the U.

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S. and Canada.

Working with horse trainers, stunt coordinators, musicians, and fictional knights and royals, Cordner has guided the show’s narrative across multiple iterations of the performance. It hasn’t always been easy.

Cordner has had to work to keep a live show featuring sword-fighting, jousting, and feudal intrigue both kid-friendly and consistent across multiple locations. Every change to a scene sends ripples through the entire production. In late 2017, Cordner and company introduced one of the biggest changes in the show’s history, replacing their long-standing king character with a queen.

While the new queen is still in the process of taking her throne, and in advance of a Reddit AMA we’re hosting with Cordner on Monday Feb. 26 at 12 p.m. EST, Atlas Obscura spoke with him about the challenges of installing a female monarch, how he tries to tell a story through action, and why we won’t see dragons at Medieval Times any time soon.

What do you want the feel of a Medieval Times show to be?

It has to be family-friendly, in so much as we’re killing off four or five guys every night. It’s a family destination. The idea is to weave the story through the action. It would be difficult to have an hour and forty-five minutes of non-stop action. You try to make the characters a little multidimensional along the way.

How do you bring these characters to life?

The audience is divided up into six sections each night, so that relationship [with the knights] has already established itself. Whether we had the king before, or the queen, we make sure the audience understands that all the knights that they’re cheering for are in service to the monarch.

Cordner has also served for many years as one of the show's performers. — Cordner has also served for many years as one of the show’s performers.

We came out of the gate with the first show I wrote. We had an after-the-battle scene all in torchlight, and the guys all in distressed costumes, as a prequel to the show. Then in the next show, we had a flashback scene that we had never done before that took place in the arena, but it was a scene previous to the action in the show. We also started micing some of the knights, which we had never done before, and assigning them speaking roles. That turned into, in the last three shows, the knight wearing the mic, who was subsequently in one of the final combats, was probably going to be carrying one quarter of the dialogue.

After something like 20 years of writing the show on my own, or close to it, I felt like we had probably run all the possibilities. It started seeming repetitive. The king this, the princess that, the king this, the princess that…We were really looking for a way to change the model. And we have to be careful, because people come to see the horses, they come to see the falcon, they come to see the games, they come to see the jousting, so when you look at it, you’re really only talking about 30 percent of the show you can play with.

What kinds of things do people often request to be added to the show?

We have people asking us why we don’t have a dragon, why we don’t use archers. I mean, it’s a 360-degree theater, which way would you like us to shoot the arrows? We had pyro for years, but we took it out. Indoor pyro is expensive and unsafe. A lot of people want us to use fake blood. But we’ve got kids there, and they’re eating dinner. You don’t want to spatter blood all over the front row.

We do take pride that there’s nothing fake about the show. Everybody you see talking is talking. The weapons are real, the combat is real. The stunts on the horses are real. We don’t use anyone in a mask, we don’t use pre-recorded stuff. No video, no lasers. What you see is all real. It’s live.