George Coulam was a troubled man.
The founder, owner, and “king” of the Texas Renaissance Festival died by suicide on May 21. He recently lost a case that would force him to sell the festival, as well as the mayor’s race in Todd Mission, dethroning a man who had ruled his small corner of Texas for more than a generation. According to Anthony Laporte, counsel for new owner, Meril Rivard, the sale of the festival should still be finalized later this summer.
Everyone agrees that TRF should continue. It’s a beloved institution, and the largest fair of its kind in the world. On good days, it’s a magical place. I’ve been going there since I was 15 years old.
On bad days, it resembled the man who built and shaped it. For decades, tales of Coulam’s insatiable sexual appetite and disregard for personal boundaries were common around the fairgrounds. Multiple female employees came forward in recent years to accuse him of sexual harassment, at least two of whom pursued the matter in court. According to some employees, Coulam would hire people based on how attracted he was to them, and he rode around the grounds in shorts with no underwear so his penis would stick out. In the HBO docuseries Ren Faire, Coulam was seen obsessing over sugar babies, younger women he could finance the lifestyles of in exchange for dates. Until the day he died, his official bio mentioned how sexually active he was.
When you build an empire to fulfill your sexual wants, that empire inevitably grows to resemble its maker. The podcast Crime Waves: Renaissance, TX chronicled the sharp rise in date rapes occurring at the festival. Multiple people reported being drugged and waking up with injured genitals after being assaulted.
Over the past ten years, the festival also grew increasingly sexual even as it promoted itself as a family friendly outing. The campgrounds where people would sleep after a long day at the fair have always had a reputation for bawdiness, but they became downright dangerous.
“The rapey part won’t go away until the clans are policed,” said Albert Nurick, a marketing professional from The Woodlands who has been attending TRF since 2001, in response to a Facebook post about TRF’s character. “Some clans run themselves honorably. But some don’t, and protect the abusers in their midst. The crappy clans circle the wagons and shun the women who dare go public when a popular member assaults her. It would require the men who lead these clans to suddenly develop integrity.”
The clans he refers to are the power brokers in the various circles of TRF. They tend to group by theme, such as pirates, fairies, or the various nationalities. Some of the clans have been a part of the festival since the early days, creating structures of influence that can be fiercely defended. Unfortunately, it’s also a prime way for abuse to become systemized.
“TRF camping has gone beyond sleazy in a fun way and now it’s just dumb, people are getting their lives ruined through injury and overdoses and assaults every year,” said another longtime attendee who wished to remain anonymous. “Hopefully, the faire gets cleaned up and becomes its full potential.”
There would be a lot of pushback if the new owners did start instituting a code of conduct that punished sexual harassment and assault. It’s something I’ve seen first hand in another venue.
When I took over The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the River Oaks Theatre in 1999, I made a bunch of new rules. No more unaccompanied minors. No more nudity from the cast or from asking members of the audience to strip. Cut down on needlessly edgelord content that was alienating people. Anyone caught creeping was out, no exceptions. It didn’t make the show tame by any means, but it made it significantly less gross and predatory.
A bunch of longtime cast members revolted, screaming that I was robbing the show of its true nature and going PC. Many of them had been there longer than me. Who was I to tell them they couldn’t take their dicks out in front of a 17-year-old?
But just like that, there was a lot less bullshit. Audiences felt more welcome, women reported far less harassment, and one of the people I kicked out later ended up on a sex offender registry.
In 2014, I published an opinion piece here at Houston Press about how tired I was of dudes (and it almost always is dudes) screaming sex jokes at my wife as we walked hand in hand with our five-year-old at RenFest. Then I spent the next week fielding hate mail from people who assured me the entire point of TRF was to act like frat bros around wenches. I must be a prude.
I’m not a prude. In addition to Rocky Horror, I am also the number one Google search result for “Doctor Who sex toys.” The thirstiest article on this site was written by me.
There is a time and place for sexual content. If the festival is inviting families out, less energy should be focused on making sure a handful of pervs can get their rocks off. TRF regularly invites high school classes to come out (that’s how I first went). Either the creeps don’t care or, more disturbingly, they think that’s actually a plus for the sexual content. The festival has always had an unfortunate creepy streak, something that is apparent in the way grown men leer into the decolletage of teenage girls in period dress.
This is an opportunity for the new owners to revamp the festival and expel Coulam’s sinister influence. Over the years he ran the festival, he surrounded himself with people who would either help him creep on women, or who would at least ignore his deeds to keep the fair running. Most of those people are still there, hoping that nothing changes.
“When something is run by a certain type of person then people of the same ilk/mindset think that it’s OK for them to show their true colors,” said Michelle Holloman, a Cypress bookkeeper who has been going since 1994 before stopping because she was tired of being propositioned for sex. “I said something similar when that orange guy took to power. So hopefully new ownership will set a new mindset with the people.”
There is no stopping all sexual harassment and assault, nor can you police all bawdy humor and off-color remarks. Half a million people attended TRF in 2024, and thousands work there in some capacity. Crime is inevitable.
But it can be mitigated, and it doesn’t have to be tacitly encouraged by a sexpest at the top. With Coulam gone, there’s no reason to maintain that miasma of lust that followed him wherever he went. Those who want to be at TRF for the art and fun of it can remain if they straighten up. The rest should be booted. Sexual crimes can be more thoroughly investigated. Victims can be heard. A balance can be struck struck between freedom and safety.
All it takes is making it very clear the Texas Renaissance Festival’s purpose isn’t to feed unsuspecting victims to a handful of men. If TRF wants to get out from under the shadow of Coulam, the new owners need a code of conduct and the spine to enforce it. That goes for both employees and attendees. Harassers should be shown the gate again and again until word gets around that this isn’t the place for that sort of thing.
Otherwise, it will just continue to degenerate. More than a few people I’ve talked to have long since abandoned TRF for Sherwood Forest Faire in Bastrop County despite the long drive simply because it’s nice to be able to walk along without some someone shouting bad sex jokes at your breasts. Or your kids.
