Robert Bryant loves to dress as a pirate.

It just “feels right,” and he likes the compliments he gets from women.

“I almost feel like I was born in the wrong time,” Bryant said.

But his pirate costume proved beneficial earlier this decade when he was recruited for the Fishers Renaissance Faire.

Bryant, 43, Kokomo, showed up to the first fair dressed as a pirate. His costume and interaction with cast members caught the attention of the fair’s organizers, and they asked him to come back.

Bryant will make his fifth consecutive appearance at the Fishers Renaissance Faire this weekend.

Bryant’s success story is one of many the fair will celebrate during its fifth anniversary, and the fair’s organizers hope to have even more to celebrate in the future.

The fact that the fair is still alive and growing is reason enough to celebrate, said Adam Fivush, chairman of the fair.

“I knew if we did well that first year that we would keep going,” Fivush said. “It’s an untapped market for an interesting community event.”

The fair, a fundraiser for the Sister Cities Association of Fishers, is set in 1579 Billericay, England, which is Fishers’ sister city. Costumed actors talk in the dialect of that time and offer guests the food and entertainment of Renaissance England.

The Sister Cities Association wasn’t sure what people would think of the fair’s approach to history, but the fair has attracted about 47,000 guests and maintained several dedicated volunteers during its first five years, Fivush said.

It had to move to Conner Prairie because it quickly outgrew its original location at Fishers Heritage Park at White River.

The fair has raised money to send Fishers teachers and students to Billericay, England, and to begin a scholarship program for seniors at Fishers and Hamilton Southeastern high schools.

Fivush and his wife, Andrea, who have helped organize the fair since its beginning, want to keep raising money, but they hope to expand the fair in the future.

They want to find a permanent home for the fair so they can build sets, such as a Shakespearean theater. The Fivushes said they likely would need land or monetary donations to achieve those goals.

“Those are big, giant, win-the-lottery goals,” said Andrea Fivush, who’s in charge of casting. “I’d be thrilled to keep going another year or two.”

Angela Jones, a Fishers resident who plays Queen Elizabeth, hopes the fair goes on for more than one or two years.

Jones, who’s British by birth, was talked into playing the queen at the first fair because of her accent and became hooked. She now plans to play the queen as long as she can.

“You just get caught up in it,” she said. “They’re going to have to pry this one from my cold, dead fingers.”