"You're only as good as your audience."

The street show (as I briefly and badly mentioned long ago) is the product of a street performer’s and her audience’s combined labor. The audience's role in street performance is just as important as the busker's in creating a distinctive urban "vibe."

How so? What happens when the audience fails to live up to their job as co-creators of a show - and "patrons" of street art? Some street performers will stop mid-show if they sense that their audiences are not appreciating their performance.

One particular show was cut short in just such a way. When a group of street acrobats asked their audience to “make as much noise as [they] possibly can!” and the response was lackluster, the acrobats immediately turned off the music and turned their backs to the audience.

Yes... street performers can fly.
Street performers = superheroes.
Yup.
Oh. And note the awesome audience.

When I asked one of the acrobats about this later, he explained their decision:

"I mean, it’s not easy what we do. Like, we can get hurt. Like right now, my knee is hurting. But I will do a show if the energy’s there. For me it’s not about the money all the time…. I was taught, you’re only as good as your audience. And if the audience is great, you’re gonna have a great show, you know? But, I mean, we did all of that building up this energy to grab the crowd and we were like, you wanna see the show? And they blahaaaaah. If we don’t get a good response in the beginning, it doesn’t make sense to do the show because that lets us know how the end will go. If they don’t give us enough energy, we’re not gonna do it because we could hurt ourselves and we’re exerting energy and they’re not giving it back to us. It doesn’t make sense to do the show."

The exchange of energy and the failure to exchange energy is, for these acrobats what makes or breaks a show. An audience that refuses to acknowledge the value that these buskers can give will, in effect, not be given a performance. By not acknowledging the value of a show, the audience lets the acrobats “know how the end will go.” Lackluster audience participation signifies the production of an eventual product that may just not be worth the labor.

While their decision to stop their performance mid-show has a jarring effect on their audience, they are not the only performers who manipulate the length of their show based on how likely they think their audiences will pay them. Jeremy, for example, does not start a full show unless a sizable audience has already gathered. If he manages to stop someone but is unable to build a good audience, he will do one trick, ask them for a tip, and move them along. Otherwise, he would waste his time and energy working for an audience that would not participate as much in the co-generation of an affective experience when, instead, he could be working to build another, better audience.

Tin Man also turns off his music and declares to his audiences, “I’m on break!” if his audiences have stopped paying him. He explained:

"That’s why I don’t dance all the time when people donate. I might get one or two donations, but if I don’t feel that appreciation from the crowd, there’s no reason to give my all into it because they’re not going to appreciate it. Not gonna appreciate it. I’ve been rejected so many times. [...] Those people are expecting you to do something for nothing. So he [another performer] dictates how long his show is – hell yeah. He says, ‘I’m cutting this one short.’ Ah, yeah. I hop off and say I’m on break. Yeah. Right in the middle of the song. I’m on break!"

These examples are all instances when street performers gauge how much “appreciation” their audiences will have for their show, prior to the moment when they have expended time and energy performing, and prior to the moment when they have actually requested money. In these instances, the street performer attempts to maintain control by manipulating who they want as members of their audiences.

An audience’s acknowledgement of the value of a show is thus indicative of the subsequent role they may play in generating additional value for the street performance. Their failures, as well as their triumphs, reveal just how closely linked they are to the affective labor of a street show. In the end, this link is what connects them with their fellow audience members.

In addition to the shared affective experience as members of the same audience, they also share in the work of nonalienated labor. By being co-laborers in the generation of an affective product that they, in turn, enjoy together, indifferent strangers develop the ‘intimacy’ of intimate strangerhood. Street performers, in effect, take indifferent passersby and turn them into intimate strangers.