Wednesday, July 22, 2015

"Do nothing": It's all in the promise

I stopped 5 people.
I think I performed for about 15 minutes before I gave up.

I was standing in the big pitch in Brattle Square. I was there because my inclinations for research (or just hanging out, really - I love anthropology) beat out my desire to perform. But here I was, somehow performing anyway.

Not just performing.

I was trying to build an audience in an unusually large space.
Worse: I was trying to make something of the unusually large space with other performers looking on.

The things that represent the buskers that own them.
There I am, with my straight jacket and a bag with the initials FTL stitched into it.
FTL, by the way, refers to Faster Than Light travel. Or something. [End BSG reference]

My back burned from what I imagined must have been torches shooting out of their eyes. I tried for some time, banging an old magic wand against the side of my table. I had gotten the wand at an auction for a dollar, and I thought if I used it to mimic the rhythmic cry of an auctioneer, people would stop.

At the very least, they'd complain about the noise I was making.

I hadn't planned to perform here. There's a nice corner about a block away where I'm a whole lot more comfortable, where there's plenty of pedestrian traffic and the pavement is both wide enough for an audience and narrow enough for little ol' me to disrupt their flow and easily build a crowd.

But I had decided to watch and learn from other street performers. Being at a pitch with other buskers (with all my gear on hand no less) and not performing? That wouldn't have made sense. So when it was my turn to go (because there was a line, and everyone else had already gone), I swallowed my fear and hopped right on.

"Try moving your table back a little bit," one of the buskers yelled out to me. I turned my head to look back over at them.

"What?"
"Back up a bit. Most of the traffic is going by behind you."
"Oh."

She was right. I dragged my table back a bit. It wasn't enough - there were still a lot of people going by behind me. The space was too big, I was too small. I didn't quite know which way to face. But whatever. Here I was, and as they say, the show must go on.

I caught a kid's attention, but the parents refused to come to my table.
I made a joke about them leaving their kid with me (cuz I'm scary-lookin' and all that).
They didn't budge, so I gave up on them.

In the end, I think I managed to stop 5 people.
I performed for them for about 15 minutes before I gave up.
At least I knew enough to hat them.

I turned to look over my shoulder at the other performers and shrugged, defeated. I tried, and it didn't work out.

"Sometimes, you have to fire your audience," one busker sympathetically said to me after.

As one of the other buskers moved his stuff onto the pitch that I had just walked away from, I got a quick lesson on audience building... both from his performance and from the two buskers who just watched.

"Do nothing," they told me.

Do nothing. I had started performing too early. Which, pretty much, is what the Chicago 10 Man had been telling me all along:

"99% of street performers are like the TV that’s already turned on when you’re walking past. The show is already going. Matter of fact, if you want to watch it for free, you can. And then walk off. My TV is off. You have to pay to turn my TV on, okay? If I’m moving, then my TV’s on – I’m giving out free shows. Nobody, nobody cares about my dance moves. Nobody cares! Nobody cares about how amazing I look. Nobody. The only thing that’s in their head is, 'Is he real?' Ok? 'If he isn’t real, then I gotta see.'"

In other words, it's not the delivery of the performance itself that makes a good show; it's the promise of something amazing. And the great performers - they can be absolutely entertaining doing absolutely nothing.

So next time (I was told), take a deep breath. Slow down.
And do nothing.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Close Encounters of the Urban Kind: The Magician's Assistant

Anecdotes from... the Old Boy's Club?
The Magician's Assistant

First: A quick disclaimer. The majority of magicians I meet are very friendly, very supportive, and generally awesome people. That said, the world of magic is secretive, closely guarded, and primarily male. Every so often, little things happen that make me squirm - honest, genuine mistakes I think, but micro-aggressions nonetheless.

As another female solo street performer told me, people will automatically assume that she is in another person's act if she's standing next to another male street performer. The same would never be said of two male buskers standing next to one another.

Woohoo! This will be exciting. I get to meet other magicians!

Yup yup! This introduction is real.

Pleasure to meet ya!

Er... I am over here. Over here!

And, uh, yeah. I've got my own show.

MY OWN SHOW!

And and and... I know you didn't say that I'm the assistant.
But if we were two guys, you totally wouldn't assume that we perform together.
Or maybe you're assuming that we perform together cuz we're both Asian?
...That's not any better.

Words now. Verbalize those thoughts, Felice.

...

It is now... just awkward.
But YOU CAN STILL TALK TO ME! I am still here.
Not invisible.

*sigh*

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Harvard Square in the 70s

"It's like the 70s out here," Cate Great observed as we sat in the corner of Brattle Square, watching another busker do his act.

When Faneuil Hall Management instituted a set of new regulations against its street performers (where they, among other things, could "dictate performers' schedules, deny them the right to cancellations, and ban 'hat lines' asking for tips"), street performers responded with a strike.

When that strike supposedly ended and the dispute had been settled, it was too late: their trust had been breached.

"I just don't feel like performing there anymore," one street performer had told me. And that distrust created - on that one Saturday afternoon at least - a migration of some of Faneuil Hall's best buskers into Harvard Square.

A satellite view of Brattle Square from Google Maps
There were five of us there that day, "sharing the pitch" (or taking turns performing in one spot). Though I saw four other buskers there, there were only at most two other performers waiting to perform at any one time.

The big red X on the above bird's eye view of the pitch is where the show happened. The little blue circle is where we hung out as we waited. And the vibe of the "70s" - what Cate Great had mentioned - had to do with both the sudden resurgence of variety acts in this spot (variety acts, as in juggling, magic, physical comedy, acrobatics, and the like) as well as the sense of community that comes out of sharing a pitch with other buskers.

One thing I learned?
Buskers love to analyze.

A bunch of stuff.
This is where buskers left their gear as they waited for their turn to perform.
And it's not just about reflecting and analyzing when a researcher asks specific questions. It's about analyzing each other, analyzing themselves, and working constantly to improve their art.

As I was sitting there watching one show, two other performers near me pointed out a couple. Those two were "critical," one said to another. If they stayed - even for a little - then the audience will come. If they left too early, the performer will have to work a lot harder to build his audience.

Sure enough, they stayed, and the audience materialized around them.

Another thing I learned:

There's a world of difference between a circle show and a sidewalk show.

For one: your audiences are much much much larger. The shows have to play bigger. And, because of that, you can do fewer shows.

I took a shot at working that space and failed miserably the first time around. The second time around, I did a little bit better - but not by much.

Working a smaller space where I'm much more comfortable (like at the little green square in the map above, where another magician frequently works) has more to do with my physical presence interrupting the flow of passersby. In these larger spaces, the idea is the same - but at a much larger scale.

Cate Great, making herself big.
The busker has to make herself even bigger, which is even harder in the larger space (and not only for someone of my height and stature).

And since it takes longer to build an audience that can fill the space, the busker has to manage the crowd in different ways - getting them to stick around those first five, ten, fifteen minutes of audience-building.

None of this is any different from what I learned from Chicago's performers; it's a different slant to what is ultimately the same basic principles, illustrated with different examples that can help me better understand what they've been showing me all along.

What does this mean? Weeks of more analysis, maybe. I'm not sure if I can do that in a blog post without doing it elsewhere first... but we shall see.