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*

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.

A Tale of Two Cities: The Power of Place

I was street performing sometime last weekend.

I neared the end of my show without quite getting to my finale... and I could feel myself faltering. I had a brand new opener. My mid-show routine was going smoothly.

But then I faltered. I didn't have confidence in my finale (my straight jacket routine), so I faltered.
And...

My audience stayed.
My audience STAYED.

I don't think I can over-emphasize how strange that was for me. I didn't have to rush through my transitions to keep them there. When I jokingly messed up a trick, I didn't have to quickly cut into my joke with a, "That was a joke. Don't leave!" (which in itself is a joke, I suppose).

And I didn't have to cut off any applause.
I had learned long ago that applause is bad. When it's not controlled and intentional clapping, then it's a signal to the audience that it's a good time to leave.

But my show needed an ending. And my audience didn't try to rush away like they usually did. I stared at them for a second, wondering why they were still there. When they didn't leave, I moved forward, ending with a finale that I'm still not particularly happy with - but at least it's a finale.

So what changed?

I don't think my performance has really had time to evolve all that much. Unless my new opener is powerful enough to alter the whole tone of my show (maybe it is, but I don't think so).

I think it's the city.

When I started asking about what the street performing scene is like in various international cities, one Boston-based busker told me that there's no such thing as good or bad cities for street performing.

If you're a good performer, he had said, you can stop a crowd anywhere.
That doesn't mean that some crowds aren't easier to stop than others though.

"Faneuil Hall is cheating," I was told - not long after I watched an audience practically materialize around a performer as soon as he turned his music on. And when a recent performer's strike at Faneuil brought these same performers out in search of other venues, they told me that they had to work much harder to build their audiences in places like Harvard Square.

They still managed to build them, of course.
That's because they're really really good.

Harvard Square is harder than Faneuil Hall. But compared to Chicago, Harvard Square is easy. I noted this observation to a busker, who complained, "Chicago is like New York. Everyone's in a hurry to go nowhere."

That's what it was. That's why I had two audience members (a father and his son) stick around for three shows. That's nearly an hour, watching me do the same thing over and over again. I kept on seeing the same faces walk back and forth on the sidewalk. Like the pedestrians on Chicago's Magnificent Mile, these pedestrians are mostly tourists - or, at the very least, people out and about enjoying the day.

But these tourists actually do look like they're looking for something to do. I don't know what the difference is just yet. There's something different about the very nature and "vibe" (whatever that means anymore) of the two cities.

In the meantime, if any Chicago buskers I know would be interested in trying out the scene in Cambridge, let me know if you're in town. I would love to drop a Chicago street performer into Harvard Square and a Boston street performer into Chicago, just to see what would happen.

That's... not exactly how this kind of social science works... but if it happens naturally, I would love to see what comes out of it.

2 Photos - 'Nuff Said

I failed at posting last week... and this week, there won't be much content either. Just some photos a spectator sent me that he took earlier this month.

That said - I was also out busking earlier today and finally figured out how to make my amp work properly! Having sound that people can hear does wonders.... Thank you Happie Amp!

Close Encounters of the Urban Kind: The Tea Shop

Anecdotes from the Street

The Tea Shop

So the other day when I was street performing in Harvard Square, two people walk past and describe something that I hadn't noticed upon setting up in my spot. This episode from my Stick Figure Cartoon Series tells the story of that encounter...

A Mad Dash to the Faneuil Hall Restrooms

I got off early from work Friday afternoon and wandered over to Faneuil Hall. It was my third time there this year but my first time wandering through it alone.

My first thought?

I really needed to pee.

I had climbed up out of the Haymarket T stop with a practically unusable cell phone and an equally unreliable sense of direction. The red brick of the Freedom Trail led me through through the front entrance of Faneuil Hall, past a crowd that surrounded a group of break dancers that I had yet to watch.

I would have stopped, but I needed to pee, so I went into the first building. The stairs to the bathroom were blocked off. I went through that building into Faneuil Hall proper, walked all the way around the food court, and circled the entire area before going into the central building, only to find my pathway to the bathroom impeded by a line of tourists that came hand in hand with the start of Memorial Day weekend.

A few first impressions, as I essentially scoped out the area during a mad dash to find a toilet:

1. These weren't "my streets." I didn't get the same sense of comfort and familiarity that I have when I walk down the Mag Mile in Chicago.
2. It definitely had the same vibe. Mostly tourists wandering around, looking for something to do. No skyscrapers, no cars even. But it was still a city, made up of people who generally ignored each other. I was a stranger among strangers - people ignoring each other out of habit and necessity, but looking for a reason not to.
3. I saw some people who looked like they were street performers, but no actual street performances at the time. Did the recent "Pay to Play" controversy kill off one of the scenes that made Faneuil Hall so famous?
4. And I really really really needed to pee.

Eventually, I ended up near the front entrance to the food court, where the big street shows normally take place. There wasn't a performance going on, but a group of five people were gathered in a tight circle right in the middle of the performance area. One of them had a mic on and a bag of juggling clubs.

I sat down. Watched from afar. When it was clear that a show wasn't going to start anytime soon, I gathered up the courage to approach.

Their first thought? That I was with the Boston Globe, starting off "all friendly and everything" and then whipping out a pen and notebook to get quotes from them.

I laughed uncomfortably, then went on to explain my background in anthropology, as well as my experience as a magician and street performer. I didn't want to hide my research background - especially given how closed and guarded of the craft buskers tend to be.

Their second thought? That I was with "the feds."
Nope. I am not that either.

Then I sat back and watched some of the best street theater Boston has to offer - not as an anthropologist in the field but as an amateur busker learning from the greats of her time.

[Trying out tags for the first time. Not that I really understand them, so I'm not sure if I'm using them right.]
#Faneuil #busking #buskers

"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.