Tuesday, June 28, 2011

#2-A rundown on street theatre dynamics and online applications

I might work on that title...It's a bit clunky...

Anyway.

Dynamic 1

How to create a stage in public

Now to be clear

The space between the performer and the audience is what we are talking about here, although the space the audience are on needs to be owned by you also because it's a catchment area useless to anyone else while you are working except perhaps pickpockets.
It's real estate, free land, you borrow it, do your business and then relinquish it.
Your audience defines it by their focus, their wee heads are all pointing in your direction and they have lent you their attention

Performers congregate at the prime locations and then usually rotate, allowing each other use of the space. You might get one or more shows done in a day but prime spots are worth the wait because of the crowds and the return from them.

London, Paris, Sydney etc each has one or more prime spots that performers head to. There are other performers who branch out and find niches of their own, forging new territories that are initially exclusively theirs until such time as others discover their now proven potential, or not. It's all very fluxy.

The online equivalent of this real estate is virtually limitless .

A youtube channel
A blog
A website

or any combination of these.

There... done, you have your own stage. No competition for space, take as much as you need.

It's too easy. 

No really, It's so easy it can lull you into a state wherein the next thing, because it so comparatively difficult, fries your mind.

There you are, on a pitch that is so large you can see the curvature of the earth, and it's teeming with people, staggering numbers of people wandering about but the catch is that you are invisible. You can see them but they cannot see you. You can invent yourself as a skyscraper sized luminous scrotum but nobody's going to notice.

Until you do that one thing that will define everything from that point on.

You must engage them.

I'll cover element 2, 'How to create an audience' tomorrow.





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