'Hecklers'; Two Perspectives.

Robert Nelson / Butterfly Man

Friend or foe; a heckler can be either one. How you deal with a heckler being the determining factor. Yes, even an abusive drunk can become an asset to your show… all I had to do was drop my pants and sing Jambalaya with a wino in Halifax once; we killed ‘em.

The most difficult situation for me was getting heckled too early before I established my character and got the audience on my side. Actually, that wasn’t much of a problem either probably because I was always looking for trouble and more often than not, I found it.

Something about me just pisses people off. Not a great thing when you’re trying to win over a crowd. Looking like a bald Jiminy Cricket with two insects stuck to his skull does have its disadvantages. But look at it like I do, use your imagination and never look in a mirror. In my mind I’m a young Jack Nicholson who’s a great fukin’ juggler.

Hecklers surrounded me during my very first street shows in New Orleans and in some ways they became my security blanket for an otherwise rather banal juggling act. They breathed life into my show and made me who I am… the king of dicks (some say).

I never knew why I was so good with hecklers but it was probably because I like them so much. I treated them mercilessly; like I would my best friend… maybe that’s why I spend so much time alone these days. Aw, it’s probably because I live so far away… yeah, that's gotta be it.

Hey, like ANY volunteer, the secret to turning it all around with a heckler is to: LISTEN TO WHAT THEY SAY. If a performer can USE whatever the heckler says… well he, more often than not, turns that potential tragedy into comedy and, unless I’m mistaken, that's what clowns are supposed to DO, right?

Gazzo and I went head-to-head once in ’88 and his line “The best part of you went down yer fatha’s leg!” was countered with my, “At least I got a father and not 100 suspects.” Gazzo was left drooling and I’m not saying there is any connection here but he had a stroke exactly 7 years later.

Yes, I would’ve been nothing without hecklers. Think Rumble without his nose, think Martin without his wit, think Gazzo without his balls… wait, strike that last one, too easy.

The only danger, and if you are savvy, you can use that, is when facing your possible death. I picked on 4 badass guys biker guys one night and went though the first two before I looked at the third. The third had an American Indian looking head whose face looked like an LA freeway interchange of wrinkles and scars. I saw his alpha+ personality and with simply a squeaky “OK!” went on to the 4th guy instead. It worked; my proof lies in the fact that I’m still alive today.

There are a plethora of heckler anecdotes that swirl in my brain when I think about this topic.Someday, remind me to tell you about the guy who heckled me in Dundalk and the three days that followed. I still get cards from his girlfriend.Or, better yet, listen to others make up their own bullshit tales about me; even I don’t believe I did some of that shit. Of course, I did do a lot of drugs in the early ‘80’s and that's all kinda a blur… so.

I wrote a story once about being heckled by 40+ stand-up comics. It was the ultimate test for me and I passed with flying butterflies… in fact, the lines delivered back and forth that day were so memorable they could be put in a book. 

Oh wait, I did that once. I wonder what happened to that.

It must be around here… somewhere.

Martin Ewen / Lurk

Hecklers.

I don't speak while performing so hecklers can never usually get the better of me although one time in Perth some smart-ass kid with a couple of friends passed by and smirked and out of the corner of his mouth said, “Dick on a stick.” and they fell over laughing and it hurt my feelings and I wanted to torture him to death over weeks.
Cos I'm very sensitive like that. That was over a decade ago. NEVER FORGET!

If you talk in your show I guess it's a live by the sword, die by the sword kinda thing.
The only wisdom I have if your show is aggressive is that you will notice that they guy who mouths off at you is never the leader. The leader is happy where he is. It's always the omega or someone in the lower half of the pecking order. By mouthing off they want to elevate their position and cutting them an new a-hole simply cements their position. You pick on the alpha and you are in for a disproportionate response. He or she will defend their status to the death. I'm speaking of passing people rather than heckles coming from a fixed audience. A fixed audience is your omega and you are alpha so it's you who have to defend to the death in that situation.

Because I don't talk I have the advantage in that I can be more obscene and graphic in response to any language or comment made. If they are teenage I mime popping pimples, I pull my pants out and look down then weep. A roll of the eyes and a couple of wrist flicks proclaims 'wanker' in any language. I then move on, if required, to illustrating the tiny size of my hecklers penis as compared to the size of their mouth. Most people realise they simply cannot win at this point.

David Holder and I along with Chris and Peter from Hoopal held an impromptu heckling workshop while hanging out in Lyttelton during the Christchurch Buskers fest one year.
Here's the winning heckler response. I'll leave you guessing whose it was.

“No, no leave him, he's got a right to be angry.
You see earlier today I was actually at his mothers place, yeah that's right, I was at his mums place and I was pissing on her face, [gasp] Oh come on, you people, let me explain. I wasn't actually pissing on her face, no I was just visiting and went to the toilet and she had all these magazines in the bathroom next to the toilet
and the top one was 'The Face', it's a British magazine, you might know it. And anyway it's embarrassing but I kinda sprayed a little and it hit her magazines there by the toilet and the top one was 'The Face'.
That's all, I mean I wasn't actually pissing on her face.
[perfect pause, then offhand..]
No, no, she was tied up in the bedroom covered in dogshit.”

Beat that!

'Volunteers' Two perspectives.

Robert Nelson/Butterflyman

“Pick me! Pick me!” said the performer as he raised the hand of a rather nondescript member of the audience. I laughed a little and so did the rest of the crowd. It was the first time I saw anyone select a volunteer that way. Maybe I laughed a little less because I saw a little more.

Picking a volunteer can be risky business for sure. You just never know 100% of the time but a seasoned performer knows what to watch out for. Never, I repeat never, use someone who appears too eager. It usually means they have their own agenda and more often than not, they aren’t funny. That and anyone with dreadlocks, don’t ask me why.

Someone too shy or reluctant is just as much of a problem. If you get that vibe, pick someone else and quick… because it can be a real bummer if your choice adamantly refuses to participate. It lets the air out of your comedic balloon pretty quickly and usually has a viral effect on the next selectee. 

You might wonder why volunteers have such power over your act and the answer is simple.
A volunteer, once engaged, becomes the representative of every person in your crowd. Whether they consciously realize it or not, every member of the audience sees themselves up there and well, if your volunteer sucks… nuff said.

Even more important than picking a volunteer is how you USE a volunteer. Watching and listening is an absolute MUST. Many performers mistakenly ignore their volunteer and use them as they would any inanimate prop. Ignoring your volunteer is the same as ignoring your crowd and can have demoralizing results across the board.

Besides, you never know. I mean, you just never know. Some people just have IT. They have that indefinable quality that just comes alive when in front of a crowd. Where most people freeze, they know exactly what to do and like a great performer play their role perfectly. I used a cop once who should have had his own sit-com. You really don’t want to miss out on things like that, you really don’t, so you must LISTEN. There’s gold in them thar’ hills.

Always make eye contact with your volunteer before during and after you use or “abuse” them. Either way you want them to feel like the star they are. The way they feel about being up there is the way everyone will feel and hopefully part of their joy will be generosity. I got five bucks from a guy in a wheelchair once who pulled a knife on me during the act. To this day he’s the best volunteer I’ve ever had.

Sometimes you just aren’t lucky and the volunteer is an absolute jerk or worse, a jerk that thinks he or she is “entertaining”. Good gawd, I wanted to kill this one blonde I once used, I should have known better. The line: “No, no, its MY fault… I picked her!” still resonates in my head.

So, yeah, it’s a roll of the dice but you can load them, so the odds are in your favor. Just remember that in choosing a volunteer you let your instincts be your guide, but when using them then your means to an end is clever setups and failsafe jokes. Paying attention pays off.

And last time I checked, people will pay for a happy ending.

Martin Ewen/Lurk

Volunteers are the swapped spit in the sloppy French kiss that is a street show.
I have a form of psychic Herpes so I tend to keep my distance. I don't kiss my audience, my audience exist to watch me sodomize random passers-by. The tighter they are the funnier it is.
[Ha, I'm so full of shit.]

Volunteers denote the level of trust your audience is prepared to have for you. They are your audiences ambassadors sent out into a strange land in the hope the natives are friendly. They are brave folk prepared to take a risk and should be afforded every respect for this.
That's not to say you can't play with them however you want.

Picking your volunteers is an art in itself. There's a skill in picking people best suited for your needs that is part intuition, part experience and part guesswork.
Like the concept of props there's the potential of amplification at stake. You want someone who has some energy. Sometimes you want a serene type who will survive what you're about to subject them to. Other situations may require individuals whose enthusiasm and ability to take direction makes them OK to take the ball and run with it improvisationally. The risk with seeking live-wires is that some simply have no sense of place. They are unschooled in dealing with the amount of attention you provide them, they become unmanageably excited.
Whatever they are it's you that got them up there and it's your job to keep them safe, they represent the audiences trust in you so you can't abuse them with anything in your heart but affection if you want to get rid of them. They lend you validity.

Some quick 'Don'ts' and 'Nevers'
*Don't pick the bouncing out of their skin person.
*Don't be a sleezebucket with pretty girls it just makes everyone uncomfortable you stupid horny loser.
*Never make them less than they were before you called them up.
*It helps to make some form of physical contact initially. It's calming in a primate way.
*Don't think that you are better than them, you can act like that but never think it.
*Whether guys or girls, if they are in a group of three, Never pick the omega [lowest status], they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by sabotage.
* Always give them some chance to play, even if it's just you setting them up with an easy comeback.
*Always thank them afterwards and give the audience that opportunity too.

Volunteers carry with them a degree of risk however the rewards when they supply the return can be awesome. The right volunteer can carry a show, give you impulse after impulse to work with and show both to you and the audience the very point you are trying to broadcast. That having fun sometimes just means trusting yourself. If your volunteer is given the chance to eclipse you in playfulness let them take it, be amazed. The audience may learn to love you but they automatically love the volunteer.
The more fun your volunteer has the bigger your hat. Just don't get too cynical. I know it's hard but just try OK?

'Props' Two Perspectives.

Robert Nelson, Butterflyman

From flying pigs to frying pans, everything can be used as a prop. Imagine anything and everything used in unimaginable ways and there you have it… its a prop.

The catalyst transforming these objects seemingly only the performers intent. The object, any object, becomes useful in perhaps a totally different way from the way it was originally intended.

My God!, I saw a guy use a bag, a small paper bag, fergawdsakes, not only a prop but also as a glimpse into the psyche of his soul. As a prop, he initially used the bag to cover the wine bottle filled with water he used to hydrate himself during the show.

The bag became his prop when he used it to not only imply he was a wino but also when, after using it to “hat” the crowd, he ceremoniously stuffed it down the front of his pants simulating a rather large penis.

The kicker for me, really, was that the final 20 minutes he did after stuffing his pants he did altruistically, for his audience only asking nothing in return. That told me more about him as a person than anything else. But I digress.

Props can handicap you for sure. Anyone packing their six footer+ unicycle for a plane trip knows exactly what I mean, but that’s not the real handicap I’m talking about. I’m talking about how a physical object, no matter how creatively it is used, is no match for using words alone to stimulate an audience’s imagination.

It is obvious a prop forces you to focus on it rather than on anything else and your creativity is thereby limited to its physical presence. But in limiting your freedom, it does have the distinct advantage of focusing the audience’s attention, particularly if it is sparkly and shiny, ask any Indian.

Hey, I know that was rude but it could’ve been worse. I could’ve said, “ask any black guy”. I didn’t say that because, well, that shit’ll get your ass kicked.

Anyway, all I really have to say, and I’m saying this as a prop comic myself, is that whatever you use as a prop do it with integrity. Use it to say something about yourself even if its just “I’m funny”.

Masturbatory fire twirling and technical ‘whatever’ when used “just for show” is boring to me. I like it when performers use a prop (even if its another person) to make a point or say something, hopefully something more than just “look at me, look at me”. That’s all I’m saying, is that too much to ask?

OK, never mind, go blow a six-foot flame out of your ass on a 20 ft. unicycle. Go ahead and throw a bunch of sparkly shit in the air and catch it between your legs. Or, dare I say it, go ahead and stretch a wire between two tall buildings and walk across it with a pole. Because, if that’s all you do, then your affect on your crowd will be amazement only and they’ll remember you until they get to the parking lot.

If, however, that flame, wire or sparkly shit is used in a way that says something about YOU, then your audience will remember you forever.


P.S. Philippe is a hero to me, not because of what he did but because of who he was.

Martin Ewen, Lurk

Props are objects you use, you lay your hands on them or refer to them and they become props, you stop using them and they turn into costume or backdrop or nothing at all. My definition is contentious, get yourself a sub atomic microscope and go looking for any protons of 'I give a fuck'.

Questions remain, for example are my stilts costume or a prop?

A red nose is costume not a prop, unless you actively use it, and Charlie Barnets money padded groin is costume that used to be a prop. If he touches it or uses it it's still a prop, if he doesn't it's costume.
Volunteers are props, that plane passing overhead is a prop, anything at all you use during your show is a prop.

Some performers go light and some go heavy on props. Anthony Livingspace and Rob Torres are at one end, able to turn up with a small case and from it pull small objects that are dense in theatricality, multi-purpose improvisational objects that help amplify their characters.

That's what a props purpose is, to amplify your character, to give you the opportunity to show your commitment to the pursuit of some relationship either with yourself or the audience.

On the other end of the prop scale are the pole-merchants and apparatus junkies.
I use stilts and makeup so I fall into this category. I know why I do it, because it separates me from the world and my show is about building a bridge back.

I can only guess why others do it but the TMO principle, [Tall Metal Object] is so self evidently cash rich that if liquidity is your goal you'd have to be subintelligent to pass it up as a means to your end. Even so I've seen some performers cashing in on the TMO who are dumber than plankton and it still works.
Alakazam is the crown prince of the TMO, deservedly so. He already had skills and personality, I remember seeing him work in Sydney when he was still earthbound, but he showed what a well chosen prop could do as an amplifier when he suddenly morphed and in earnings, audience satisfaction and popularity literally dwarfed us all. Unlike myself Al has never had a bad word to say about anyone. In fact it's too humbling to speak of him so I'll move on.

Sometimes your relationship with your props can be used as a metaphor for your relationship with your audience. Peter Post is a master at this. He fails and fails and fails. He never gives up, he tries to but his suicide attempt itself fails. His props are his enemy and his subtextural cunning is that his despair makes his audience his friend.

One of my props is a hand held mirror. I use it to amplify the conceit I have for my character and the disdain I have for my audience. Another is a single juggling ball which I make a big deal about before simply passing from one hand to another. It's purpose is identical with that of the mirror.

Each prop is a means to the end of defining your character and your relationship with the audience which is why I always thought technically brilliant jugglers might as well just use a blackboard and chalk and scribble advanced equations as an alternative to using objects to do the same thing.

I use props as bridges. I establish relationships with them then subject audiences to that relationship.