So one of the main tribes I belong to is the street theatre/performer tribe.
Been one of this cabal for close to thirty years.
Over the last 15/20 years various methods have been used to corral our talents to be focused in specific places. The Edinburgh fest was one of the older congregative venues, so was Vallach in Austria, Canada starting running festivals starting with Edmonton then Halifax then a host of others. Meanwhile NZ started the Christchurch festival and led the way in Australasia, there's now an Auckland festival and intermittent Wellington attempts as the political winds are wrestled by various folk with their arts admin dreamcatchers. Oh and not forgetting Dublin. That started up about 5 years ago and touts itself as the 'busking world championship' a kind of shared joke. We tend not to compete nor want to but sponsors are bred in their dog eat dog worlds and looking down from their plinths of business conquest like the idea THAT THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!
Plus it's demonstratively cheaper to offer prize money and have otherwise professional performers prostitute themselves for a chance at earning their keep than to actually pay fees and do it properly.
Now up on the Gold Coast of Australia they have a problem, they have a domestic violence problem and a few other problems that I may get into later.
They [some 'business allegiance' outfit] have a festival they want to put on in a month and lets just put it this way. If their business management philosophy were a puppy you'd take it outside, tie it to a post and shoot it for it's own good. It's stillborn, all the pro's have pulled out of the program and while they might put their best faces on, they're floundering and their event is going to suck because they have designed it to suck.
Now I've done my homework and I could do more. I have the entire business associations administrative staff, their spotty educations, their limited experience, their prior media statements and their various mentions in the press all researched and have done some, if i may say so , exquisite lambasting, toe curling, skin peeling writing that I was going to spend a further week on and polish it till it glistened with venom. Because these people are messing with my tribe and diabolical writing is a talent of mine.
But then I stopped... I thought it through. Maybe these people are not venal pompous deluded dysfunctional half men half/stale Lemingtons.
Maybe they just need help?
So I'm going to finish my vicious broadside on all that is wrong with Queensland and business associations and executive directors with bog average business degrees and possible prior experience with putting on events in student cafeterias and then I'm going to put it aside and rewrite it with my helpful free consultancy hat on.
I don't know why. It could be age, it could be my belief that the more useful I am the more successful I will become or it could simply be that it's so easy for me to rip the shit out of people that I need the challenge of actually trying to communicate with them in a way that helps them see where they themselves could improve rather than them flushing with embarrassment and righteously hating me.
Cos if They hate me their festival will still suck and if I can help them it might suck less and if it sucks less it's better for my tribe.
