#3 pt1 how to create an audience

This one's the killer. [and a bit of a ramble which is why it's pt1, I'll probably take 3 posts on this one]

Street theatre you engage curiosity and mix it with promise, implied or simply stated.

I'm going to ...[fabulous fabulous]

Free beer ....[ I hated people that used that line as much as I hated the subtextural rape of the misplanted kiss gag]

The implied promise of scattering interesting props about the stage.

This all works in public because people can SEE you.

Here's a picture of the internet. You're a monkey in a forest, a lonely wee monkey with a bunch of bananas. You are up a tree all alone with a bunch of bananas and you'd like some company.

DEFINE YOUR BANANAS.

The internet is an infinite forest, whereas street pitches were/are finite places with traffic.

You had a juggling skill, or some mad storytelling chops, or some oblique skillset that were your bananas. Some people survived on having just one banana. They'd bring it out, TA DA! and a decade would pass. Nothing wrong with that. The worlds a big place, just keep moving with your banana.

I used the same banana for more than a decade. I like to think my banana implied I had a bunch but mainly I hid behind corners and went BOO in a variety of ways. Worked for me.

All this stuff is just my opinion you understand. Part of what I'm trying to convey here is the means to use that tangential imagination that successful street performers have and apply it to a larger environment, a new environment that has only existed a short time and is IMO really suitable for our kind.

So...Bananas. This is worth giving as much time as you would a new show because it's formative and has more potential than simply a new 20/40 minute re-gludge of your skillset.

It's scary in it's own way because you don't have props to hide behind.

It's a given we are all attention whores, you can be as jaded as you like but a crowd of strangers made happy to see you is critically important whether you admit it or not.

Behind the skillset you employ what have you got?

A keen observational eye?

One new wisecrack a show?

Some truism your show is built around to illustrate?

An absurd  perspective?

At the end of the day, apart from the funds acquired, what makes you most proud of what you've pulled off?

It's OK, it's taken us 100+ shows to get to the beginnings of the street theatre vehicle that has transported some of us hither and thither.

There is room for experimentation. I would suggest first that you look at what it is you think you were celebrating by getting into street theatre in the first place.

For me it was about creating a relationship. I was 11 foot tall and disgruntled and appeared not to like anyone and got periods of up to a hour of unconditional love as i moved an audience through a consensual relationship, where they stopped and I made them laugh, to a reciprocal affection where they would pay me for their appreciation.

As far as I can make out that was the core of what I was doing. I was being ME.

I was just being me in a strange and funny way.

So to get an online audience you have to be YOU. and that's really quite hard to work out.

I'm lucky and it's no credit to myself, that I have a certain quality of mind. I'm the kind of person who says something, some simple reply or question or whatever, and people respond by tilting their heads to one side because I'm incomprehensible. Sometimes it's presumed I'm intelligent because I guess everybody's insecure to a degree. [and the most arrogant among us doubly so] , personally I think I'm just resistant to digesting reality on anyone elses terms and as such wonder if I'm the sort of person who should even attempt to give advice.

Whatever....

You want to attract an audience you need a show. There is no beginning, middle, end. there is just show.

Don't pretend you know the minds of others, unless you want to get into pornography or horoscopes.
Work out what you have that could be useful to others, the production of laughter, the ability to collate material, the ability to observe or advise or relate.

What I've found is, through experimentation, that the thing that you never tire of doing, the thing that makes you most pleased after having spent time on it. That's the thing. It's easy to be distracted.

Find that thing and you have found your voice and your voice is of prime importance in creating an audience. Clarity of that voice is what will attract an audience because clarity is a subtextual form of content that's attractive in itself.

#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.

#1 A rundown on street theatre dynamics and online applications

Here are the basic elements of the most common template used in street theatre.

Create a stage in public

Create an audience in public.

Perform a show with a beginning, a middle and end.

Collect money.

Simplicity itself on the face of it however each of these elements are distinct skills that require experience and experimentation to master and any one weakness effects the whole disproportionately.

You create a stage in public by projecting your presence with intent and by defining an area as yours to control. Whether it's with physical props or borders of chalk or whether it's simply by engaging with anyone within your preset perimeters, you 'own' a certain area.

Your audience are created via the primate curiosity humans are built with wherein they become arrested by intent and action without easily perceived purpose. It's called the 'curious ape syndrome'.

People stop because there is something happening and they have to work out what it is so they can make a judgement concerning it that will define their next action.

It comes from when we had just got down from the trees and two thirds of things foreign to us would kill us and eat us if we were not paying attention. We have to pay attention to strange things until we make sense of them. It's a feature that has turned into a bug but it's useful and I've hung out in alleys 11 feet tall and crowds form as long as the question remains "what is he doing?"

I aim for the first thing I do producing an audience outburst of laughter and the definition of my stage, my creation of an audience and my beginning all gel at that point and we move onto the second stage of my seduction.

Beginning, middle and end and the collection of gratitude.

I have a big middle, I play with my situation and as long as I create some sustained pace of laughter production my audience are happy and lost in the moment, when I tire I increase the pace to raise the frequency of the laughter generated and when and if I can run the outbursts so that they are running into each other I sustain that until I judge it cannot be sustained any longer and break quickly into a movement dance piece that is a form of punctuation and then Bam, It's over and I bow and beckon the final movement, which is the audience to register their gratitude and come up and donate to my ongoing upkeep as that funny guy that brightens up your day.



For a decade now I've been looking at the internet like it was the largest pedestrian boulevard on the planet and wondering if these not inconsiderable skills that I've applied internationally could be utilized in a similar fashion.

My findings to date; People don't pass, you don't have any visibility until you market it, marketing is your costume and props. Marketing is how you define your stage and audience.

You have to have an online show, you have to have content and there is no beginning middle and end unless you look at each and every visitor as a separate performance which means your online presence, each individual installation of content you produce, has to have a beginning, a middle and an end and a means by which the participant is drawn to support you willingly.

I'll write more about this tomorrow. if the contents of my head are useful it would be ideal if you could donate a dollar once and a while and also link to me so that my audience increases.