There’s a common street performer “trick” to unite the audience and it’s call and response. If you’re not familiar with what that is, it’s typically used when the performer says something like, “Would you like to see another trick…say YES!” then the audience responds by saying YES.
This an effective technique uniting the audience, they’re doing something together and it helps them start to become an audience and not just a bunch of individuals. This is especially important for an outdoor show where you may have a transient audience. Another thing it does is forces the audience to invest energy into the show. The more they are invested in the show, the more they will stay and watch the show…and like it!
I like the technique, but I personally don’t like how most people do it, they’re doing it simply because it’s effective. There’s no real purpose besides filling a hole in the show because you don’t have a segue to the next routine.
When I use it in my show, I give it a bit of meaning. In my Drawing in Ball of Yarn routine, I do it to have the audience vote on whether I should buy the person’s drawing. It accomplishes the same thing and just telling the audience to say “yes”, in fact it actually moves the show forward!
With a little bit of thought, you can find ways to use this technique to move the show forward, instead of a hack bit.
-Louie
Tag: street performer
Street Performer in New Orleans
In the French Quarter in New Orleans I ran into a street performer. He was doing standard stuff in a pretty standard way. It wasn’t bad, but for me it was just “meh”.
He closed with the cups and balls. If you look at the picture above, you can see the table top. The above picture was taken with the camera held above my head.
I also took a picture of with the camera at my eye level:
I was in the 3rd row and couldn’t see a thing. The busker had trouble building past the second row, and that’s because you couldn’t see what he was doing.
I know I write about this a lot on this blog, but most magicians would learn a lot about what’s visible if they saw a picture of their show from the audience’s eyeline.
Have a friend take a picture of your show and check out your audience’s sight lines, it’s eye opening!
-Louie
Backstage Magic Jam…
Last week at the Moisture Festival, one of the acts was Just Felice. She’s a street performer out of the Boston area. We did some magic jamming back stage at the festival. Here she is doing an in the hands three card monte routine for one of the stage crew:
We also did some BSing with the second deal, which is a move neither of us really use, but can do. We both have decent technique, but still kill our wrists a lot to hide the move. I think if I ever had a need to use the second deal in a routine, I’d put in the extra time to be able to do it without turning my wrist. For me, the second deal is an emergency move that’s in my tool box.
-Louie
Yelling into a Wall…
This week I’m performing at a very small county fair. There’s an act that’s a “found space” act here. Essentially a found space act is one that isn’t on a stage, so very similar to a busker or street performer, however they don’t take tips. He’s a singer that basically does cover songs. All day … Continue reading “Yelling into a Wall…”
This week I’m performing at a very small county fair. There’s an act that’s a “found space” act here. Essentially a found space act is one that isn’t on a stage, so very similar to a busker or street performer, however they don’t take tips. He’s a singer that basically does cover songs.
All day he’s been essentially playing to no one. He’s had no crowd all day. One thing I learned from a guy named Skip Banks, who is an amazing act at fairs and knows how to draw them in. He has a theory that you need to make the audience comfortable. That means giving them a place to sit and watch your show and shade.
Doing found space entertainment as “ambient” entertainment really doesn’t add much value to the event. If you are doing ambient entertainment in a wine garden, it makes more sense, than in a random walkway.
This act would be way more successful if it tried to engage people. He could do this by simply by changing lyrics to song to thing that are happening around him, or talking to people. Instead he was a human jukebox on auto play.