From discouragement to empowerment

We are reenergized, empowered, and enthusiastic, and let me tell you why.

Yesterday noonish we went out with our circle busk in Jackson Square. It was a beautiful day and tourists abounded (we actually heard it was a rather meager crowd for a Saturday, but it was the most buskerrific crowd we had yet seen this trip). We talked with a few street artists, and found an excellent spot to set up. I set out from our spot on stilts to gather an audience, and Stina stayed behind to amuse passersby. We gathered a modest crowd to begin of about 10. And we began. And everybody walked away. Ouch. We rushed through the rest of the show for the one remaining man, a street artist who had talked with us enough that I'm sure he felt obligated. Towards the end, a couple kids stopped by to listen to our stories. Families, however, had left us, so while kids may be fascinated by us and our everything, their parents are not... and parents generally dictate what their kids watch (and if their kids' entertainers get paid).
Whoa. $0 is discouraging. It doesn't scale well.
We offered our space to Alexander the Magician (see last blog for his website). We watched him operate in the same conditions we had. While he mentioned it was a slow day, he held a good 20 people's attention and convinced them he was worth several dollars each. His show was confident, competent and amusing.

Walking home that evening, and realizing how far our show was from even mediocrity, we outlined our options.

We recognized that much of our disappointment was caused by our nearly zero context for expectations. We had, we thought, modest expectations, but getting out there, we see that our skill set and audience interaction needs to improve 4-fold. And so we also reurned to the question of why we do this and what the payoff is.
In all its glory, our list of options:

1. Continue as planned (see last month's post for that plan)
2. Stay in New Orleans for 3 months and work work work to improve our skills and busking
3. Give up the busking portion of our plan and travel the world for the next year
4. Move to any city we choose and concentrate on our dreams (Brendan-acting, Stina-writing)
5. Seek out venues more attuned to our style of busking (e.g. Ren Faires)

A few of the above options had sub-option, like 4a (city= New Orleans, Brendan's Dream=busking)

Over the course of 3 hours we came to a tentative decision.

We slept on it.

Today we took the necessary steps to make our decision reality.

We will sublet Jocelyn's apartment (she's moving in with her boyfriend, Nate). We will follow a strict rehearsal schedule:
3 hours a day of Juggling and Stilt-walking practice 4 days a week
3 hours a day of content creation and discussion 4 days a week
2 hours of trickle busking each week
3 circle busks each week

As we improve, we will increase the amount of busking we do - there's nothing like practical experience.