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.

Stina's notes on yesterday

We tried frozenness again yesterday, with less success. We went out an hour earlier than we had the day before, hoping we would catch more of the lunch crowd. One man seemed interested when we first set up, but he walked away saying "I wish I had some money." About a half hour later, when we had tired of the stillness and were standing there juggling, that same man came back and we offered to tell him a story and he requested one about a mean clown (he'd just had a negative experience, where he felt ignored by the balloon man down the way) and he gave us three pennies in return. This put us at a -$9.97 profit, since we had donated $10 earlier in the day to a good cause (something about feeding the homeless? I'm not totally sure, but it was one of those people [the second we've directly encountered in our lives, the first being in Seattle] who stops you on the street and issues you a ticket for something like "being with a beautiful woman" or "having too much fun." Those people are good!).

Here is Brendan in frozen mode:

We were out there for a little more than an hour with no one else stopping but the three cents man so we stopped and ate our sandwiches and scoped out the area to see where would be the best place for a circle busk. We want to try our whole routine (what we did in Seattle and Wisconsin with a few modifications) on stilts. We plan to walk around Jackson Square (on stilts, of course) gathering folks and then perform our show, on stilts. We need to practice this--I'm not sure how I'll do walking on stilts and juggling. I know I can do it, but I'm afraid I'll drop a ball and it's harder to recover when you can't quickly grab the ball and continue. But performing the whole show on stilts will, I think, be more impressive to an audience.

We met a cool guy yesterday. He is a magician here in NOLA. His name is Alexander (www.alexanderthemagician.com) and yesterday he was out taking notes on things going on around Jackson Square. He looked friendly yet also imposing and we rightly assumed he is a performer, and we approached him to see if we could ask him some questions about busking in New Orleans. He was super helpful. He told us New Orleans is the Mecca of street performance, and buskers don't come here because it's easy, but rather because it's hard, and if you can make it here you can take your act anywhere. That was encouraging to hear. Not that we've made it yet, but we are learning a lot here and hopefully will be more successful this weekend.

Anyway, I could say more, I'm sure, but internet time is scarce and I want to do a few other things with my onlineness.

Love,
Stina