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.
Showing posts with label variables. Show all posts
Showing posts with label variables. Show all posts
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Considering all options
This blog brought to you by the everyday uncertainty that is our brains.
Firstly, we have much that we are considering when it comes to what may or may not be the best circumstances for busking. We don't really have enough patience to do sufficient experiments to include or exclude particular results. There are too many variables that might or might not matter, and even if we figure out that a certain variable does matter, to what extent it matters is also important to us, as we also seek to travel efficiently and cheaply (this regards variables that may be bulky or expensive). Some variables we're trying to analyze with our limited information:
Location in city, proximity to other buskers, time of day, day of week, shade vs. sun, costumes, hooks (e.g. carnival barkers, frozen statues), events in city, etc, etc...
We had an overall positive if difficult experience with busking today. Stina had the idea that since our carnival barker approach could be offensive (see fisticuffs incident of last blog) and tired us out without apparently being super effective, we should try this new approach. One of the difficulties we sought to overcome was our inability to entice a crowd as more common buskers might. Musicians can play music continuously, and someone who enjoyed it might stop for a moment or two. People can evaluate whether they enjoy music or not without engaging the performer. It gives them a safe space to make their decision before committing. This is, I imagine, why most juggling buskers are circle buskers. I suppose we haven't really tried yet, but we are just uncertain enough yet of when and where is appropriate to try a circle busk that we haven't exactly, despite getting positive feedback most times we've performed it.
All of this is merely to say that we tried something new today. We made a sign that said:
Step One: Drop in some $
Step Two: Give us a topic
Step Three: Hear a story
We stood behind the sign and froze in a position as if we were in the midst of juggling. After a few minutes, a man dropped a dollar in and didn't say anything, so we told a story of Pickled Mushroom Man then went back to our freeze. He said, "Bravo" and wandered off chuckling, "Pickled Mushroom Man" to himself.
Very pleased with this success we proceeded to stay frozen for 30 minutes without any more dollar or change drops. I noticed a few flashing cameras that Stina didn't notice, so maybe I imagined them or maybe they weren't directed at us. Hard to tell when you're frozen. After waiting quite a while, my feet began to ache, and I proposed we simply juggle and stand looking innocent until someone approached us again. No one ever did except a man who wanted to give Stina juggling advice. We should have charged him a dollar for the privilege.
We were out there from about 2-3pm... should have been there earlier, I suppose, for the lunch crowd.
We're still struggling to find something that works for us.
We have been seeking to create costumes of brightly colorful shirts and pants, but have been unable to find anything cheap and complementary. We're considering buying dye and plain white t-shirts and light colored jeans, but there are fewer thrift stores here than Seattle as far as I can tell, and the Bloomin Deals has odd hours that we never seem to make.
(On an entirely unrelated note, Marx says "hifalutin" at one point in the Communist Manifesto... isn't that strange?)
We're also considering trying to follow the renaissance faire circuit and perform there. In that case, we imagine we would have to get ourselves some fancier costumes. It's hard to know what we should do. We haven't made a significant amount of money busking yet, and we did anticipate a slightly better time of it.
For those dedicated readers we propose an interactive element just for you. We need help narrowing our variables... Today, for example, we walked past some trucks and trailers of equipment for the film shooting in New Orleans and starring Renee Zellweger, we think. I said, "Let's busk right here, right now." Stina said, "That sounds like a bad idea." We each had valid reasons for thinking that. We could decide ourselves... and of course we will, but we want some third brain who is neither of our ridiculous brains. If you send us your phone number in a message that says "put me on your variables list!", we will call you now and then and describe in 2 30-second increments the pros and the cons of the busking situation that faces us. You will then have 30 seconds to say "yay" or "nay" and give your reasoning. We will then chat with you for 29 seconds and then hang up. You will be able to read about the decision on this blog the next time we blog. Congratulations, you are an active participant in our busking!
Firstly, we have much that we are considering when it comes to what may or may not be the best circumstances for busking. We don't really have enough patience to do sufficient experiments to include or exclude particular results. There are too many variables that might or might not matter, and even if we figure out that a certain variable does matter, to what extent it matters is also important to us, as we also seek to travel efficiently and cheaply (this regards variables that may be bulky or expensive). Some variables we're trying to analyze with our limited information:
Location in city, proximity to other buskers, time of day, day of week, shade vs. sun, costumes, hooks (e.g. carnival barkers, frozen statues), events in city, etc, etc...
We had an overall positive if difficult experience with busking today. Stina had the idea that since our carnival barker approach could be offensive (see fisticuffs incident of last blog) and tired us out without apparently being super effective, we should try this new approach. One of the difficulties we sought to overcome was our inability to entice a crowd as more common buskers might. Musicians can play music continuously, and someone who enjoyed it might stop for a moment or two. People can evaluate whether they enjoy music or not without engaging the performer. It gives them a safe space to make their decision before committing. This is, I imagine, why most juggling buskers are circle buskers. I suppose we haven't really tried yet, but we are just uncertain enough yet of when and where is appropriate to try a circle busk that we haven't exactly, despite getting positive feedback most times we've performed it.
All of this is merely to say that we tried something new today. We made a sign that said:
Step One: Drop in some $
Step Two: Give us a topic
Step Three: Hear a story
We stood behind the sign and froze in a position as if we were in the midst of juggling. After a few minutes, a man dropped a dollar in and didn't say anything, so we told a story of Pickled Mushroom Man then went back to our freeze. He said, "Bravo" and wandered off chuckling, "Pickled Mushroom Man" to himself.
Very pleased with this success we proceeded to stay frozen for 30 minutes without any more dollar or change drops. I noticed a few flashing cameras that Stina didn't notice, so maybe I imagined them or maybe they weren't directed at us. Hard to tell when you're frozen. After waiting quite a while, my feet began to ache, and I proposed we simply juggle and stand looking innocent until someone approached us again. No one ever did except a man who wanted to give Stina juggling advice. We should have charged him a dollar for the privilege.
We were out there from about 2-3pm... should have been there earlier, I suppose, for the lunch crowd.
We're still struggling to find something that works for us.
We have been seeking to create costumes of brightly colorful shirts and pants, but have been unable to find anything cheap and complementary. We're considering buying dye and plain white t-shirts and light colored jeans, but there are fewer thrift stores here than Seattle as far as I can tell, and the Bloomin Deals has odd hours that we never seem to make.
(On an entirely unrelated note, Marx says "hifalutin" at one point in the Communist Manifesto... isn't that strange?)
We're also considering trying to follow the renaissance faire circuit and perform there. In that case, we imagine we would have to get ourselves some fancier costumes. It's hard to know what we should do. We haven't made a significant amount of money busking yet, and we did anticipate a slightly better time of it.
For those dedicated readers we propose an interactive element just for you. We need help narrowing our variables... Today, for example, we walked past some trucks and trailers of equipment for the film shooting in New Orleans and starring Renee Zellweger, we think. I said, "Let's busk right here, right now." Stina said, "That sounds like a bad idea." We each had valid reasons for thinking that. We could decide ourselves... and of course we will, but we want some third brain who is neither of our ridiculous brains. If you send us your phone number in a message that says "put me on your variables list!", we will call you now and then and describe in 2 30-second increments the pros and the cons of the busking situation that faces us. You will then have 30 seconds to say "yay" or "nay" and give your reasoning. We will then chat with you for 29 seconds and then hang up. You will be able to read about the decision on this blog the next time we blog. Congratulations, you are an active participant in our busking!
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