Greetings from the West Coast. Coming to you live from Long Beach, CA for the official Waffles of the Damned shindig with the Cult of the Eye. With any luck I can hit up le Magic Castle this friday. (Take that David Oliver)
Regardless, we all know how much talk there is in this blog about not being like the Ass Hat and doing street magic the proper way, right? Well I thought I would comment on a few things about the art of street performance as observed in New Orleans. First there is no RIGHT way to do street theater, but there is a hell of a lot of wrong ways to do street theater. (Sounds classier when you call it that too.)
Two of the shools of thought are to do many many quick shows. Quantity WITH quality. The other of course is do a fooking long show. There are ups and downs to both of these. Let's examine them shall we?
So you want to do a 45 minute street act. The upside to this is that you can draw a MUCH larger crowd and therefore increase your Hat. (Money you take in at the end of a show) The downside to this is that if yer show is lacking good strong attention getting stuff you can and will have a lot of walk offs. People will only spend 3/4ths of an hour of THEIR time if YOU make it worth their while. How do you do this? I'll talk about that later.
Next is the shorter but easily to repeat shows. Again on the street you HAVE to be good. The street is a busy distracting place and everyone has places to see and people to do. Therefore if you have a good 8-10 act of strong visual stuff and skill you too can make much money.
So you can either work continually for about the same amout or do 3-5 big shows a day and pull in much. Again there is no right answer, you just have to be good at what you do. I have seen both work just fine. So the question is what do you do in a larger show?
Well at first a few small things to draw a crowd. Some stop a few people to see a trick and go. Some yell and beat on things. Some do a combo of the two. (With it's variations.) Well then you do some amazing magic, sleight of hand, comedy, etc. One of the tactics best used is to destroy someone's money. This not only keeps the person who lent you the 20$ around (sometimes) but also keeps others around to see if your gonna find it or get beat up.
So hwo do you use money and keep it funny and magical. Thaz where Gazzo, Chellini, and pretty much any other street performer come in. The cups and balls. Most every street person with a table and fresh fruit does this trick and, in all honesty, it kills. (Especially when the money is in the orange, lemon, lime, etc at the end.) Problem is what if you hate cups and balls? Then do a chop cup routine... or a two cup routine. What if you don't have a large shaped hat to produce a melon from? Get one!
What if you want to be different and not do this well established effect used for ever and ever and ever and ever and... well you get the idea. Remember, there is no right way to do street magic, just plenty of wrong ways. Cups and balls and fruit are well known to get reactions, money, and applause... then again so is fire eating and dove productions. It really depends if you want to be like two other guys in New Orleans or want to be different. Only problem with being different is you better be damn good to be different. It's possible. It happens. The question is: Can it happen to you? If the answer is yes, then make it so.
Make it JUST so...
Bizzaro.
