Haven’t done any street performing in a while, but I recently made an addition to my juggling clubs. I got some multi-colored electrical tape and wrapped the ends in red and blue. The clubs themselves are white. And I used black to create the letters USA, one on each club, so that as they spin a passerby sees something written on the clubs and has to kind of squint and piece together what the letters are. It’s a nice little moment of payoff when it happens. A friend of mine who juggles also has some clubs which are red, white and blue, one of each. All these patriotic juggling props got me started down what became a very ridiculous and very over the top train of thought.
If you were going to have a red, white and blue USA club juggling routine that you performed on the streets, what else might you want to add in? Flag-waving, obviously. Last year I bought one of those “DON’T TREAD ON ME FLAGS” and I eventually gave it away to a co-worker of mine at the Dog Temple. We ended up affixing it to a pole and tying it to the back of his bicycle, and then riding all across town with this immense flag waving yellowly behind us. The thing we discovered is that when you’re waving a flag, people automatically give you a lot of leeway, a lot of extra freedom. It gives the appearance that you’re doing something important. Little kids ran alongside us down Chestnut Avenue. Someone outside of Frazier’s on the Ave yelled “Sic Semper Tyrannis.” Cars were stopping in the middle of traffic to let our impromptu parade through. And we were only fucking around. There were only three of us.
So I imagine that standing near a crowded intersection with people juggling and waving giant American flags would garner a lot of attention, at least visually. People would likely stop and watch for a minute or two, or slow their car down to see what was going on. And when you can get people to stop on the streets, that’s when you have to figure out how to get them to stay. Working a lot in theatre lately has got me researching its history and origins in things like comedia del arte, Italian street performance which utilized stock characters to tell really simple often bawdy stories.
Comedia relied on outrageous masks to exaggerate facial features and colorful costumes to attract attention and immediately convey a sense of what each character was all about. I’ve been sort of obsessed lately with the notion of stock characters, of ancient ones and of modern equivalents. Riding this train of patriotic juggling routines got me thinking about who or what would make good modern stock characters. Uncle Sam immediately sprang to mind. Who better to juggle USA clubs while someone waves a flag next to him?
But every hero needs a foil. Dramatic tension demands it. If you want to get people to stop and watch your routine, it pays to have a little bit of storyline in it, some excitement, some intrigue. One of the most famous of the Comedia characters, of the zanni, was Arlecchino, or Harlequin - closely related to the jester of medieval courts, the clown, buffoon or trickster. If our pivot character is Uncle Sam, the trickster character becomes only too obvious: Osama Bin Laden.
Comedia and other similar street theatre routines don’t just have stock characters, but also have stock storylines as well. Basic plots and segments around which performers can improvise their parts. The cultural significance of Uncle Sam and Osama Bin Laden as symbolic-archetypal characters immediately suggests all kinds of different and dead simple storylines. Things which can be communicated wordlessly. Things which are so broad and physical and obvious that even little kids and dogs could understand what you’re trying to say. What if you had a plotline where Uncle Sam and Osama would pretend to fight with each other and play mean pranks, but then secretly would shake each other’s hands and walk away the best of friends? What if you had people dressed up like the WTC buildings, and then had Osama run over, clothesline them and knock them down? What would Uncle Sam’s reaction be? Maybe he could have a bunch of minions dressed up in cheap camo costumes who would do his bidding and extend the dramatic and visual action (all the while people are juggling, mind you) in new directions.
If you were feeling extra randy, you could even throw in things like a fatcat Wall St. banker character who runs around stealing people’s money right out of their pockets and laughing maniacally:
With these bits and pieces of archetypal Americana as a jump-off point, the possibilities seem almost endless to me. And the probability that you’d get arrested or at least in some kind of trouble for performing such a routine in public obviously increases the more outrageous you make it, the more obvious. If you can reduce complex social scenarios and unspoken issues to simple everyday action which ordinary people are exposed to, can think about and talk about with one another on and off the streets, well you become something of a public nuisance. Or you become a hero. One of the two: it depends on who’s telling the story, why and how. If you’re the one telling the story though, then you stand a much better chance of coming out on top.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_theatre
From that same page:
See also: that part in V for Vendetta
http://bigelkmountain.tumblr.com/post/...7/v-for-vendetta-terrorist-on-tv-part
I also think that a performance such as this would be awesome if set to Old Time American mountain music: people playing banjos, mandolins, guitars, harmonicas, jaw harps, and everyone in the audience could be cajoled into singing along in the true spirit of Carnival
My memory of the WTO protests in Seattle is that the street performers were targeted by police first, particularly the ones with puppets.
There were some other protests in New York a few years later and the same pattern repeated itself.
Street performing is freedom of assembly and free speech in its most elemental forms
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2008...8/why-street-performing-is-essential/
Have we mentioned mummers’ plays before?
OK, quick rundown: grew out of mediaeval morality plays, retained as folk custom in the UK until the C19th and to a certain extent still survives today. Performed at Christmas time, used to go round the big houses like carol singers doing it for money and / or figgy pudding.
Characters limited to certain stock: St George (our hero), the Dragon (or Turkish knight in one production I saw, confusingly, given that St G was also an, erm, Turkish knight. The villain, anyway), The Doctor (the psychopomp) who, when St G is killed by the dragon - usually in a sneaky and treacherous way - comes in and revives him with ‘medicine’, in a not entirely un-Christ-/Osiris- like fashion. St G then gets back up and kills the Dragon. Much rejoicing and mince pies.
The whole thing is done in rhyming couplets and within this basic framework there is room to bring on as many other characters as you like, often with a contemporary / satirical bent to them. Sometimes they all fight St G before the dragon and are defeated. In every case they introduce themselves with a little comic monologue and then banter with St G a bit. Sometimes you have a character introducing / narrating the whole proceedings.
I would love to see this translated into Uncle Sam, a fat banker or two, and bin Laden! With Santa Claus coming in to revive Uncle Sam? Or a Native American medicine man? Or maybe that old black woman from ‘The Stand’ who is the spirit of the land or something?
I saw these guys doing it on Twelfth Night this year on the South Bank of the Thames:
http://www.thelionspart.co.uk/twelfthnight/traditions.html
There was also much wassailing and the Green Man arrived in a longboat along the Thames to the strains of bagpipes. Result! Later we all drank ale in a C16th inn and the Green Man got very very drunk and made lewd suggestions to everything that moved, including me.
Also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummers_play
Yeah! I’ve heard about the mummers before, but that was the best description I’ve seen so far. Totally kickass! I’m meeting some people at my theatre who are into Comedia del Arte stuff and Baltimore has a burgeoning underground theatre scene, so we’ll see what happens.
Imagine going door-to-door with the Uncle Sam/Osama Bin Laden routine though!! How nuts would that be? People would freakin flip out.
That would be really cool. Do it!
I can’t help but think about the obvious added impact of holding such symbolically charged “impromptu” theatrical displays on certain days, such as July 4th or September 11. More interesting than the predictable reaction you’d get from the “authorities”, would be that of ordinary passersby on the street. Granted, beholding such a spectacle on the anniversary of the deaths of thousands of people might push quite a few buttons, but who says that the main intent of theater is to please?
Seems like Morgan Spurlock’s new joint has sort of this same kind of purpose, to reveal puppet characters like Osama Bin Laden for the generic stock cultural story-telling utility he really has become.