Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
As I’ve mentioned a few times already on the blog I’m currently in the middle of a run at the PNE (Pacific National Exhibition) where I’m performing a new show entitled “The Hot Dog Show” which features me and my six inch tall stuffed Hot Dog partner, Willie The Wiener. My friend Bruce Thorson came by to watch the show the other day and thankfully he saw what was likely the best show I’ve done during the entire run of the fair… Everything just seemed to work.
Bruce used to work a the Edmonton International Street Performers Festival where we first met and became friends, then moved out to Vancouver a few years ago to go to the Vancouver Film School. We worked together on one of his assignments and created a piece called “47 Dutch Lessons on Cassette.” Bruce is a long time fan of the Art of Street Performance and after watching my show, I got an email in which he asked the following three questions. I had to think quite a bit about the answers and as such, thought they might make a great post… Here then are the questions and the answers I gave…
1. – Why would an audience buy into a silly concept like the Hot Dog Show? Well I think more than anything else it’s because the performer (in this case me) appears to enjoy the concept and deliver it with such confidence and bravado that the audience is drawn into the sales pitch because of the dynamic nature of the story and the charisma of the performer. Any good pitch man can sell a sucker anything because people come under the spell of a good pitch and the delivery… There is something genuinely intriguing about watching a good pitch man at work which is why I sometimes like to go up to the Marketplace building at the PNE and watch the guys selling the magic slicer machines, Ginsu Steak Knives or what have you… There’s almost a hypnotic effect, a trance that they’re able to put you into that entices you to buy their product and the most successful pitch guys have built their careers and fortunes on being able to use these techniques to get money out of people’s pockets…
2. – How do I ensure that they do buy the pitch? Well to be honest I’m still not feeling that they do entirely I’m still fumbling a bit with this new show. That being said, a good pitch is a combination of many factors. As mentioned above, confidence and charisma play a huge role in the process and I can state that over the first 10 days of the fair my confidence with the new pitch/new show grew tremendously so that when you came yesterday – Day 11, I was no longer fumbling to get from point A to point B to point C. This is HUGE!
The hypnotic-ness of the show starts at the beginning by getting the audience to unify as a group with some simple exercises like – ‘Everyone clap when I count to three…’ The Call and Repeat game style of this technique isn’t very threatening and eases and audience into unity and encourages them to get behind what ever is to come next. I’ve long been an advocate of the ‘Hype’ style of performance. This style get’s an audience wound up into a frenzy with what ever stunt that’s being sold being representing the climax that they’re all building towards. In many ways this has become so instinctive to me that I don’t even really think about it any more, but the effect is that the audience is drawn in to the pitch and is willing to come along on the journey.
3. – What is the audience buying into? In the end it’s the performer. The audience isn’t necessarily buying the fact that the Hot Dog is a Super Stunt Hero, they’re buying into the fact that I’m going to make this journey a fun one and one that they’re willing to invest a half hour of their life into. If the audience doesn’t like the performer, then no matter how good the pitch is, be it a skill show or a show like the Hot Dog Show, then the audience will likely not want to watch. Likability is everything! The performer can be aggressive, caustic, in your face or calm and gentle, but with out some degree of charm, with out charisma and confidence, forget about it… It just won’t work.
Also, I think as a performer you really need to love your show too… If you loose the love of it, if you loose the joy of being in front of an audience doing what you’re doing then it becomes very obvious to an audience that you’re heart’s no longer in it. I think this is one of the reasons I enjoy watching Glenn Singer’s show so much. He still loves telling that story and it’s a joy to watch him taking such pleasure in the telling of it.
I’ve got 5 more days at the PNE (including today) and am looking forward to each and everyone of them. I’m still not sure about the future of the Hot Dog Show, but it’s been an awesome work out for my performance muscles and it’s been really interesting being at the center of a show that doesn’t rely on skills and tall unicycles to make it work.
