We made a last minute stop in Copenhagen because buskers in Stockholm kept telling us we needed to go there, that Copenhagen had a great street performance scene, that Stroget Street attracted professional performers from all over the world, and that audiences there were receptive and willing to pay heartily for shows.
They were right. Stroget Street was a mini-version of what we’d experience at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh a few weeks later. Professional circle shows formed all day from the Stork Statue in Amagertorv Square and continued down the longest pedestrian street in Europe, attracting large, appreciative audiences. And, except that buskers weren’t required to wake up at dawn and drag themselves to an organised meeting where pitches and time slots were distributed via a lottery system, buskers in Copenhagen seemed to maintain a relatively intimate, supportive, and informative community. They hung out with one another after shows in a small charity cafe set up on the grounds of a local church and gave one another feedback on their performances. They informed one another about potentially abusive or drunk audience members who’d could disrupt shows, and initiated newcomers as to the rules and expectations of their established mores.
One of the performers we saw there was Elron, a juggler from Hawaii. Elron was not only an exciting combination of juggling and unicycling; he’d created a stage character reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson with eccentric, somewhat disturbing, hand movements, awkward wobbly-giraffe-like strides around his pitch, and bizarre facial expressions. An onlooker would be forgiven for assuming that Elron had no control over his unusual behavior, that he was somehow afflicted. Whatever the cause, his stage personality was captivating, and for people like me who easily fall in love with the bizarre, it was one element that made his act so successful.
Off-stage, Elron is articulate and poised. There is no more finger flipping or dramatic facial contorting when you talk to Elron about what he does. While he spoke to me about his experiences busking in Denmark, it dawned on me that his eccentric behavior was art. It was acting. Elron wasn’t really an insane person, he just played one on the street.
Copenhagen, like me, must really like freaks.
We soon came across the first traditional circus side show we’d seen since we started The Busking Project. We met five performers from Hellzapoppin, most of whom either hold world records or have been featured on TV shows like National Geographic’s Taboo. Bryce Graves, Hellzapoppin manager, Tim Zamora the Torture King, Balancing Strong Man Frank Simon, Bladebox Contortionist Evilyn Frantic, and Wolf Boy Jesus Chuy Aceves include glass eating, sword swallowing, skin piercing, and balancing heavy objects on their mouths as part of their act. Hellzapoppin place themselves within a long tradition of public entertainment and believe that by taking their show out of private venues into public spaces, they are bringing the side show back to it’s origins.
One of the questions I asked manager Bryce Graves, was what role he thought extremist acts held in the greater context of street performance culture. I wanted to know if he thought placing his show on the street, where audiences have no choice about being subjected to their often disturbing displays, generated more appreciation and acceptance of atypical forms of expression, or if it simply induced shock and perpetuated a sense of “otherness” and subculture.
Bryce admitted that he wasn’t sure what the totality of responses was to his form of art, but he suspected that, whether they liked what they saw or not, most people were fascinated by Hellzapoppin’s show, and that this attraction to things that are shocking or strange was very basic to human nature. Even though the streets are a place where, if passersby don’t want to support what they see they don’t have to, most of Hellzapoppin’s audience stayed to watch the end of the show.
I never saw an audience member walk away in disgust, even when Bryce shoved a screwdriver up his nose all the way to the handle. There was some wincing, some curled upper lips, some momentary eye covering, but most audience members were held captive, waiting to see what Hellzapoppin would do next.
Belle
