This afternoon’s post comes to you from Noel Qualter, a Covent Garden regular who dazzles the crowds with his magic:
Covent Garden is a bustling, cosmopolitan area of central London famous for its theatres and shops, but it’s been associated with its other great attraction for centuries – street performing. In fact, the very first documented reference to an act entertaining the crowds in Covent Garden was in Samuel Pepys diary of 1662 where he mentioned seeing a “Punch and Judy act”.
The local authority grants licences for street performance in Covent Garden, and anyone is free to try and gain a slot by auditioning in front of council-appointed officials each week. There are various areas dedicated for performers and every day you can see a variety of different shows: from jugglers and circus acts to mimes or musicians. The performers try to put on as good a show as possible for the tourists, so many have a strong visual emphasis to draw in the crowds and, even if you’re not a native English-speaker, you’re still bound to gain enjoyment from the skill, humour and crowd rapport of the acts. Here’s a basic breakdown of how an individual performance is likely to play out:
The Show
Each act starts with crowd building techniques to try and get an ‘edge’, which is slang for a starting crowd from which you can build. The edge might come from setting up props for the act in a comedic way so as to build intrigue or even the rather unsubtle technique of shouting at passers-by, demanding that they stop! After a few bits, gags and tricks the crowd will get bigger. Everybody knows that when you see a few people watching something you feel compelled to take a peek to see what all the fuss is about. As the act progresses the performer will push the ‘edge’ back to allow new people to join the throng and try to build the crowd into an arc. People will always try and sneak around the back of the performer to watch from a different vantage point (which is less than ideal by the way) but its pointless trying to fight it, and anyway the street guys know that the people at the back never drop any money into the hat!
Passing the Hat
Which bring us on to the reason why these guys perform in the first place – to get paid! The only money that the performers make is when they pass the hat at the end of the show. Just prior to passing the hat the performer will finish his big stunt or trick and perform a ‘bottling speech’ which is designed to get the onlookers to put their hands into their pockets and pay. They will usually break character for this in order to sound deeply sincere, outlining the reasons why street performing is a noble art and pointing out that the onlookers are helping this fine tradition to continue if they make a donation…
Street performers come from all over the word to perform in Covent Garden as it’s seen as one of the top ‘venues’ in the world. Contrary to popular belief, street performers aren’t down-on-their-luck hobos looking to make enough for a coffee – in actual fact, many travel the world performing at street festivals and can make a good living while enjoying the camaraderie of fellow street performers and a free and easy nomadic lifestyle. As proof of this, you may not know that several very well-known celebrities started their career in street performance at Covent Garden, most notably Eddie Izzard who used to perform a zany comedy act with bits of juggling and magic. He cut his teeth on the cobbles of Covent Garden before eventually going on to become one of the biggest stand-up comedians in the world.
So, in closing, when you are next in Covent Garden and watching the end of a show make sure you take out your donation, fold it up and drop it into the hat in order to guarantee that next week there’ll be more performances to watch!
Guest author, Noel Qualter, is a member of the Magic Circle and has ten years of experience as a street magician in London, and is also available for hire as a table magician at your event anywhere in the UK.
[If Noel is as good a magician as he is a writer, hire him!]
January 26, 2012
Arts and Culture, London Sights