Street Theatre

sara farr · Post by **sara farr** » May 25th, 2009, 1:54 am

I'm very much interested in what anyone has to share about Street Theatre- improvising in outdoor public spaces without a specific paying audience. I'm considering doing a run of street performance with the Puppet Improv Project. My guess is that there are some Austin imps who have some advice to give.

* What are the legalities of performing on the street?
* What are the gimmicks and pitfalls?
* How do you manage money donations?
* What other questions should I be asking?

DollarBill · Post by **DollarBill** » May 25th, 2009, 1:27 pm

Well Hung Jury did a lot of this back in the day. I'm pretty sure we did most of it illegally, but I do know that we took lots of donations with absolutely no problems. In fact I think those shows were some of our most lucrative. We even did shows on busses and on the steps of the capitol without any real security or cop problems. I can't believe some of the places we did shows without any issues.

The only place that we really got kicked out of was the mall, and that just made the show more fun.

beardedlamb · Post by **beardedlamb** » May 25th, 2009, 8:21 pm

yeah, it was all unannounced, save our publicity. we never told any of the spots ahead of time. we would take a little break in the middle, when the audience is usually at its thickest and go around soliciting donations. we even had aaron saenz selling snocones a couple times.

biggest pitfall is distraction, other stuff going on besides you. street noise, animals (two ducks getting it on derailed our show completely at barton springs,) the sky, anything. we almost exclusively did montage at these shows because it requires the least amount of attention and allowed for the most varied uses of whatever space we were in.