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Posted on 07/19/2008 by Isabella
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Every gig has a schedule. In Dublin, we headed down to the pitch around noon to warm up for a 1PM show, got some yogurt along the way, said hello to fellow performers at the festival, threw down three shows hour-on-hour-off, then took the minibus to the evening show to watch or perform, then home to the party and bed. Singapore we waited around a lot for our five minutes, just like every other corporate gig ever. Covent Garden is different.
You only get one show a day.
Because there is only one pitch. Technically, there are two pitches, but the indoor pitch is too hot unless it's raining and you have to sign up two weeks in advance for that one anyway unless you want to put your name on the freebie list and wait to see if someone doesn't show up in which case you can go on five minutes into their time any disputes to be settled by the freebie list tacked up on that pillar over there, yes, it's written on the back of that receipt stuck up in a crack in the wall.
You only get one show a day. Sometimes, you get no shows. Like the morning you find out that the train in from Walthamstow (1 hour to Central London) isn't running and there's a replacement bus which is over there, you just missed it, next bus half an hour. So you take a minicab to the next station, get the next train, change at Finsbury Park and run all the way from Covent Garden station to the pitch, which is the piazza in front of the My Fair Lady pillars, only it's sunny and Saturday instead of raining and Friday night. And when you reach the pitch it's 8:16AM and you have Missed The Draw. And since Saturday is the best day of the week, there are no freebie slots today indoors or out, thank you for playing, why not spend a lovely day sightseeing on the South Bank?
But most days definitely week days and especially the week when a lot of the other acts are at Glastonbury, a huge music and fun festival nearby you get one show a day. The time everyone else wants is 2PM. And at 8AM every morning the performers slouch in, paper coffee cups in hand, for The Draw. Sham (Big shoes, giant unicycle), Shandy (pop and lock dancing), Ossie (handstand walk over a line of people), the Sams from Australia (sword swallow on giant ladder) and New Zealand (knife juggle on giant rolla-bolla). Everyone's name written by a number in the order they arrived. The numbers on paper scraps picked from a hat. And in the order drawn, write your name by the time you want. The time we want is 4:40PM, which means a 6PM show since by that time of day Phil (slack rope), Sam from New Zealand, and someone else will have run over and the pitch is running behind. We're not picky 5:20 will also do.
We've discovered we are not an afternoon act. We don't fight hard enough for our crowd, we don't heckle them into staying, bully them into giving, and yes it sounds like we are all virtuous and Thee-AH-trical, but what we mostly are is unsuccessful. At least, at first. At least, in the sense that we make about the same money as everyone else and have about the same size crowds and don't end up bailing on a show after the first horrible twelve minutes when No-One Stops To Watch or even after the first twenty promising minutes when No-One Will Be A Volunteer. (In our time here, we see five acts mostly good, experienced acts bail on shows. The first day, the pitch is running slow but our first show suddenly happens on time when a sweet girl juggler walks off the pitch not able to get a volunteer. We hope this is not an omen.)
We are not used to doing as well as everyone else. We are used to doing better, to being the biggest act around, hi-five-hi-five-lo-five-lo-five, Queens of the Festival, pour the money out like water. Rustling water.
Here we learn a lot. Like, half the crowd does not speak English. The other half *is* English, and no, they Do Not Want to Play, thank you very much. The first couple of days, two girl show, Spike and I need three men to foot the rig while we set it up. I ask seven count them, seven men to assist and get turned down stone cold. I'm back in tenth grade and not going to the Spring Fling.
Like, don't apologize for being American. The Brits don't care, the Americans get offended because they're as homesick as we are (we're pretending the dollar is equal to the pound, otherwise it's too painful to buy anything), and the Europeans don't understand. In Canada, it's funny, it's a moment of irony and shared cultural understanding. Here, it's a moment of pained embarrassment and badly timed applause.
Like, we can't do two aerial acts in one show at a festival, hoop at the beginning brings them over and they stay through the end of the show with silk. At Covent, once they've seen an aerial act they're ready to go, we know what that big tripod does now and shouldn't we go get in line at Madame Tussaud's?
Like, Sparky Mark (chainsaw juggling in gold speedo, plus giant unicycle) has a secret to phrasing your hat line to get more bills, less coins. I can't tell it's a secret.
Like, transitions are the key the next section has to start before they realize the previous section is done. Like, don't go out to the audience for hat pass (it's a Renfest thing to haul ass to the back of the audience Before They Get Away) because it lowers your status. Stand in the middle. Let them come to you. Then haul ass to the three bar balconies (you remembered to talk to the balconies in the show, right?) and get that hat pass in while the other performers take down your rig.
Like, HOLY CRAP THE OTHER PERFORMERS ARE TAKING DOWN OUR RIG. Because at festivals, you Do Not Touch Other People's Stuff. But here while the act before you is finishing their hat pass, you take down their stuff and move it with the help of whoever else is waiting for a turn so that the next act can get out there and Maybe We Can Get The Pitch Back on Time.
Like, that guy who juggles five, casually, almost without thinking, will probably not show up for the slot after us because the substances will claim him around 3PM and we will be able to relax a little and run 55 minutes in a 45 slot. We watch him practice in the churchyard in the afternoon, the red balls catching our eyes as we kill the 10 hours between Draw and Show (it's not worth the commute to go home and nap, we're learning the names of the Men of No Fixed Address, not our colleagues but members of our work environment), and he flashes the balls calmly and quickly, without the desperate air of the guys who are really pushing it for five, confident, solid, on top of things (he can do it with five clubs on a giant unicycle, astonishing even other jugglers), the years of training and performance visible in every sure catch for this, his only act of the day.
I would trade him the 10 minutes.
Covent Garden's reputation is a group of mean, old, snotty jerk performers who drive other people off their pitch. This is 100% wrong. The performers are beyond kind and helpful. When we arrived, our amp died. We used four different people's sound systems, including the memorable show with Phil's amp, Sam from Australia's iPod cord, and Mark's mic, which he ran out and put on my head midshow when it was clear we needed a mic to deal with our slightly drunk but still funny audience volunteer. People carried stuff for us (you always carry your own stuff). People ran back to the green room and got cords when our cords died. And yeah, festival people are nice, too, but this level of We're All In This Together was unprecedented. As we packed to leave the country, George (slackrope) and Dave (didn't see his show, probably a giant unicycle in there somewhere) grabbed our broken amp and a screwdriver, and we left with a working amp.
What we mostly learned is this: There's a reason all big unicycle shows look alike. There's a reason they pitch the big tall thing that's going to happen at the end. There's a reason there's a bonus trick after the finale. There's a reason they stall like crazy before the finale.
The last day is Monday. The Sunday before, we leave after our show, Bach floating from the South Hall musicians' pitch, the lights of the ticket booths, the Royal Opera's terrace, the ticket touts shouting and waving for Billy Elliot, Hairspray, Lion King, good seats still available, you can make the curtain. There is a magician on the corner and another waiting his turn for the magician's pitch. Our transitions are tight, our hat is high status, we use non-Brits to set up the rig and pull as show volunteers. As we go into silk, the only aerial act, it starts to rain. We tell the crowd, open your umbrellas, go under the porch, we're at the finale. And they shift, but they stay. They stay, and they give. And afterwards Sparky Mark and Dr. Phil congratulate us on holding the crowd, keeping them even in the rain.
Monday, it's still raining, and we sign up for our 5:20 and for a 5:40 on the indoor freebie list. We'll take what we can get. We dump last night's hat into Sid's tray at the Money Exchange and he sells us dollars better than his best rate to get rid of them, to be nice to us, the daily girls. And after Sparky Mark treats us to tea at the British Museum, our one tourist experience, (finger sandwiches, little cakes, pots of roobois tea because this is the modern London) we get nailed by a downpour and stagger over to the pitch, ducking and running from pub doorway to pub doorway like the opening credits of M*A*S*H. Technically, we are about to miss our spot, but Alex (giant unicycle) is ready to go and trades times with us. Luna's circus performer friends from Germany and Isabella's IT friends from outside London and our public space architect friend from inside London have come to see us, and we relax. We are done with making the show all things to all venues. We are done with changing every day to try to be the show that makes the most money. We do the acts we like the best, the acts we want our friends to see. And it is grace and illumination under the rainy glass roof, it is a crowd that stays and grows and stays and (because all the beauty in the world Doesn't Pay The Rent) gives.
* * *
I realize, after writing this, it doesn't give much of a picture of London. We saw but didn't ride the London Eye, because we were checking out the busking pitch there, and we saw the second half of Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe, after our show (and really, the first half's all set up anyway, right?) We saw a lot of the Covent Garden neighborhood, and the outside of Buckingham Palace (it was near the ice cream stand), and we walked over bridges on the Thames. But mostly, we got up at 6 for an 8AM draw on the weekends, or drifted into town around 11 to sign up for a slot on the weekdays, and then we hung out and hunted for internet and affordable lunch. I always forget, it's not a vacation. That's why it sometimes feels like work. |
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