In cities all over the world musicians, magicians, artists and the like take to the streets to showcase their talent, make a little bit of an income and to try and get themselves noticed. There’s no doubt that if you have been out doing some shopping on the weekend, or have been heading out for a night on the town that you will have come across one of these acts, and may have stopped to watch at some point or another.
One of the things that you may have noticed fairly quickly is that there are some very good street performers and some very bad street performers. But what exactly makes a good or a bad street performer? How does one become a successful street performer? Continue reading this article to find out.
1. Determine A Few Good Places To Busk
When first starting out what a lot of street performers tend to do is find one good spot and return to it each week. Although you may strike lucky and find a good spot straight away it is still crucial that you determine a few different places to busk. This will allow you to perform to different audiences and test different things out in order to find out what works best for your specific act.
When looking for great places to perform you need to look for a place where there is a lot of foot fall where you’re not too close to other street performers and it’s perfectly legal for you to be there. There’s nothing worse than getting moved on midway through an act so do everything you can to avoid this happening.
2. Learn to Pass the Hat
Passing the hat is a skill that you need to learn very early on if you wish to make money as a street performer. It’s no use just leaving the hat lying about in the hopes of the odd person placing some money in it. In order to get the best return you need to get the hat moving around in your audience whilst you are performing or at the end of your performance.
3. Use your Skill to Put on a Great Act & Stand Out
The fact is you don’t have to be the best singer or the best dancer in order to become a successful street performer. What you need to do is use your skill to put on a great show that’s a little different than all the other acts as this will draw in the most attention. So use everything you have may it be your great personality or the saxaphone you picked up from a musical instruments pawn shop in columbus to stand out from the other street performers.
4. Keeping Building Tension
If you don’t keeping building up tension during your act people are going to lose interest and walk away. This means that the chances of getting noticed are going to be minimal and the money that you make is also going to be minimal. Therefore you need to find a way to continuously build up tension and keep people interested.
5. Learn from your Experiences
Becoming a successful street performer comes with experience. This is because each experience allows you to see what works and what doesn’t. Each time that you perform make a mental note of the things that work well and the things that don’t go down well all too well. This will make it easier for you to tweak your act until you reach perfection!
Good Luck
A lot of famous people such as Penn and Teller and Dub FX started off as street performers and have gone on to do incredibly well. If you adhere to the advice in this article, and give street performing everything you have, you never where you could end up in a few years! All the best.