The Awkward Moment when Street Evangelists Mistake Counter-Trolling for Sincere Interest, or, a Street Performance Art Critique

 So If you've ever hung out with me in a city, you know how much I enjoy talking to random strangers and getting distracted by anything that might be interesting and future writing/thinking/performing fodder. So you won't be surprised that walking through downtown Boston on a surprise day off, I couldn't resist watching a man doing what I will refer to as “performance art.”

The brief synopsis is a man was standing in front of a simple enough easel that had a poster broken into 4 quarters, each with an unfinished picture and some type of rebus puzzle (you've probably seen them before, click here for examples of this type of puzzle). Anyway, when I entered the circle around his performance, there was large painted letters across the top that said “Can you solve the riddle?” More details about the plot under “Loose Usage of Linear Narrative.” It was interactive, involved live painting, writing, discussion, the unraveling of a story, spectacle, props, costume, and at first glance looked like some form of guerrilla art.

What follows is a critique of it as performance art, and then some random quips at the end that I couldn't resist sharing.

Loose Usage of Linear Narrative

In a structure very similar to “Blues Clues,” the charismatic host wearing simple colors had a tone that was a mixture of teacher, big brother, and theatrical monologue. The title across the top of the painting introduced one big idea, overriding question (“Can You Solve the Riddle?”) and then the audience was taken through a set of smaller puzzles, that when their answers were all put together would answer the big question. This is the structure of every Blues Clues episode. Ever. The riddle became “What happened to Harvey?” The answer, which by the 4^th panel (when you had already become invested in finding out the puzzle regarding how he lived and died by the first three) was blatantly religious. The first three are a mixture of rebus puzzles and “guess-what-I'm-drawing” type puzzles. I had fun calling out the answers while the rest of the audience stared somewhat blankly. They were about how someone died pretty simply by falling off a boat into below 0 degrees water and dying. But then the final panel was about how before he died he had read his bible so he knew there would be “Life After Death,” (or as the rebus wrote it Death/Life) and was therefore not afraif. And then he proceeds to write sin in the middle of that as a barrier which he paints over in black and turns the black line into a cross on a hill. Cutting edge imagery, right? Still, his overall use of spectacle and ability to pull in the interest of people who were mainly walking from somewhere to another point or grabbing lunch was pretty strong. A big part of that stemmed from wrapping you up in the concept of a plot and a truth to be discovered that was hidden subtly in front of you.

Building Off Childhood Memories

Besides the “Blues Clues” like structure, a structure designed to be the most educational and useful for pre-school age children (read “The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell for a chapter on this) it was circle time, it was painting in simple colors on an easel, it was interactive story telling to try and teach a moral/lesson, it was the joy of finding an answer to a question. He distilled many of the best parts of pre-school, the first form of education many Americans experience, into an eye catching street performance that made you stop and watch what you might otherwise avoid.

Usage of Found Space

If you've walked down Boylston Street, Boston, on a nice day, you are used to random people asking you for things: money for the homeless, donations for random charities, to read their pamphlet and save your immortal soul, etc. About halfway through watching, when my skeptic side overrode my watcher side, I noticed the performer had pamphlets tucked in a box at his feet, but until then he was presenting himself as the mixture of pre-school teacher, big brother, and monologist. By presenting himself as something to watch, like human statues, break dancers, and other Coney Islandesque types might, the apprehensiveness that an audience (i.e. people walking down the street) might have to pamphlet wielders was bypassed. He could sneak his message in by recontextualizing the delivery.

Usage of Color

The painting was big, bold and simple, with no crossing or mixing of colors. The use of only yellow, black, blue, red, yellow, and green, avoided showing colors that were mixtures and hard to define. Everything was simple and what you thought you saw once it was unraveled. The world visualized was one of precise and visible truths. His aesthetic rule was carried on into his outfit, as well as into the clothes of his young disciples (more on them later).

Audience participation

While elements of this have been discussed already, I feel it important to point out that this approach allowed for a welcoming environment, a sense of audience validation, and let a monologue appear to be a dialogue.

Built in audience

Ever go to a show with no one in the audience and the whole vibe is off? Of the maybe ten or so people already enthralled and involved when I got there, at least half were high school age followers of his. I know because whenever people left or walked by after the religious nature of his performance was clear, the teens would try and give them business sized cards to connect and spread the message that we are all sinners and must read our bibles daily.

Combination of Image, Text, and Spectacle

I don't think they could have worked alone. The image of the crowd and the paintings caught our eyes. The text relates to reading, the basis of the bible related message he was trying to pass on, and a way to catch random passersby up with what was happening, and it drove home certain points while giving the feeling of reading a story book. The spectacle made it seem like just another street artist initially and held our attention throughout.

And When Blatancy Ruins Art

If you're going to be blatant in an art without saying something new, what is the point? Besides the fact that passersby who had been giving interesting peeks switched to guffaws and eye rolls (rarely a desired audience response) it pushed others away. The charm, the childhood comfort that was invoked, the sense of a puzzle being explored, became the rehashing of a cliché and the pushing of an agenda.

Conclusion

Overall, it was effective at gaining interest, developing conversation, and catching people with their guards down. But then it became blatant cliché and agenda and all the fun/joy/puzzlement was ruined.

Quips, in Bullet Point Form! 

• The high school students who seemed to be just avid listeners but then turned out to be his helpers felt like a mixture of Manson family meets 90's girl scouts on tye-dye day.
• Really enjoyed counter trolling. Like I used to do in high school with recruiters, I built my responses to his questions around taking away attention, diluting/limiting the message. For example, when he was building up “sin” as this great barrier to eternal life and asked what it means, I replied “according to the old testament, missing the mark.” He responded yes and continued on, but I feel giving it that meaning made it seem less terrible and diluted his case.
• When showing the ten commandments (a sudden prop tucked away, and arguably a mixture of graven image and text) only showed the second tablet. Interestingly did not include the 2^nd commandment against making image.
•  As I was leaving one of the teens was very insistent on giving me the form.  Apparently she thought that because I was answering questions and involved in the conversation I was "hanging off every word of his message."  Nope.  Definitely just being inquisitive and trolling.  Sorry.

Tomorrow: The Alpha and the Megatron.