A beautiful moment

In October I asked you for stories of the impact you’ve had on your audience. I got lots of nice responses, but this one in particular (from two puppeteers, Rhoda and Remo, who live and work in Australia) dampened my eyes, even though I’ve never been much of a crier.

Perhaps it’s because I started therapy in May. Perhaps I’m just softening in my old age. But this story got to me.

If you’d like to see if you can get me crying, do send me your own stories and I might feature them here.

Enjoy!

Hi Nick,

Your email was wonderful to read, really uplifting and encouraging.

Yes we’ve moved people with our marionettes, probably because for a lot of audiences, especially adults and in places like Australia, it’s rare to see marionettes or puppets in a busking scene.

We have many stories, but this is one that is a real highlight for us and one that we share with audiences after performances, even in the theatre, to the people who stay behind to look at the marionettes or ask questions about our work after shows.

We were performing at the FISAF (Fremantle International Street Arts Festival) in Western Australia. In our street version of the show we include a puppet called Gino, who lives in a box, is without clothes and is quite roughly made. Gino was the very first marionette that Remo (my husband) ever built, when he was just discovering the world of puppetry, at a time in his life where he felt a bit lost.

I (Rhoda) sing during this number, but even before I came along, Gino often moved people to tears. Theatrically it’s the simplest number that we have. We don’t use words, just music, breathing, and gentle interactions.

Gino peeks out of the box, breathes, slowly comes out of the box, sees a flower (that we’ve played near the box) and steps out of the box to go to it. He smells it, gives me a hug, then goes out to hug someone in the audience, then returns to the box and we close him back in.

After one of our performances during the festival, a woman sent us a message via Facebook, saying she had just been diagnosed with cancer, but after seeing Gino she felt renewed strength to fight and go on living.

We thanked her for writing to us and sharing her story, wishing her all the best energy for her healing from us and our marionettes.

About a year later (or maybe a bit more), the same lady wrote back to us, saying she still remembers us and Gino, and thanked us because her cancer was gone.

We love being able to perform in the streets, because it truly is a way to make our work accessible to anyone who wants to stay and share the experience with us.

Thanks for your work too Nick.

Best greetings,

Rhoda and Remo

If you’d like to send us your photo, hold a sign saying #buskingisnotacrime, and tag us on Instagram (@buskingproject), or just email it to me here.

First this week, we received this photo from the late Jonny Walker, one of the greatest busking advocates I’ve ever met. You can read my obituary of him here.

And here’s one from Patrick Spencer, who I met in Vancouver in 2013, when he was busking with his band, Coldwater Road. [Side note: their song, Dear Eurydice, might have deeply problematic lyrics (it starts, “If you tried to walk away I’d steal your shoes”), but Lily and I found it so funny we used it for our first dance at our wedding]

News, stories and gig opportunities from around the world that I’m not writing about elsewhere. This week: there is now literally nowhere for most buskers to perform in Westminster (I can’t believe I’m typing that), a street musician gets the biggest singing audience I’ve ever seen, Kamala Harris makes an appearance in busking history, and much, much more…

Three political stories before we get below the paywall. I’ve already written extensively (here, here) about the way Westminster Council has treated its street performers over the last few years. Of the five amplified pitches they licence, one is for magicians, one was in the middle of a two-lane roundabout, one is completely unusable (no footfall), which left just two amplified pitches for hundreds of Westminster musicians to share.

Earlier this year, the council closed the Leicester Square pitch. And in November a Christmas Market was erected on the pitch in Trafalgar Square. This means that for the duration of winter, there will be no amplified pitches in the centre of London at all for buskers to use. No amplified pitches in one of the most famous cities for street performers in the world.

Next: I’d recommend buskers in Nottingham start talking to—and working with—their council, before the same thing happens there.

And before we get to the ‘fun’ content in the paid section below, I’d also recommend buskers in Denver making sure that the 16th Street Mall renovation includes space for street shows — otherwise you’re going to lose a great pitch.