172 - Building Real Connections With A Crowd - Jay Gilligan - Malmö Conversations 2 of 4

A crowd cheering can feel like love, right up until it wrecks the timing of the act. From a Malmö hotel room while props are being prepped, we dig into a surprisingly deep question: what does a performer owe an audience, and what does an audience unknowingly take away from a performer when they bring their own rhythm into the room? We talk about clapping, pacing, silence, and why comedy and juggling depend on the artist setting the beat.

Then we zoom out into the bigger life problem of being a working circus artist. Stepping off the normal career track means you often have to explain yourself, defend your choices, and prove the work is real. We get honest about the economics of performing arts, why circus pricing can be wildly different from music gigs, and how easy it is for “the job” to swallow the joy that made you start in the first place. We also wrestle with the messy overlap between hobby, identity, and profession when your curiosity is also your paycheck.

The conversation turns into a practical thought experiment with real creative stakes: if money were no object, what would your artistic practice look like? We land on building a team, carving out time, and designing small theatre experiences where the audience is not anonymous. Along the way we take on the attention economy, algorithm-driven distraction, and the idea that the most radical act today might be a room full of people sharing attention on purpose.

If you care about live performance, audience connection, juggling, circus, creative work, or making art inside entertainment, this one goes straight to the core. Subscribe, share with a friend who makes things, and leave a review so more listeners can find the show.

Transcript

Welcome And Malmö Setup

SPEAKER_04 0:11

Greetings, fellow travelers, and welcome to the Way of the Thoman, where we view the world through the lens of Choman 2. I am Captain Frodo, and I will be your host and your guide along the way. And uh if you haven't done it already, go on to wherever you don't just started listening to this thing and click 5 stars.

SPEAKER_03 0:30

It really makes a difference. And subscribe while you're there. Anyway, um we're back here now in another, the second of the conversations that I had with Jay Gilligan in Malmer. And this conversation starts straight into it. Um as it often is. We are sitting, chatting, and then I go, Oh gosh, I should remember to turn on the recording so that you can listen in to what it was that we were talking about.

SPEAKER_04 0:59

Jay is again sitting, rolling up his balls in the hotel room.

SPEAKER_03 1:03

So it was a very nice hotel room, and we've pushed the couch up uh next to the bed, and um we're trying to organize ourselves so that we can sit and he has the whole table filled with all of his stuff and all of us things that he's gonna put into the act, and uh we are talking a little bit about what it was like to share the stage the night before and uh issues and it starts to be a little bit more about sort of about the audience and our relationship to the audience and uh yeah. This was really an extraordinary weekend that uh it wasn't a weekend, it was a little bit more than that, but we got to do shows together with Marlon, and uh we just it was such a great uh place. We went on a little drive around town together with Marlon, where she showed her awesome um studio. And if um if you haven't um seen uh Marlon Nielsen's uh where she actually fooled Penn and Teller, uh just go on YouTube and Google Marlon Nielsen, Fool Loss Penantella, and um when I put the episodes of Marlon up there, you you will um be able to click on those links and you can find it and you can see you can actually see the studio where we um went on a little trip to. So um yeah, and uh something really nice about being uh in a you know, Malmo is still a big city for somebody who comes from Hoagston, Norway, such as me, as which is a small city on the west coast of Norway, but uh to to um go to Malma, which is a smaller kind of uh city, and to receive the audience that Malin had built up over those uh uh m uh years that she has been performing there was just such a pleasure. And both Jay Gilligan and myself just had the best of times, and really the topic of the of the folks keeps uh coming up in this um setting where you just feel like uh the performers in this show here really were present with the audience that we were sharing it, and the technicians of the Victoria Theatre was also very great. So we had an excellent time and we got these uh great conversations out of it, because a lot of the time, you know, there's a different um feeling when you're recording remotely. Uh so here we are, and not just like recording, we are busy, he is busy creating the show and uh

When Clapping Breaks The Act

SPEAKER_03 3:25

conversing while we do it. So this really is peak show life.

SPEAKER_04 3:29

Here is Jay.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

But yeah, I don't know how to like make them not uh clap along, but uh they were fine last night. They were, but it was on the edge of like I just you know what I mean? You go, they don't know what's coming.

SPEAKER_03 3:46

Yeah, yeah, they don't know how long it is. Yeah, and I but I have the same with uh with climbing on the cans too, where like I do a do something like that, and then that can sometimes be interpreted, and because yesterday they liked the show so much here in Alma that they really reading my cues. If I would have done two in in a row, but then I deliberately turn away from them and look down when I did the warm-up thing, because they go, Oh, because they the band is starting to swing and I come back out, it's that guy again, oh cool, or whatever. And then I have ways of I don't want them to clap, because exactly that. Um I got five minutes of stuff to do, and I am setting the rhythms there, and my doing or breakings of the rhythms is gonna make you laugh. But if you're dancing to the beat of your own clapping, right, then it's not funny what I do because you're paying attention to your own rhythms or so.

SPEAKER_02 4:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

And there's times for that kind of participatory uh excitement, but uh at Eva Balls, where in which you do, such a beautiful ending, stripping everything back, it's just the beauty of this stuff, and you're standing in all with the colourful stuff around your feet in the end, but there's no balls left to juggle. That's a powerful image, and you don't want people to clap, but because of the little puffs of confetti, because of the change of colours and all that, once you start clapping, you can go clap sort of like you do almost like if you would do it for fireworks.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:14

Because it's ongoing and colour changes, and it keeps being surprising. So, whoa, oh, yeah, oh, ah, lovely, oh yeah. That was my um uh audible representation of fireworks. Nice. So, all right. We spoke about um whether life gets easier as an artist. I think what one of the things that we sort of didn't quite say last time, and you mentioned this is the way of the people from Ohio, and the most of the time, you go to the to the school, and then you might not even work up, end up doing that, but you follow this. But when we then don't, when we take the path less trodden, then you somehow have to justify yourself in a way that the others don't. Because you go, Well, I'm going to the electrician school, as that's that's a lot of people doing in my neighborhood, doing that, and they go into offshore or whatever. There's a lot of that going on in there where you work on boats or you work on things. So, like if they did that, people don't go, why are you doing that? Like, you so you think that living your life partly on boats most of the time, or like that this is this is what you want with your life? It's like it's gonna how are you gonna but it's but but that's part of the thing that is just accepted. You go, I'm gonna do go to school, I'm gonna do this, and then people don't ask any questions with it. But so we have more to prove because we step off that path, and and I guess what I have had all the way along is that I have had this feeling that I first and foremost, why am I doing this? It's because I have I love it. I spend all of my time thinking about this kind of stuff, and I've done that kind of all of my life. Like I also do read and I do all the sort of stuff, but this is the constant that has had my had my travels, it's had my intellectual and my passion, and it's how I've met my friends and how I've met, and and like now when I move to a small town on the edge of Norway and I don't have people such as yourself, or people that you can have long conversations with on the on the craft, then you know it you you're feeling different than when I was uh chasing around and just being with those people and going from festival to festival or whatever. So uh yeah, it's I've certainly and thoroughly enjoyed it. So that's sort of been one driving motor, and it makes me feel like I belong in the world and that I'm doing the right thing, even when I'm sharing a van with four other people, and you're driving somewhere, and there's like six of us sitting in the van for two more hours because we can't check in and uh or whatever. Yeah, you break down the car and all the stuff that happens, right? So I am, I am certainly loving it, and uh and now the love sort of changes, and

Choosing The Unusual Life Path

SPEAKER_03 8:10

that's it. We reached a different phase of our life, and and different things becomes hard, I think.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

So sure, I can relate to that.

SPEAKER_03 8:18

And I don't think we also spoke last about whether we can sort of change track now, and I am beginning or I have kind of come to terms with the fact that I don't think so. I don't think I can change track, not because it wouldn't be possible, but I think because of what we touched on last time, because it wouldn't satisfy me in that way. Yeah, and why is that? Do I have and this is for you, do you have a striving? Because this isn't easy in the way that you just can sit back and you just go to work and you're half-assed do it. Yeah, or is it? But I'd say we're making that claim anyway. So you have to hustle it for gigs and you have to do all this stuff. So, like what do you you have this urgency or like you you you you still have that striving towards something, and what would that be in any case?

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Well, yeah, man. So I don't know exactly how to answer that. Too many thoughts come to mind, so I try to get some of them out and it goes somewhere. Um you know, when I was growing up, like the a lot of examples I had of professional jugglers were jugglers who hated juggling. So they were, I don't know what to say. I mean, looking back on it, I can put my own spin on it, but like uh it had turned into a job. And it really was they had made these choices of the path of least resistance. I mean, this is hilarious that I'm talking to you right now, rolling up these balls that I'm gonna juggle tonight that takes two hours, uh, two and a half hours to roll them. Um I could have just not put them in the show tonight, and then I would have saved myself a total of like 10 hours of extra work on this contract. And if we start dividing my salary per hour, well, I'm an idiot. I just basically cut my price in half by doing this one trick. So obviously, this trick gives me something more than just it being a job. But when I was a kid or a teenager specifically, I mean, looking around at the professional jugglers, a lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them were just checked out on juggling as perhaps what their initial interest in juggling was, which was a hobby, which was a maybe even an identity or a lifestyle, or who I'm not interested in that so much, but you know, just as a practitioner, as a hobbyist of like, I'm a juggler, I like to learn new tricks, I like to talk to other jugglers, I like to think about juggling and watch juggling, and you know, I'm interested in juggling culture and whatever. And so that's why when I was a teenager, I was I really was like, oh my I don't want to be a professional juggler because when I do, I'm gonna start hate hating juggling, juggling. And I love juggling too much to hate it, so I'm not gonna be a performer. I mean that's how extreme the examples were in my life. Wow. Whereas like I never wanna I never want to juggle. So it does come down to like maybe choosing I was gonna say choosing the path of least resistance. I don't know if choosing performing as a way to make money is uh in general is a path of least resistance. I don't know if that's because like I say, in many ways I can champion being a pro a performer as a juggler, for example. I I'd much rather be a juggler than a musician or a dancer if I had to make a living, or a painter, oh my god, or a poet.

SPEAKER_03 11:39

I can't imagine trying to make a career as a as a fine arts painter and having a gallery show, a gallerist, and because there's in many ways I mean trying to make it in the world as a poet, that's not an easy Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

I mean if I generalize about it, it's because we can say like as an actor, there's just millions of actors out there. Whereas there's like maybe 20 jugglers out there, and I know the potential for acting as a career is exponentially by the power of a hundred bigger than juggling. Oh, yeah, yeah. Right? We can become Jerry Seinfeld or Brad Pitt or whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 12:16

The examples at the top are just astronomical, or like within sports, which is like it's right. So sometimes it sometimes tips into sport and that, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

So I'm not saying that like so. I don't know. I mean, that that's a question I don't know if it's so interesting to answer, but this idea of like, well, if I'm gonna be a professional juggler, is that some sort of path of least resistance to making a living? In one way, it is out of the arts or performing arts. Like it could be ironic. I mean, it doesn't sound like on the surface, right? It sounds ridiculous. Like, oh, you mean a juggler? That's a good idea to make money. It's like, well, it's a better idea than being a musician who gets paid like 25 bucks a gig to at the local bar, you know, Tuesday night, which is which I would love to do. I mean, you want you talked about maybe do you feel you could change into some other thing now? I could totally change into a musician. Like I've like since the

Staying In Love With The Craft

SPEAKER_00 13:05

pandemic, I've gotten hired a few times, a handful of times. Yeah. So I don't know, 10, 15 times to do music. All the sweet electronics. Yeah, and it's stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know how many people are doing that besides me? Like millions.

SPEAKER_03 13:18

Yeah, so there are more people who can do that Tuesday night gig, which is what drives the price down as well. Like, but when we do, there's not as many gigs, but you do get paid a bit more, so that pays for those days when you are hustling for gigs and creating your material.

SPEAKER_00 13:35

And well, what's funny is I was just in Iceland performing juggling, and a producer from a music festival swallowed me and invited me to perform that night at a music festival. And so I did. And then he said, Hey, next year, come back. I want you to do a juggling show as part of the festival. What's your price? And I knew we were gonna have that conversation where I said beforehand, I go, Hey, just so you know, I'm gonna tell you my price, but I work in circus. I don't work in music because I've had this before. When you tell the music producer how much you get paid as a circus artist, they're gonna choke. They're gonna laugh you out of the office. Right. Because, you know, I mean, I'm gonna get two, three thousand euros for a show. Whereas like a musician, like, okay, we'll give you like gas money in like a food voucher for the food truck. Like, you know, I mean, there is a just a huge discrepancy of culture there.

SPEAKER_03 14:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so of course it is, because there's the headliners who are getting right. I I'm working at music festivals too. So I'm like, right, I am getting a decent pay, right, but I am getting a fraction of the the others. But then again, it's like that's also a little bit too you could also get a person to do it for the gas money and everything if there was a circus student who is just out, or someone just starting out, and they go, oh man, right. Like, not only will we get to go to the festival for free, we will get food vouchers for the food truck. Yeah, I know, I know. We did it too. And we've done that, and there was that time. So now it's also like when we talk about circus performers, there's such a big uh uh it's a chasm between what is is possible and what gigs are sort of available or whatever. I know there's a lot of talk about that of of younger performers undercutting the others as well. But that's why that's why I don't feel like they're nipping at my heels. Right. Yeah, no, that's a good point. Yeah, and that's that thing of God. I'm not looking for that gig where they go, hey, we want you to be at the festival, but you need to do walkabout, it's like yeah, well, uh, like from there's we opened the doors at 10, so you don't have to start until like 10.30, and then and then you don't have to do it after the headliner goes on at 10 at night.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:48

And then you go and you take the breaks, you can change in the toilet. So, like, you know, there's there's a spectrum of of stuff that's available. But yeah, that's right. And and I think if you don't have a following as a as a band, you are in a very difficult situation. Well, so more so than than circus arts is.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Well, so so that idea though of like I'm a performer and I don't like juggling. I'm a juggler as a performer for an occupation, and I don't like juggling anymore. It's just my job. I just have my props in my case, and I can just go out and do the the thing I do and I don't think about it anymore after that. That's never something that was uh that never that never it first of all. I had a reaction against it when I was young, so it never became my life. But also, I never got into performing to perform. I got into performing as a happenstance that I liked juggling. And I still like juggling.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

So that's where I'm at, right? Like I'm still in love with the craft and love with the art of it as well. Yeah, and never gonna still still exploring new things and I'm old enough now that I and I've been doing it 40 years, and I know I know now it's not gonna run out, I promise you. That's not a hyperbolic thing, you know. I just know I'm just like, oh, there's not enough lifetimes to juggle enough for me.

SPEAKER_03 17:09

Yeah, and oh, that's the thing that was uh like can you change track? And I'm going, like, we both, I guess, would say it's possible. I could go and do another job if but I do still love this. So the truth of the matter would be that I would do that thing, and then I would still be thinking of these things. I would still be writing, I would still be that's true, because this is still my passion. I'm a like a I'm a lifer. I don't think it's going to change. And if I do another job, then that would be because of uh pandemic reasons, where it for some reason it became illegal for me to do my job, which uh because the conditions of it, having people gathered together in one place, yeah, that became illegal. So if that happened or some fascist dictator dictatorship takes over and gathering of people, it becomes illegal.

SPEAKER_02 18:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 18:04

Whatever. But I would still, you know, that I I would still be thinking and doing these things if I did that other job because I needed to to because it was the only way to make money, then I would still be thinking and dreaming of these things and where and what is possible and whatever.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

And so do you remember what you asked me then why why I started that idea about the juggler who hates juggling?

SPEAKER_03 18:25

Uh have you got a striving and it's something that drives you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

Exactly. So that's what that's kind of my answer. Like it's like even without it's what you're saying. That's I love that answer. It's like, yeah, I could be something else, but I'm still gonna keep thinking about this thing I'm doing now.

SPEAKER_03 18:40

But I hadn't thought of that, and that's like it came in now as a result of you, like it's a summary of your thought because it was so similar on some of those things, and that's that's the thing. My rooms in the basement where I have my stuff, right? It's a whole bookshelf full of circus and carnival freak show stuff, and a whole book mainly of magic with juggling in it, and then another double bookshelf of um of Billy bookshelf of all the general kind of stuff that I'm interested in, then philosophy and religion and biology and all this that just fills those, plus that that's just those two rooms where there's the books that Miranda don't want upstairs. Yeah. So I this is what I like, and then I would swap into writing about it or whatever, or like doing whatever it is. So I think even that because all my fiction as well is about performers doing shows and stuff, right? And the non-fiction that I write that people have heard on the podcast at length,

The Money Reality Of Performing

SPEAKER_03 19:41

uh, that is about performance. But it is also then about what it is to be a human being in the world. Because I think maybe we artists think about that a little bit more so because we aren't following a normal track, and you keep people asking you, is this what you do for a living? Can you make a life? How do you do it? Can you support yourself? Okay, so I don't know if that's just me, but I because I'm philosophically inclined, when people ask that, I do you do tend to think about that and sort of go, actually need to have answers ready. Not necessarily needing that you have answers ready, but people actually ask with genuine interest. So sometimes in a more formal situation where it's an interview and you're in a small town and they can ask really direct, straight to the core questions. Like, can you is this what you do for a living? And you sort of go, they're not asking because they're but they're asking because they don't actually understand it. There's such a big discrepancy between what you and me do for a living and what this is the way of Ohio. Like that it's like it's so different that when they look at what we do, they are actually genuinely asking, is this what you do for a living? We're going, is this work? In the same way that they asked about uh about um Firebird when I came out or Duchamp's fountain that they're going, is this art? We need to have a good conversation now to work out what this means. Because they're looking at it as so different from what you thought art was. Or whatever. Yeah. So yeah, I mean the the striving comes and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:13

Well, there's another way to look at the whole the whole question about what we were talking in last episode and this one now, even. Where you can kind of rephrase the whole thing and it goes back to Eric O'Berry's like myth of the juggling artist, where we're kind of pretending that we're doing I'm pretending that I'm an artist working with juggling and that's how I make my living. But the reality is I I do a Christmas cabaret and I I juggle at a shopping mall potentially, or you know, and then I go do a show in an art gallery.

SPEAKER_02 21:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

But so like, but I kind of have this self identity where I'm I'm whistling in the dark a little bit of like, no, but I'm also I'm a juggling artist, Frodo. Like I'm an artist, I work with juggling, that's how I make my living. But if you drill it down to the practicalities of Like, how do I actually make the money? Very a small portion of my income is actually from juggling as a as an artist.

SPEAKER_03 22:08

Yeah, so this was what what we touched on last time, but one thing that I want to go. So we're making, are you making art or are you is it about making money versus making art? And is there a difference? And I guess the answer to that just from what we just said now is that yes, there there is a difference in one way. Like because in way we always juggle, but there are certain times when I watched your show yesterday from Out of Play, uh then this is something else. This is there's depth going on here. There's deep emotion, and there's all this interesting stuff that has to do with like it it's it's we are beyond the tricks, at least in what we like the tricks are needed because that's a skeleton that holds it up. But the flesh and the meat of the thing is is based on something else, what that work is, and why you're going back again to do that show again, and and why we so there there is a difference in in those things. And me, I am now part of why these questions are coming up, is because I am needing to do more art in my life, because a vanishingly small portion of what I do as a performer has my art in it. This podcast and what I've written, this is my artistic main artistic output, and I would like that to change.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

But you hold on now, wait a second. A couple of things, or I don't know, hold on, but like also and or whatever, where it's like first of all the the expectation of the art versus entertainment or whatever, that comes from the venue or the audience's expectation, right? So one thing I love about your work is you don't condescend to the audience, you don't uh talk down to them, you don't take them for granted. That's why I think your acts are genius because you you yeah, you you are not afraid to bring honesty and truth and big ideas to the stage in a quote unquote entertainment setting, even though that's not the expectation. And I don't think you do it either in a pretentious way where you ignore kind of their expectation, rather you capitalize on it. You you fully say last night in the cabaret, hey, I know why we're here, I know what we're doing, I know what the occasion is, I'm not stupid, neither are you. Let's have a fun, intelligent conversation in the right way to to to to do the canned speech of like, now I'm the incredible rubber man, and what do you want to do in your life? And right? So like it's more so just to say that that discrepancy between what do I do in each situation can come from inside of us as performers. But but it doesn't have to necessarily, right? Like it can come from the situation itself, but the way you approach that TV commercial shoot could be just the same way you approach the art gallery show.

SPEAKER_03 25:01

And I guess ultimately I do, and I am not saying that what I did last night that I treat I I am you are an artist who work in the field of juggling. It's often what I most often when I sort of have to describe it, it's that because you go, there's more stuff going on here than just no, I'm gonna eat the apple. There's like there's more. But with me, it's also I am an artist working in the field or con field or constriction of entertainment. I am taking taking the parameters of entertainment that the audience needs to be having a good time all the way through. They need to be able to enjoy the whole experience. And I have the feeling like they're watching circus, but and I will be doing tricks and doing stuff, but I will be talking and thinking and sharing deeply human things because that's the stuff that actually connects us. So that's how you connect deeply to my acts, that's how you connect deeply to me, and that's how I share. I want to have a genuine connection in here. So I am doing art, but it is constrained by it needing to be entertaining.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

So this is a great, this is a great segue into the other part of what I was gonna say, is that we our language starts to fail us and confuse us a little bit. Because I think about Anthony Gotto. There was a huge he used to have a forum on the internet. You could write on this forum and chat with him, actually. It was amazing. And he called himself a circus artist. Oh yeah. I'm a circus artist. Or I think he even could drop the word circus sometimes because it's also like how we speak. You could say, Oh, I'm an artist, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean maybe it's implied he's a circus artist. But there became a whole argument on his forum. Like, am I am I an artist or am I uh like what does that mean? What do you mean you're an artist? You just did the same act every night, people were saying.

SPEAKER_03 26:46

Are you just a technician or like a big thing? Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

He's like, no, but I I for me, every show is totally different. And whatever. What I'm saying

Art Inside Entertainment Constraints

SPEAKER_00 26:55

is we're we're getting into these these areas of language and intention and intonation and texture and whatever. So what I'm saying is for you, when you just said to me, I'm doing these things, and I feel like maybe I want to start doing some other things. For me, the challenge in that whole conversation is that what we love as a hobby is tangled up in what we love as a profession, is tangled up in what we love as a side interest, is tangled up in what we love. You see what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it and for me, it's so hard. It for me, it gets really um uh confusing in my mind. Where does my personal interest end? Where does my job begin? Where does my job end? Where does my new hobby begin? Like it's but it's all one thing. Yeah, like like my son, he sometimes asks me now, Dad, are you working? And I'll say, Yeah, I'm working. And he'll see my computer screen, and I'll be like, you know, uh searching essentially toys or something. Yeah, like and he'll be like, Is that your work? And I'm like, Yeah, it is. And it's so hard to explain to him.

SPEAKER_03 28:03

I'm looking through something and I have a vague idea. And if I see something now, a toy that does such and such, then this will be this might be something in my or or like, hey, I'm gonna go talk to Frodo for an hour on the phone.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

Is that your work, Dad? Are you getting paid for that? Well, no, I don't get paid explicitly for that, but it is my work. Like it like we went over my show, you know? Like you you you helped me with my show. So that is work, but like it is our personal interest.

SPEAKER_03 28:34

Exactly. It's what I would have wanted to do anyway. Yeah. And why I didn't watch it when you sent me the link last time. When you sent me the link, and then we spoke soon after, and I was like, let's do this so that uh so that uh so that we can do it in the moment together on this gig that was coming up. So and uh we both benefited from the fact that we were here because I think about it in a different way when we are stopping and starting, and you're given context and going, This next bit, think about this or whatever, and then I'm watching it, and then it's like so when you tell me, when you tell me, you know, you're like, yeah, but I'm doing this and I need I want to change and I have this desire to change.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

I'm always like, yeah, dude, but uh you should, and also you're maybe already doing it, and it's just like we have to try to understand a little bit better where is our beginning and ending points in terms of our hobby versus our profession versus our interest versus our secondary hobby versus whatever. So can I just finish? Yes, I just finished a little wrap up on that point, which is there was a there was a person who wrote on uh Facebook a while ago and some group, and they were like, oh, but my I'm finally have an act that's getting booked after like you know 10 years of struggling. I finally have an act with a theme that's res that the market is responding to. And the question was, should I like like shouldn't I already now start changing the act? Because what I see is two things. I see a day when the market will be tired of my act, and I need to present them with some new like I always need to inject new information or new freshness into my product to keep it relevant. And also I'm personally I need to grow. So like now that I'm finally getting a bunch of bookings, like it just started popping off. I'm really afraid that this is gonna like typecast me, that I'm only gonna be able to do the tennis rackets or whatever. And so shouldn't I already now start changing it? And there was a bunch of I mean, there was hundreds of responses to the to the thing on Facebook. But my my my response was like I mean, I'm not saying there's a right or wrong response, right? But I'm like, hey, look, you you're getting some commercial success with this product, right? Ride the wave, like ride the wave until the bookings stop. But don't think that you can only be one thing. Don't think that you have to just be this act and that's all you can be. Because that was kind of their point. They're like, well, I'm gonna be known as the person who eats the big donut or whatever the act was. And I'm like, sure, you can be known as the person who eats the big donut, but why not on the side publish a poem or or or make a painting and hang it on your fridge, or go for a long walk and narrate it into your phone and post it on SoundCloud, or go make a new act and maybe do it on the street, or go like you don't need to limit, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah. So many of us we we reduce or reduce, but we limit our identity to kind of this one main thing. And I understand there's an there's only 24 hours in a day. You can't do everything in the world all the time, but it's like, yeah, if you want to be commercially successful, you're the big donut eater, then let that let that ride it out that wave. And you can channel your creative energy into any another another of infinite facets of yourself and externalize that in any other different ways. You don't need to mess up your big donut brand. That was just kind of my riff on it. I was just like, that's how I would think about it.

SPEAKER_03 32:06

But that makes sense, yeah. And I am both you and me have like, oh, we are artists working in these mediums or whatever. You have like a and what that makes me then think is that there are so what am I expressing then? And now I am when I what I mean by I I need want to make some changes. It's not that I want to change the things that I am already doing, because those I are I am satisfied with. I they are they are doing the thing that I strive for the most. For me to authentically present something which is only mine, that I have created and perfected, and that people really like, so that I can do my stagecraft and go on and do that. And it is a uh, for lack of a better thing, what was it you said? It's like uh it's recession proof or whatever we were talking about last time you spoke. Like these are are those, and I'm proud that I have created something like that. That I like this is like what in the vaudeville time in the past would have been an act that would be booked for the rest of, but I am always working on other things as well. And what I guess what I'm meaning is that I want the parameters of doing a show where people are and um uh what they're expecting of me. That means I need to present the stuff that I do in a very certain way. That's a kind of the entertainment um uh contract. You need to please them

When Work And Hobby Become One

SPEAKER_03 33:40

and I need to have fun time and whatever. And this is where um yesterday um spoke speaking to Marlon and Marlon Nilsson, and she said, Oh, like I can't remember exactly how it came up or whatever, but you were talking about the difference between uh people her coming to the people, corporate events or whatever, and people coming to see her. And when you do that, then you can do other things, then it can be like the gig where we're what that we're doing with her now. It anything goes because we want to put it on, and they come to us wanting to see what we have to offer. When I come in and I'm doing the gig and I'm the guy in the corner that does this, and I'm the entertainment that gets them excited for the next part of their convention, then it's a different story. Uh and what I would uh what I mean when I'm saying I want to change is that I want to make room in my schedule to set off time and to put work into putting some kind of shows on where they come to me. And I I don't need it to be more than that unique venue that you performed at where there's like 30 people or something, and that's an exclusive kind of thing. And I don't need the exclusivity in terms of people paying really large sums for each ticket, like there's hundreds of dollars. But for me, just like to get 30, 40 people who come to this small space to see me do me uh something so that I can experiment with my poetry and uh story stuff and acts and things that are not driven in that same way, plus then that I have some that are actually more fully formed kind of theater shows that will be a full kind of experience, and I have been writing about for a long time. So those I'm like going, I need to now start to put into place moves, sending some emails or doing some stuff for. And the first step is just to go to a small venue and start doing some of those and then work on the big to kind of just start flexing myself as a performer in in a different environment that I have not had much time with lately.

SPEAKER_00 35:54

So that's kind of also what I meant in terms of what is our relationship to our hobbies and to our profession, where now we have these expectations on our profession, right? Like we both have heavy ones on our profession. We know the heights artistically we can reach. And we also know practically in our day-to-day lives the business side that we need to reach to continue to be professional performers, right? It's pretty clear cut. Like it's not uh yeah, it's not such a mystery as when we were younger. Like I don't know the limits of this, but now we're kind of like, we have families, this is how much we need to pay every month. Uh, I'm also an artist for this long, I know how effective my act can be. These are kind of known parameters now. And I think in terms of that, then you start to go like, well, just for fun, as an interest of mine, aside from my profession, I would like to meet an audience on my own terms that they come to me and those things instead. But it's really hard for us then to not place that professional expectation upon that project in terms of let's just say getting, let's say you have a 40-seat theater and you want to sell it out. And because we start to think practically too, it's hard to give that's what I mean when our hobby and our profession is so tangled, it's hard to give space to the hobby because it's so easy in one way to turn it into the profession. Because if you're gonna do a show, you might as well sell it out, then you can pay your rent that week, or you know what I'm saying? So then, so then we were talking last night um with Ariel here backstage at the show, uh here in Malmay, and it's like, yeah, doing a solo show, what is that like? And then the and then immediately the conversation was like, yeah, what's the market for a solo show? Right. And then we so like once again, just recognizing that immediately we turn it, we don't turn it into a business, but we have that experience, and it's so hard to to keep it separate. And I'm I'm the same. So then it reminds me uh before I forget, can you remember?

SPEAKER_03 37:52

Yeah, I can go uh yeah, yeah, yeah. So because so then it reminds me. But then then that thing becomes a hobby, and then we start to like if we're going, I want to do this big project, that takes a lot of time, and you've got to be careful of what you practice, because then you need to be able to do it. And if we spend then six weeks on developing something and creating it, and then you just perform it one time, like that's an expensive thing. It's like deciding to take a holiday or something in a way, but it's also like you're taking a course in something that's adjacent to it's so hard to quantify.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

Yeah, it's easy to quantify in the short terms in terms of practical, like, oh, I had 40 seats in this theater, I only sold 10. And that's pretty easy to quantify in a short term the value, the financial value of that. But that six weeks of you diving into that world and what you learned from those 10 people being there, that can totally reflect on all of your work. And that was what I said. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 38:46

Now I would just go, this is what this is this is the next turn of the conversation with Arian.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

And exactly. And exactly it was, yeah. And that's like me touring Iceland for 15 years every summer.

SPEAKER_02 38:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

And then working in Germany. And like I've said this a million times, and I'm gonna say it again. I think it's hilarious. You can go to see Absinthe in Las Vegas 10 times a week. And when water in Mars, Water on Mars is in the show, there's some show, there's maybe one or two tricks in that show that we made in Iceland.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

And from the concepts of that work, right? And there's I see that line directly, and it's just cool. I think it's so fun.

SPEAKER_03 39:26

As far as you can exactly in in a fishing factory that they clean up the floors and they move it, and then you do it there, and the workers come and some of their families come, and it's just gone. There's gonna be a possibility.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

In that moment in Iceland, if you would judge that project financially, it's just a why are you doing this? This is just costing you money. Yeah, yeah. This is a waste. But then you see, oh, okay, it's not just about the here and now money. I don't know, it's all tangled up, right?

SPEAKER_03 39:50

What do they talk about on folk circus and all that's an episode that's gonna come out soon? Uh that stuff also came out of there. So there is like it didn't fully, but there's like that solidified or whatever. So that's like there's valuable concepts that we are still dealing with today of about what is it, the essence of what it is that we do.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

So let's go back to this idea. You let's say you you want to I like that idea of the audience coming to you and to meet you that affords you these different opportunities that you want to explore.

SPEAKER_03 40:17

Um, then we need to see what you have to offer as opposed to them going like, we have paid for you now, or my boss has paid for you, so now you come in, give it to us.

SPEAKER_00 40:26

Right. So now we're gonna get to a big question that you're gonna have to answer,

Building Shows On Your Own Terms

SPEAKER_00 40:30

which is hard. But I was talking to Brian, our common friend, Brian Crabtree, and I was talking to him, and it's like, at the end of the day, Frodo, it's not necessarily about that six weeks in money. I think you can afford in your life to set aside six weeks to have an artistic process as a hobby on the side. I think you could pull that off. So then it's not so much about getting 40 people in the door financially, though it would help, but it's not the main priority. This it's this artistic journey you're on, is the main priority. And then in terms of that, what you need to do is meet an audience. That's what we need, really. Yeah, the money of ticket sales is important. It's more important to have those bodies in the room to see what happens with the work. That's what you're actually interested in, right? So then the question becomes that Brian asked me. He said, in your perfect scenario, if money was not an object, if you had unlimited money, or for you know, for all intents and purposes, right? After a hundred million dollars, does it really matter the next five billion? You know? Yeah, yeah. So whatever, you have all the money. I'm still at 90 million, so I'm still wondering. So money's not an issue. Yeah. What does your artistic practice look like? He asked me, I had an answer, but I wondered what you would say first.

SPEAKER_03 41:44

Yeah, really interesting.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

In terms of but go, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 41:47

I mean, I can also tell you, man, if you want to or you want to jump in, or should I yeah, you you well, yeah, either. Well, now that you gave me the option, uh like at first I was like, yeah, well, it it it is hard. I haven't thought that it's big. But yeah, it's um I do believe that I would uh I would I I would the stuff that because the thing about this is if if it is that I'm having any queries about what it is, because what I'm just talking to you about now, and I sketched out some of the show uh ideas that I have for like or whatever, these are like this is the I have a line of reasoning or a line of show progressions of what I would like to do uh with my family stuff, and then I have also got at least one that's just ready to go, and then the one that you and me spoke about. So I have two kinds of shows, one based on where I what I've been doing before, and one that will create a new show about my relationship to my dad and about magic. Yeah, and those those, but those are for a sort of an that's more more theater shows. So, in a in a sense, what I would like to do is to get the team around me to help me realize those. And those I would just need a team around me to realize the theater shows because I want them to go into directions and touch on stuff I haven't done before, haven't got enough grasp on. The other two family shows that would that's just like I just need help with the production of the to get out and or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 43:15

So it's it's it's of course it's a silly thought experiment because there is no we we don't have unlimited, we have financial constraints on our lives. But if you're not doing it try to do it, then that's it. So then so then there's a couple of things.

SPEAKER_03 43:26

Would it just be that I would do those things and not worry about uh maybe would it then be that it would just take away some of my anxiety and it would validate me into go a daring to go into further exploration? Because that's what I guess is one of my queries about myself. Am I holding myself back from doing stuff that could advance the what was the wording of Eric's uh thesis? Create new knowledge for the in the field. Yeah, could I do something like that? Because I speak. So much of what I think a performance is, but then somebody goes, What's examples of this? And I'm so still formulating that idea that it's hard to immediately come with, like, oh, it's this artist, they do it, or whatever. Because I'm sort of developing it out of myself. So then to proof of the concept, I need to now redevelop the work. And am I holding that back? Or is it just that I am literally in the last two chapters of this book project that you're helping me with, like to make that finish off? Is that why I'm also feeling like I need to go out and apply some of these things? I I don't know. And and that's when you take the constraints away, would have gone, well, would that would actually kind of be what it is? I'd take a block of three months and pay some people to help me out and then do that show and advertise it enough, and not to then make the money, but to show the work and to get people excited about what I did.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

There you go. So you've already kind of answered the two ways I answered Brian's question. Right. So when Brian said to me, what would your artistic practice look like if you didn't have any financial constraints? Yeah. Then I said two things, and he kind of tweaked it a little bit in a really funny way. But basically, I I stole it from you. My answer was fundamentally my first answer, I stole from you, which is I said, Well, obviously, I can just pursue the artistic ideas I want to pursue without any sort of uh this myth of the juggling artist can just can just go away. I can just be the juggling artist, not a myth.

SPEAKER_01 45:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

Because I don't need to have any sort of like uh in one way pressure from any sort of context that I don't want to be in to make whatever work I want to make. But the thing that's missing in that equation is I do need an audience to complete the work. And that's the part I steal from you from the way of the showman, because I can't do a show alone, right? So then the question becomes, and we can argue this later, is it's it's less interesting, it's fun, but it's less interesting than the final point which is coming up. But you can say, well, just because I don't have any financial constraints, that doesn't mean I have an audience, because we're in the attention economy right now in the world, because I have to compete with Netflix and YouTube and Instagram and TikTok. So just because I don't need to care about my own artistic uh sustenance through the work, it means I still need eyeballs and I need attention to create a show. So then we can start, like I say, it's it's a it's fun, maybe a thought experiment, less interesting than the final point. But like that and that that conversation is kind of like, so what do you do, Frodo? Is the show just like free tickets? Or do you pay people to come see the show? Hey, come see the come see the way of the showman, and everybody gets walks away with 20 euros.

SPEAKER_03 46:48

And I think my direct answer to that is this idea to go towards what I did in the Tiny Top when it was full at 40, and that unique experience that was there that we just revisited when I watched your show, and that's popping up all over America, and that no doubt will come uh to other places where there are small theaters that are full at 40, and there might be room so you can even make it smaller, to make these intimate things. For this is not for mass consumption, it's to create the genuine uh special experience that is meant to be small, and it won't be making you rich, but it will create the genuine thing because I none of the ideas that I have here now needs to have 750 people. I don't, and that is what I also say when I want to change the constrictions that the entertainment has to take those people by storm. I need to come out going, are you guys ready? That is my the normal thing for circus if you want to sell 750 tickets and go like it's the Stamp Town kind of vibe, and it's just that crazy

If Money Was No Object

SPEAKER_03 47:55

hangout.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

You got Joe Fisher in the wings.

SPEAKER_03 47:57

Yeah, yeah. It's like it's so uh and so exciting and so fun. Yeah, and I've done that for a big part. But what I would also like to do now stuff is where I don't need to ahead of time jump up and down and gear myself up like I do, because I'm normally a relatively quiet person or like chilled, but then when I go on stage, I'm screaming and jumping and it's chaos and whatever. And it's so like what would it be like if I came on and actually started in another level, much more relating to what you're actually doing now, which is why we talk so well about what's going on, because I have that, and to that, if I had a room like because that out of playroom, or as it called Atlantic 69, that's 30 seats or less. Yeah, and the experience that people when people come in that's like is is so real. When I did the Tiny Top where I developed the cans and where I developed the Spoon Act, which are two core acts of like that experience that they come in there and they expect, I don't know what, but very little. It was five dollars a ticket. But we did a new show on the half hour, every hour, uh every half hour. It's a million minutes, the solution now, yeah. So, like doing these, like these smaller kind of shows where that's the fight against the attention economy. It's not the most downloaded show on Netflix. If the thousand million people have seen it, it's that I have a genuine connection with eyeballs on me for the next little for the hour. And in this hour, we share something here and now we have our phones off, and for this moment, it's just us, and we take one moment, and this is the rebellion against AI and against all of this other stuff. It's just you, and I'm trying to be, as my book is about, uh as fully human as you possibly can, them on all these kind of human levels.

SPEAKER_00 49:43

Right. So that's one half of the answer. Yes. And you touched already on the other half of the answer, which is was which was my other half of the answer too, which you said the first thing you said was I would get a team. Yeah, that's I and that's what I said to Brian first. I said, Well, I have the problem of reaching reaching an audience, and we can talk about the logistics of that. And then I said, But what I would actually do, if I didn't have any financial constraints, what would my artistic process look like? It would be me and my friends in a room. That's my artistic process. You, Proto, you'd be there, Ryan would be there, Eric would be there, Carter would be there, Ivar would be there, my my team, Eric Lonjaquel would be there, I mean Joe Fisher would be there, right? Nick DeFat would be there. You know? Like that's the dream. Like there and there would be money to facilitate that, or you know, to create time and space to have that process.

SPEAKER_03 50:35

And you'd have a to pay all of those, the fees that was needed so that those people would not feel like this was a diversion of their time or like you that you just but that we actually hear, work on the street.

SPEAKER_00 50:46

Well, me and you have a shorthand. We say in between the cracks. Yeah, yeah. So now we set we we have financial constraints, but we try to fit in this utopian idea here, in between the cracks, like we're doing literally right now. We're booked on the same gig, it's during the day before the evening show. This is in between the cracks of those shows, right? And so Brian had a cool idea, and it because he's pretty, he's a pretty extreme dude in in some ways of his philosophy. And he goes, Yeah, man, but like for me, he said, once you have that, because he said, he said for him, it was the same answer immediately. He goes, it would just be my my core team, my inner circle. Would that that's it, that's my artistic practice. And he goes, in fact, that would be my audience. And I thought that was a really cool answer. I'm not sure I'm satisfied with that personally, but it was a cool idea, right? That he's just like, hey, but we have a group of people who all share a common interest and a common conversation. And he goes, that's enough of an audience for me that the core team could be the audience. Anyway, it's a little philosophical thought experiment. And I thought it was fun.

SPEAKER_03 51:51

And it's really interesting, and it would cause me no ends of pleasure to be with that team that you just mentioned, and that we like we're doing, we'd meet three times a year for for uh for three weeks or like for a month where you are working and all that. But then in between, I need that second step. I need this to be seen by real audiences that are not invested in the artistic process of creating it, that just sees it the way that I saw um stories about gravity before. And like that, where you just see it for the first time, and I'm like, well, even more you see it with fresh eyes, where just this thing comes and exists and it works on you, and it just comes as a as a whole. You you you see the whole thing in in for for for as a first viewer.

SPEAKER_00 52:46

I hear you, but continuing the fantasy, that's fun, what you just said. So because I also had that that thought, because I because when Brian said, yeah, but we could be our own audience, he's like, that's enough for me. I know he does stuff like that already, so he's used to kind of like he lives inside that kind of world. Whereas I had intuitively kind of the same answer as you, where I was like, yeah, we could be our own audience, but also for some reason that I cannot articulate, I would want to have a different sort of audience potentially, that the that the work would go externalized into the world in a different way. You you you put some words to it now, but then I was kind of fantasizing on that, where it's like the film we watched of my show at 69 Atlantic, I told you it starts in the in the toy shop, and the audience gets to play with toys for a half hour, like the puzzle, the kaleidoscope, the spinning top, the the little mechanical, like how do I get these two metal knots untwisted from each other? And they do this for 30 minutes before they come see a juggling show. So they're curious about the world and they're exploring tactile physical objects with their hands. It's like you can't get you can't be better primed to go watch this juggling show. They're already in this beautifully designed store, they're already being served um, you know, really great wine. I don't know, wine, but like great wine, proto. Imagine great wine. Yeah, just normal wine. It's like normal wine, but extra plus. Yeah, and then they go through a secret entrance to the theater. So that's already like you see what I mean. Like they're being primed. So then in this fantasy, which we could do later, but like it would be fun to design. Because like you said, like, yeah, I want to bring it out to like the thing that resonated with me, what you said now, is you said, I want people to see the work with fresh eyes. Because like if it was just our core group, it was like me and you and Nick, right? And we're the three of us are talking about this show. I oh that's a good idea. Exactly. And then when we perform it for I come into the rehearsal, I come into this into our jam session one day. I'm like, ah, hey Nick, hey Frodo, I got this idea to juggle like this. Like, check it out. I'm gonna do the performance. And then I do it, and you guys are like, you know, you're already in on it's like the magician already knows the method, so the magician can't experience the wonder and astonishment. So I understand that, but the thing I couldn't quite grasp until this conversation now is like, what do I mean by a fresh set of or like a general public fresh set of eyes or something? And then I start to think, yeah, but who is that? Because all those people do have a do come be but Ivar Heckscher, all those people become pre- they come preconceived, they come to a situation preconceived in our society today. This is Evar's thing, we all are preconceived about what we're gonna go do, right? People kind of come see the cabaret tonight, there's a preconception of what they're gonna experience. Maybe they came last year, maybe they saw the poster, maybe they whatever, right? Their friend told them something. So they're bringing something to

Priming Audiences In The Attention Economy

SPEAKER_00 55:40

the experience. And it would be fun then if you are in this fantasy of like unlimited financial ability or whatever. Like, how can you prime that audience? How can you preconceive them in the best of ways? And I think, for example, the the example I said with 69 Atlantic and Art of Play is like just uh crazy amazing, not even a fantasy, it's real. Yeah, yeah. I could never I could never have thought of that. But now that we are in that fantasy, it would be fun at some point to like to do that. Okay, who is gonna watch your show photo? What did they do that day?

SPEAKER_03 56:12

Yeah, exactly. What did they do the day before? Now I know this other guy, Casey Bunkers, or uh that's his creation anyway, Clay Hillman. He also has a coffee store and a toy store. And uh I don't think he specifically has one, but then it makes me go, oh well that now doing the show there somehow in conjunction with that, like he does that, and then you walk across the street in his little town, and then you go into another, and like then there's like oh, this is something uh that that that catches my interest and whatever. But then what is missing from his uh from uh from Brian's uh equation, yeah, is that I do love the audience. I love the audience, and my audience are not my friends, those are not the audience that I'm going for. It's not that I can do my magic, I've made a new card trick and I'm gonna show it to Miranda. Yeah that isn't what I'm doing. I'm not the closer performer in part because I don't do the one-on-one random stuff. So I love the audience, and what I like is that strangers, caught by whatever it is, end up at my place with some sort of um my theater, with some sort of expectation. And then I will give them that, but also something more. But that they arrive and to take these people that have come to see a show for whatever reasons, but they've they've gathered and they come in, and to give them the experience of touching all these things and being in the childlike state of wonder that you would be when you're in that toy store or for adults art store in front, and then you go into this small theater at the back through the bookshelf. That thing, that there are now a subsection of the world, of the people who exist in the world who have gone through this thing, that thing they will take with them. And I believe that there is value in the thing that I have to give them. And if there isn't enough value in it now, once I have unlimited funds, or once I get into these next creations, I do hope that I will reach a new level of my ability to communicate in a multidimensional way to them so that they will feel what it really what's really important about being a human being and going to the toy store and going into this thing. I want that there are people like that, just like because we're talking about Stein or whatever, that the people who have gone through the world of education, who the where the world of education speaks to those people, through the whole way that they have learned physics, through the way that they learned chemistry, and through the way that they learned history, that through a slightly different lens than the public school, there are people out there who share this kind of level or this understanding of reality. That's just slightly different, the way that an artist would see it, as opposed to the people who followed the way of Ohio, where you went, did these things and didn't uh didn't answer the question because the questions weren't asked of you in the way that when you deviated from the path. You have to answer all sorts of questions about your existence or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And all those answers that we've found because you had to be forced to, and also because both of you and me are inclined in such a way to think about such things, then I now come, and I am like uh in sor in in Plato's cave analogy, like you've gone out and you've seen the light, and you you're coming back, and in that story they kill him, the one that comes back that has seen the light, who's gone left the cave. But we're coming back, and we're part of the entertainers, as Delgadio writes in his book, Immoral Man, A Moral Man, uh, that we're kind of the guys who are also holding up the shadows. But what I'm wanting to do with those shadows is to actually show stuff that actually then matters that could make them turn around and go to the light. And I don't come in and blind them by being so arty that they can't grab it. So I'm hoping that, and I want those people, and I don't like now, I don't know how I ended up into the whole thing about the cave thing and looking at the sun or whatever, but because I don't think people are in the dark, but I think we are fighting against uh what I have in stories called the Judas Showman, of the people who are taking the the tools of showmanship that we have of grabbing, holding, and manipulating attention, and they've taken them and they're giving are using it against us by by um by making it through the power of atomic weapons, and you have it in your phone, and they keep giving you stuff that you just happen to stop a linger at or whatever. You're talking about like algorithms on apps and stuff, algorithms on apps that is that that is capturing your attention, so that that's now an economy that you buy and sell or or whatever. And I'm and it's it and it's there to keep you on the platform, not to give you the best experience of life. Right. And that's where it went wrong, I think. The fact that it's it's you just want eyeballs on your phone, on your app for as much as possible, which is why there's anger, uh, there's sex and there's inappropriate, like all this sort of stuff that comes up in it to capture all the stuff that I'm I'm also drawn to those things. Uh but uh and you and what I want to do then is to sort of go to curate someone's attention has been done from the very beginning when the mother is singing to the distressed baby in the cave, when we hum and we sing whoa whoa to to calm the child, uh like that shared attention, that's the ultimate value of human existence, I believe. It's like that's how everything else, like what we pay attention to, shapes what the world is for us. And if we pay attention to the phone and it's based on those parameters that it is, then that thing is a is a gadget, an app of Judas showmanship. It is using all those tools against you in flashing colours, and and it's like, oh, we're losing them, send out the dancing girls, and the topless girls go across the stage, and then someone comes on again and it's like, oh, by the way, buy the stuff. Like so, like you're going, we we're dealing in the same world, which is why you can feel dirty when you're doing what we're doing, where if you have to sell uh sell something or whatever. So so that so I want people what and that's what the artistic experience is. I think that the artistic experience lies at the heart of what it means to be a human being and what we do ultimately at the foundation of it, which is what the book argues, and whatever, is that uh a show man shows man man. We show the human being and we show the human experience in such a way that you can feel it in your guts and in your head, and you want to act out in the world because of it. And that to me, I can't do fully with just my friends. I want people who are not artists who are from the the majority of the population who is the audience. There's a few people who want to stand the other way and share something, and that's their calling. And most people are doing other things, busy with all these other things that people care about in the world. And they sit down with someone and they want that to come out of the poet or the the the pop musician or uh the dancer or the sitcom Seinfeld on TV. So that's so like all of those. And I want so I it wasn't wouldn't be enough for me to just do it with my this maybe is the time to really dive into it.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:03

Maybe maybe at another point uh we talk about specifically about the audience. Um, because I I find this really fascinating now, this idea of potentially how to prime an audience and like what audiences we've both experienced in the past that speaks to us in different ways. For example, I was performing in the speaker world show Absinthe in Vegas, right, with Water on Mars. And one funny thing of that audience many times was because there's the whole culture of Vegas where it's like uh, you know, I can I go to Vegas and and and one of the things you do is you go see a show. It's just in the culture of that town. You go gambling, you see a show, you blah blah blah, right? Three two or three or four things you gotta do. And so they just go to some random ticket booth and they're just like, what show should I see? And then they're like, Oh, you gotta see Absent. It's the number one show in town or whatever, whatever they just buy a ticket, right? And they would never buy a ticket. They're from Oklahoma or something, and there's not a they're not from New York City where there's Broadway and other access to these different kinds of shows, they've never seen a show, they wouldn't go see a show in Oklahoma, but they're in Vegas, so it's a different story. And then, Frodo, you're in a tent full of people who have never seen a show before. And it's kind of cool, it's kind of amazing, it's also weird, they don't know how to behave because they've never seen a show before, but they're also hyped, they paid all this money, and oh my god, I'm at a show, and that energy is really kind of cool sometimes. So that was like an odd experience. Several nights you come out on stage and you're just like, what's going on here? And you go, Oh my god, these people have never seen live entertainment before. And and for and and it was just incredible. And I mean, you know, the funny thing is they love the show to death, and but then they also relegate it to like Vegas. And they're like, Man, I saw this show in Vegas, it was incredible, oh my

Small Rooms And Non Anonymous Crowds

SPEAKER_00 1:05:55

god. And then they're back home in in Ohio, and some of those sometimes. Tour, I think. Yeah, like you could go see Stomp. Yeah, yeah. You know, blue man groups touring into Columbus. And like, yeah, so why I don't I don't see that. You know, but anyway, so like there was that energy. And then, like I said, there's the 69 Atlantic where it's it's so much deeper. Hey, you're gonna explore these physical puzzles with your hands for a half hour, and then you're gonna go see a juggler. And it makes me start to think like, how else can we prime an audience for what we want to show them? And one thing I I know which I did on the first reflex in Brooklyn at the Mi 2580 theater is I had this whole fantasy where I was like, yeah, in the lobby, I'm gonna have these magazines, like juggling magazines from Blanc Heramazar brothers and Anthony Gato and Michael Motion. I have a TV playing this film of juggling and these juggling artifacts in the lobby. And when people come into the show, they're gonna already be in the world of the show. And then when they leave the show, it's gonna have a different meaning as they walk out because it's gonna be all the stuff that was in the show, and and they're gonna be filled with a new knowledge and experience it in a different way. And of course, the reality is we're dealing with Western society and cultures and rhythms. Nobody goes to the show to see the lobby. That's just not in our culture. So, of course, everybody comes in staring at their phone or talking to their friend, and it's not even until the lights go out when you're in the theater that they kind of start to think that they're gonna pay attention. Even then, it doesn't work until the first couple minutes, right? They're still finishing their conversation with their friend or they're turning their phone one more notification, or many people don't turn the phone off, right? Yeah, and so what I mean is like it would be fun at some point. I mean, to continue this thought experiment from Brian, like without any financial constraints, who would you actually want to watch your show and how are they primed and what is the process by which that happens? I think that's for me a really fun uh thing to figure out because I love these experiments of like, what if you had no money? Because very often you can it first of all, it challenges you to think about it's a really hard question. It's it's a really open-ended, like, I don't know because I never thought of it before, because there was no point to think of it before. And often then you feel like I feel I'm gonna come up with some ridiculous answer that's not possible, and then you start to think about it and you go, Well, actually, I mean, I I don't have unlimited money, but I could still do these few aspects of that, and it really pays off, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:18

So this is that what when because what would you do if money is no object? Is that quote or the the name of the thing from Alan Watts. Okay. And uh and he he he sort of goes like so these are the things, and then when you say those, and then you go, well, why aren't you doing those? Exactly. Like you can't do it to that scale, or you can't do it to that. But what if this is what you would want to do, then now you have just answered to yourself what it is that you want to do. So now how do you make that happen? Because there are ways to make it in uh in other ways where you can get the same soul from it, but you can't get the everything else around it or whatever. But going through that process might now just be foregrounded in your mind as going, this is actually the most important thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:09

But I totally agree with you that like on one aspect of it, it is the small audience thing, it is the 20 to 30 people in the crowd, or even smaller, 10 people in the crowd. And usually those don't happen in the real world because number one, financial constraints, which like 69 Atlantic solves by selling really expensive tickets to find the experience, if that makes sense, you know. Or the other side of it is like you said, um, every every show, you know, five tickets were only five bucks, but we had to do a show every half hour on the half hour, and then the show was only 10-15 minutes long or something, right? So you have to reduce the experience in some way. If you did have unlimited funds, then yeah, I think that would be the jam to start this theater where it's like uh you know, you take 15 people, 20 people at a time.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:54

Whatever you and maybe it's also like uh what I'm uh thinking about about those uh numbers or those things too, it's to that I'm I also want the restriction on this to be able to do it in my hometown so that it's not so I can set off some time to work on it and be at home when I'm working on that. I'm working on my own way of doing this show for a small number of people and get it in a place where there will be almost no overhead so that it it won't at least won't lose you any money, and that doing this exploration then that that's another so that's also why I'm happy with it being less or whatever. But what that would mean is that it has yet to be really that I put the effort into these things and that it doesn't generate something new uh for me, like that is a new that uh ultimately will be a new possibility. And the the the key thing just came through today when we were talking just before. I started during late August last year, did the first show with my wife and daughter. We've done a bunch of shows since then, did that same festival again this year, and now in uh that year after that, now we are booked for our first international festival. Yeah, so cool, man. With my daughter doing a straitjacket escape and my wife doing her balloon act, uh, and me doing the rest of the show or whatever, but like that's like that's something that has been manif manifested out of going like where we do this, and then it is not easy to book gigs with a child, but it is during the summer holiday, and it's like all this sort of stuff. It's like, oh wow, that's that's some stuff, and uh so so that thing that I did there where we did that gig for no extra money. I just did a gig that we already did, and then I paid like not that my wife and I have a completely shared economy, so that we only have one card or whatever, yeah, and but and we pay my daughter, but that's of course nothing. Like not nothing, she's getting real money, but it's like but but I'm just doing that thing and to to develop something, and who knows where it's gonna go? Well, first it was also just I'm doing a fifth fourth festival or something in the same place. How do I reinvent myself? Because it's hard to do new material, but you also want to go, yeah, it's photo, and he's doing something different each year, but like what else can you do? And then we did that, and now that has become something. So I guess this stuff of playing a small theater. Now I'm I'm like I was already on board and I have an option to do it in a small theater in town where like that's there, it's potentially 80 seats, but I don't think that would be so good for what I do because it's a flat floor. So if 80 people sit there, it's mainly music they do. Yeah. So I think I would need to move people a little bit back and potentially actually have lower stools or something in the front, yeah, slash having a few people sitting on the floor. I mean, maybe the the to get to that number, but it and not to worry about the numbers. I want to just have enough people in there that it becomes a fun thing and then shape it like that. And to go, I need to need to do this and to do some explorations that I will then do in that and think of it as a sort of recurring thing where there are no overheads and it's something that we do uh not because we we're gonna make the big money, but because I am trying to take some steps now a little bit unrestrained by the normal set of circumstances that people expect of me when I do a paid gig. That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:31

Yeah, that's cool. I mean, just really quick, I mean, the the aspect I think of the small audience that affords us that the audience is not anonymous. Because after a certain size, I mean what is it, 100 people, 5,000 people. I mean, I've I played it.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:46

No, but even where we did it last night, it's only 200 people, but uh it's it's dark and you can't it's particularly light light interface. So and it's like the way that the light setup is there, it's the often kind of thing that you really have a select group of, I don't know how many, because it's tables. I can see most of those in the beginning, but the balcony much harder to see than and than at the 100% at the at the Mad Apple in in Las Vegas. Uh-huh. There I can see, I can't see the faces, but I can see the whole balcony here. The balcony was sort of completely in the dark.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:24

Right. And so that's the thing like at 69 Atlantic, you know, you have 20 people there, but I know those 20 people at the show. And I think that's the artistic difference that maybe we're striving for. Maybe not necessarily. Like if you could find a way to do

Closing Thoughts And Support The Show

SPEAKER_00 1:14:35

it with 500 people, then do it. I don't see the logistical way of doing it. But the valuable thing isn't small numbers. The valuable thing is the audience is not anonymous. Yeah. And I think that's cool.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:44

And that's ties in with that thing. Because I think that you could probably push that up to it. Like a like that room of that uh theater with 80 to 100 people. I think when the situation is set up right and when that becomes a priority, then I will also learn what is the lighting. So I might bring specific things, or you do stuff so that that they come in, and even if it starts with a little bit of dark on them, like it sneaks up over the line uh eight to ten minutes of the show where they are like in the light. I don't think, but it's like, and I am here with you. Exactly. Like there's parts of your show where you walk out amongst them. Yeah, do something like that where you are out there and have maybe yeah. So anyway, it we actually need to go to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:25

No, no, I have to go do a show though.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:27

Yeah, I mean I have to go and do a show as well. Okay, well, I'm gonna go in town here now.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:31

I want to go do a show.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:32

Let's go and face the other way together.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:34

Thanks, Reno.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:35

All right, what a pleasure. And let's talk, pick it up and talk about the audience more. Okay. This is interesting.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:44

All right, so why not to go uh now that the episode is almost done? Uh, click onto where you downloaded this uh episode onto the pod uh the pod feed or Spotify or onto and look into the show notes, and down the bottom of that you will find links to the awesome merch from The Way of the Showman. Get yourself a sweet hat, get yourself a t-shirt, get yourself a hoodie, because it was cold when we recorded this, and as I where I am at the moment, it's uh not so cold, but it's still when you go inside one of the casinos in Las Vegas, you might need a hoodie, because such is the way over here that uh it's uh too hot outside, and sometimes, quite frequently, too cold inside.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:26

You could have an excellent way of the shaman uh hoodie to uh keep you warm and snug. Um but be that as it mate, I'm not just here to sell you stuff. The main thing and only reason why we're doing this is for the conversations and for the deepening of our understanding of the craft. So it is my absolute um pleasure to be giving this to you absolutely free of charge. But uh yeah, if you do have it in you, click subscribe on the podcast so it comes down every second week when it comes down in your podcast.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:01

Really makes a big difference to me. But enough about all that. And uh until next time, take care of yourself and those you love, and I hope to see you along the way.