The Little Tramp has never looked so sad.
On the first day of Toronto's annual four-day Buskerfest, thunderstorms have moved all street performers indoors and Charlie Chaplin, a.k.a. Michael Carl O'Neill, is leaning against a railing inside Toronto's Eaton Centre. At 46, the Hamilton native is a veteran on the street performer circuit, doing Chaplin and other routines, but not even his well-honed shtick can stop many passersby as they whizz along on their shopping tours.
But while the rain may dampen his take it's not dampening his spirits.
"What I like is bringing something alive and interacting with the audience," says O'Neill optimistically. "It's fine."
Busking is mostly an outdoor activity and rain-slicked venues are dangerous to perform in. They're also no fun for an audience to hang around in. Even when your venue is bathed in sunshine, street performers (they prefer the term to busker) have a tough gig.
It's an art form that seems ready made for disrespect; say the word busker and you think of the haggard-looking youth strumming a guitar on a street corner. City dwellers are practically trained from birth never to make eye contact, and with only a few letters difference between street performer and street person, it can be hard for a busker to be acknowledged, let alone make a living.
But busking has evolved into a much more creative art form, and includes dancers, jugglers and comedians. In fact, some buskers are classically trained performers.
Take Lurk, for instance. Lurk is the creation of Martin Ewen, a graduate of the New Zealand Clown School. Come performance time, he transforms into a white-faced man on stilts who, uh, well, lurks around and scares unsuspecting people walking by. His Web site shows him creeping up behind schoolchildren, office workers, even a nun.
The highly specific skill set of face-painting, stilt-walking and intimidation make for an odd, if ingenious (and wickedly funny) career choice. But can Ewen actually make money off of it? Do frightened people cough up enough coin to pay the rent?
"It's the people watching me scare people who pay me," Ewen explains, adding that his victims usually join the crowd to witness his next round.
"There are various ways of making the money, a passive manoeuvre -- you can put down a receptacle during the show -- and after the show you can ask. I do a bit of both. I used to just not ask because I liked not talking -- it meant I could work in more countries. But it means I don't make as much money as I could if I actually worked at trying to get money out of the audience."
Surely, Ewen must be tempted from time to time to have gone on to a somewhat more explainable, if not stable, job like acting? Why not go into something less dependent on weather and a fickle audience?
Ewen says he often does children's TV, and was even written into Tom Cruise's film Far and Away when he was working in Dublin. But ultimately, it's the joy of his routine that keeps him on the stilts.
"It's the simplicity of working when and where you want. And an idealistic purity of people giving you money because they they want to."
But for all the idealism, busking really is a business. Hard-core busking -- the time-honoured tradition of staking out your territory on a street corner and plying your trade -- is the most difficult and least lucrative.
"It's a different animal, it's harder," O'Neill says.
He should know. He's practically a lifer in the biz, having started touring with the Golden Seniors Band as a child. After studying dance and mime as a teen, he fell for the notion of embodying Chaplin. He'll spend much of the winter on the Internet, doing research, sending out press kits and tapes.
The best strategy is to land a regular gig, he says, at a weekend market or theme park, or doing private parties. O'Neill has a regular spot at the St. Jacob's Market in St. Jacobs, Ont., near Waterloo. Assuming you have an act that impresses, then making money is mostly a matter of location, location, location.
"If you're a musician, you can't get away with playing near the eating area, because people are just going to sit there and listen. The problem is you're basically free entertainment. Your goal is not to be glorified Muzak. You pick an area where people have to go by you. And it's the old axiom, less is best -- you have a beginning and an end. The goal is to have people say: 'When are you on next?' "
O'Neill also does bits where he dresses up like a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald (who in his day indulged in his own busking binges, according to O'Neill). In August he'll be taking the act to a busking festival in Ottawa.
And it's the growing festival circuit that's increasing visibility and respect for the art.
Toronto's Buskerfest is just one of the 12 large festivals in the country this year. Both Ottawa and Halifax host popular busker festivals in early August, featuring a slate of local international performers. And the appetite is steadily increasing. Despite the rain, this year's Buskerfest in Toronto (a fundraising event for Epilepsy Toronto) attracted 70,000 people by the time it wrapped June 16 -- the same number as last year.
"In Canada, there are not a lot of workable pitches [stages]" says Phil LaConte, one half of the Kitchener, Ont., duo the Silly People. Tired of juggling, the Silly People crafted the Lords of Latex, a vaudeville cum balloon routine that has been called the Best Comedy-Balloon Duo in the free world. (They've yet to compete with those comedy-balloon duos in countries with repressive regimes.) "Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa are the only places that have working pitches."
"They're so many organized festivals, that they make it really easy for you," LaConte's partner Colin Franks adds. "They do all the work and get all the people for you."
"It's not as easy as people might think -- we don't just show up," LaConte says. "We don't just show up on the street, or show up at a festival and work. You have to be personally invited or apply, with a promo tape and package, and a decent reputation of quality material." They also have to arrange their own travel and accommodations, he adds.
"Festivals are just chances for us to get together and socialize, really," Ewen says.
"Especially on days like today," Master Lee, a New Yorker who specializes in a kung fu routine, says, referring to the rainy day.
Ewen, the Silly People and Master Lee do a bit of translating Buskerpeak: A pitch is a stage or place to perform; an edge is the beginning of a crowd; a blow-out occurs when you get fed up decide your act is over.
Best is the funkily archaic phrase "bottling the crowd." The term came from the practice of giving your person collecting the donations an uncorked bottle with a fly in it for one hand and the collection hat in the other. To make sure the fly didn't escape meant keeping one hand on top of the bottle -- and out of the hat with the day's take.
The lingo is a quiet nod to the history of their crazy way of life marked by friendship, zaniness and most of all, humour. Losing a day's wages because of bad weather is no laughing matter, but they still manage to keep themselves amused.
"You know what the difference between a street performer and a carney is?" asks Master Lee, slyly. "A few teeth."
Even street performers have their standards. Ottawa's Sparks Street Mall Busker Festival runs Aug. 1 to 5; the Halifax International Busker Festival runs Aug. 8 to 18.