The first casualty was Crowds, but they took with them the whole of show business. We are a social species. We dread isolation from others. Isolation is how we punish those that are already in prison. As a species we would rather spend time with murderers and violent criminals than spending time alone with our own minds. Also, it’s bad for us. Studies have found that social isolation increases your likelihood of dying as much as smoking.
No gatherings of people, no Crowds. What’s left for a Showman to do in this new world? How can artists and performers help turn social distancing into merely physical distancing? And what is a Crowd in this strange new situation?
The Killer
The 11th of march, the day before my birthday, all the artists from Opium got called into an extraordinary company meeting. It was clear that it would be about the Covid-19 pandemic. I immediately felt the stress come on. Tingling in my hands, and a sinking feeling in my stomach. On this exact day nine years ago, 11th of march 2011, the earthquake, which caused the tsunami, which destroyed the Fukushima nuclear reactor happened. That incident lead to me loosing a year long contract in Hawaii. Only a few years, 2014 I was in a different show in Vegas called Vegas Nocturne the casino we worked in got sold from a German bank to an American financial group. It resulted in immediate cancellation of all artist contracts.
The business of entertainment is a fickle beast. Those on the Way of the Showman must be prepared for contracts to fall over on incredibly short notice.
The message my Boss, Ross Mollison, delivered at the extraordinary company meeting, was that they would keep all three of their Vegas shows, Opium, Absinthe, and Atomic Saloon Show, open for as long as possible during the crisis. We all signed a legal document with amendments to our contracts, essentially giving us four weeks notice. Promise of pay for four weeks. After that the show would take its decision to stay open on a day-to-day basis. Anything beyond the four weeks was a bonus. Shit was about to hit the fan.
My Awakening
The day after the Boss’ announcement, on my birthday, my family from Norway was set to arrive in Las Vegas. My father, my sister and her daughter of 7 had already begun their journey. My own daughter had been looking forward to her cousin coming with considerably more enthusiasm than to Christmas.
An hour or so after the Boss promised we would stay open, Trump announced the national borders would close. In that moment I understood the situation. It had been plain to see, but like a man in a disaster movie, making his bed and mowing his lawn whilst the nuclear bombs fall, I had refused to accept that everything had changed. I finally woke to the situation. I had to tell my family they needed to reconsider traveling.
I think all us adults had refused to see the seriousness of the situation simply so we didn’t have to break our little girl’s hearts. I spoke to my sister on the phone, two and a half hour before they were about to board their plane from Norway to the USA. We decided they would have to stay home. We hung up and broke our daughter’s hearts. The world collapsed into a black hole of all-encompassing disappointment, pain, and darkness.
Closing Time
We didn’t stay open for the anticipated four weeks. It only lasted two more days. The Casino ordered us to shut down. The pay dried up after one week. Everything was up in the air. Still is. At least I didn’t have to fight the ethical dilemma of having to work whilst it wasn’t the right thing to do for the pandemic. It’s hard to do the right thing when you still need to pay rent, electricity, your daughter’s school fees, and your own raging book-buying habit.
My show closed. Then the other two Spiegelworld shows closed. Then they closed the schools. Then they turned off all the gambling machines and all the casino’s closed. For second time in history. The last time was after the assassination of JFK. That shutdown lasted 24 hours.
When the Tsunami and the ensuing Japanese nuclear spill made me lose my Hawaiian contract, it was because the investors pulled out, since the Hilton resort, that would house La Soiree, had a substantial asian clientele, which they expected to loose. With that contract lost, I went to Australia and created a new one man show, called The Way of the Showman, and booked some seasons with that. I survived and kept the business of shows going by finding other contracts and other Crowds. That is not an option now. This time there are no other contracts on the horizon anywhere, on any continent, and there are no Crowds.
The very thing my Craft of Showmanship requires is exactly what is not permitted in our new world situation. Gatherings of people are restricted. Having no Crowds of people have become an important remedy in fighting the pandemic, and saving lives.
A friend performing in a Palazzo show in Austria got shut down a few days before us as a new rule made gatherings of more than one hundred people illegal. Across the world that number dropped and dropped, until the United Kingdom forbade gatherings of more than two. (As of 23 of March 2020, Regulation 7 makes it an offence for any person to participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people.)
Closing the Loophole
Two years ago found a loophole in my deal with the showbiz devil, here in Sin City, Nevada. I no longer have to continuously tour leaving my family behind. Here in Vegas I can go to work and come home like a normal person. I can be in showbiz AND be with my family. I wrote about that loophole about two years ago. Perhaps I shouldn’t have publicly announced it in my inaugural “On the Way of the Showman” blog post. Now the devil has come back and dotted his i’s and crossed his t’s. Sin City is closed for show business and most other business too. The devil doesn’t do things by half, he shut down The Strip and killed the whole of showbiz, to let all us pious showmen sit in our social isolation and stew on our lack of significant transgressions. We had been too good for the Devil’s liking. He’s disappointed with us all. Let that be a lesson to anyone thinking they can trick themselves into a good deal in a Mephistophelian bargain.
The Culprit
At this time, practically the whole world is in isolation. We are practicing social distancing to flatten the curve. Staying at home is not a sign of fear, it’s showing that we care about those above 60, those with preexisting conditions, and the random others of any age and fitness who are dying and will die. We are collectively doing our bit to lessen the pressure on the world’s healthcare systems.
The Covid-19 virus is making a triumphant march across the globe. Something like 20% of those who get infected need hospitalisation. When hundreds of thousands of people gets sick, the 20% quite quickly exceeds the available hospital beds. This is the crux of the problem.
The pandemic will not die down until we reach herd immunity. Which means enough people, about 80-90% of the population, has become immune. (At the moment we don’t even know for sure whether having had the disease will provide us with immunity.)
I heard America is estimating the death toll to become between 100.000 and 240.000. These are staggering and unbelievable figures. It is a war going on, a war against a new tiny enemy. This war will shape us and our world, there is no doubt about that.
How Long?
When the artists of Opium were told the show was shutting down, it was for two weeks. I was, at that time, personally expecting it to be for three months. Now I think even I was too optimistic.
A vaccine is a year to eighteen months away. It will remain bad for a long while yet. That makes a case for 18-24 months of this Crowd problem. It’s not so bad for all industries, but for my fellow show folk across the globe, things will not improve rapidly. But we will prevail. The Greatest Show on Earth will not be knocked over by hard times, in fact, in the past, our kind of entertainment has been exactly what people want during hard times. Pure good times and emotional release, promise of catharsis through shared experiences in dark theatres and big tops across the globe.
80% or more of those who get infected will survive fine and out of them the majority will have minor symptoms. My hope is that, like was the case when the Swine Flu came and went, the 80% who are fine will be disgruntled by “the government, the world, the illuminati” over-reacting. These are the people I am crossing my fingers will go “fuck the virus, fuck ‘the man’ I am going to Vegas to laugh and drink and enjoy life, come what may”. But, that time is still very far away. In the meantime we are all locked up in our houses, and if, when walking the dog, we pass another person, we hold our breath. How do we as performers deal with this new reality?
What am I doing?
The last weeks before the pandemic hit, I was busying myself with finally writing out my occult philosophy of Showmanship, stringing all the loose ideas and concepts together into a book. That made sense until showbiz died. All my ideas, thinking, and contemplation on shows and showmanship became even less relevant than usual. The Covid-19 canon ball struck the showman-ship below the water line. I was left with the sinking feeling that my whole philosophy and Way of life, slipped below to the abyssal plains.
My Way, which I so confidently had picked out step by step, insight by insight, through my life, had led me to the edge of a cliff. I found myself staring into an abyss. Which vacantly and ominously smirked back at me. I shivered. Wholly lost.
Waking up in this new world, it didn’t seem appropriate to philosophise about showmanship. It seemed self-indulgent. But, if not practicing and studying my Craft, then what was appropriate to do for a Showman? With Showbiz dead what am I? What’s left of me? What is a Showman for in this new reality?
Some time passed. I became my daughter’s teacher. The family and I settled into a new routine without work, without income, without certainty, without any assurance my Craft or Way would ever rise from the dead. Trump promised the resurrection would coincide with the celebration of Easter where Jesus also rose from the dead. That ridiculous notion was quickly put to rest and replaced with a promise of more death and more uncertainty.
Despite all this, my mind drifted back to the Way.
Sometimes the Way falls away. A crag or hill hides the Way ahead, but as you expect to fall, the Way appears again. The Way forward is, in the end, always the Way you followed. It catches you and carries you along. It comes into being as you walk. Don’t stop walking. “You are more marvellous in your in your simple wish to find a Way than the gilded roofs of any destination you could reach.” (D. Whyte)
Redefining Crowd & Material
I am still a showman, but what does that mean now? And, what the hell is my next step? I dug back into my notes and pages, studying about that good old Way. I put on the starry crown and hoped to rediscover the Way onwards.
A showman is someone who faces the other way.
Who has walked with the Crowd
then turned around to Face the Others.
I have mainly thought of a Showman as one person facing a Crowd. This is probably because that’s what the majority of my career has consisted of. In our new reality without big Crowds, UK’s legal Crowd size being two, made me think of those who perform close-up magic.
They perform tiny shows. For tiny Crowds. They might sit down with a couple having dinner at a restaurant and accost them with a show. Jokes aside, how to ingratiate yourself and get invited to show your tricks and material to an exclusive Crowd of two, is a real consideration. A close-up performance can even be a one-on-one encounter. (Making it a gathering of two. One Facing one Other is just on the side of legal.)
A one-on-one performance doesn’t have to be magic, but not every kind of performance immediately lends itself to a one-on-one show. Some skills would need an enormous amount of creativity to be suitable. A Showman must always know their Crowd and tailor the material and presentation to suit. We must totally reimagine our material. We must not focus on skills and tricks, these become obstacles of artifice thus not suitable in one-on-one situations. Specially if we are doing the shows in non-traditional venues, such as at home.
If a Crowd can still be a “Crowd” with just one person, the core of what a show can be is revealed to be even deeper and more fundamental than one person presenting preprepared material to a group. It can be one person meeting another, having an exchange of attention and making a connection. The essence in the meeting between Showman and the tiniest of Crowds is, not the preprepared material, but the connection.
Perhaps thinking deeply about Showmanship isn’t so self-indulgent after all.
The Showman’s obligation
A showman’s responsibility is to make sure the time and attention given by a Crowd is rewarding and worthwhile. They need to feel like the time given was enriched, that their investment of time an attention paid off. Keep this in mind as you make the connections. It is the only preparation needed for you “material.”
In the Warped Space of the stage
the Showman steals the Crowd’s time
But like a twisted, alchemical, Robin Hood
he returns it refined as: Show-time.
The Daily Show
Your first Crowd is the one inside your lockdown bubble. The experience of isolation shall be broken by connecting closer, by really being present with each other. Connections are made by paying attention. Being present. By taking time in the space of isolation to give each other our full attention. This is how we shall change our social isolation from equivalent to a preexisting condition like smoking, into a boost of our immune-system. (A fraught term, but it gets the point across).
For those of us with children, this isolation is a bizarre children's show. Remember this, you are constantly on Show for them. More than usual. This isolation is like a pressure cooker. The post-apocalyptic, record breaking amounts of dead-in-a-day-show, that’s going on all around us, is not the show the kids should see. My daughter is paying close attention to my wife and myself, we are the show together.
I believe once all this is behind us my daughter will remember how we behaved, and how our home felt during all of this, rather than anything about the virus. She is watching me and learning how to respond to uncertainty. Connections are made, between us, and inside our brains. How I act as a Showman in this daily show will determine how the wiring of these connections will be. I am aiming for resilience, not fear, as the response to chaos. This will be the flavour of my preprepared material in all my connections. Fingers crossed I am Man enough for this Show.
See you all along the way
Yours truly,
Captain Frodo
