Forty Five Second Smiles
I fixed my eyes on the red light at the intersection and began to countdown. My dad, seated behind the wheel of his red plumber´s van, joined in on the game too. Whoever counted down closest to zero when the light turned green would be the winner. We played this to entertain ourselves whenever we were stuck at traffic lights.
Walking through the city, dad told me a story. “See that balcony up there”, he said, pointing up at the tallest skyscraper in Melbourne, “I used to walk along it´s railings.” I looked up in awe, impressed by the image of my dad balancing above the gridded streets.
Recently, I dug up a high school report card from 1995. It reads: “other than distracting fellow students and not paying attention, Rob showed promise while playing the part of a clown”. In Native American culture, they say that sacred clowns are “full of contradictions”. I paid no attention to my drama teacher and graduated university with a degree in Sports Administration.
I recall these memories from my life growing up in Australia, sitting in my apartment in Santiago, Chile, realising that the following tale is not as coincidental as it seems…
I arrived in Santiago to join the clown company Mundo Clowns, a small group that play with patients, family members and the staff in the children´s hospital wards. A clown director from France came to direct a variety show with Mundo Clown, and consequently, I became part of the show too.
During this creative process, I learned from the French director that I needed to invest a lot more time into studying and developing my clown. And so, after her departure, I continued investigating clown, in the hospital, on the stage and in the streets. It was during this period that I began to feel a passion for street performance, watching and playing with my friend Tuga in Valparaiso.
The street is a public space where we should be encouraged and should encourage others to feel free and safe. In school, we sit enclosed in classrooms, preoccupied with deadlines and submissions, but when we are outside playing in the playground, we free ourselves from the petty worries afflicted upon us by teachers. I realised that after finishing school, this continues, only that the classroom is exchanged for a workplace, the teacher for a boss, and the playground for the public space. This is where the big difference lies. In the playground, we play on swings, see saws and slides. In the public space however, we either sit on benches or look at fountains. Not a very playful panorama to free oneself.
In most cities that I have visited, I have met buskers. Artists that decide to perform their particular talent by playing in the public space. They leave their instrument case ajar or their hat upside down before them, allowing the community to decide a value for their art. In Chile, buskers play music on the public transport. Comedians entertain audiences in public plazas. And, at the busier intersections of the city, circus performers dazzle motorists with their skills. A sight I had never seen in Australia.
My first taste of this culture was mind blowing. Suddenly, the vacant space where I had counted down so many seconds, waiting for the lights to change, was transformed into a “forty five second stage.” The artists, in this brief period, amazed the occupants of the halted vehicles with their incredible talents. This spectacle blew my tertiary educated mind into smithereens, and now opened, I discovered a new path to follow. Unpaved and with no directions, this anarchic “freeway” was undoubtedly going to be an adventure.
I began performing slack rope at the traffic lights in 2009. Combining my enjoyment for clowning, juggling and funambulism, I found that I was able to engage the captive audience at the traffic lights, and soon found myself earning a steady income unsteadily balancing on a rope. When a friend from Australia came to visit, he accompanied me to take photos and observed that I was “selling smiles”.
Over the following three years, I performed countless 45 second shows at different traffic lights in different neighbourhoods of Santiago. I shared the traffic light space with other circus performers, chocolate bar vendors (children and adults), newspaper peddlers, windscreen washers and beggars. It´s an unconventional office in an unusual space, and unfortunately it is not always shared politely. Hawkers have tried to burn my rope, a blind man swung his stick at me, and a vagrant who hits the cars that ignore him, tried to hit me too! These feuds were provoked because they believed I was causing them to earn fewer tips.
After all the practice at the traffic lights, I created two one man circus shows which I perform in parks in Santiago, and which allow me to also tour and perform throughout South America. A short documentary was made about my performance at the traffic lights called The Thin Line, and it was screened at Cannes Film Festival this year. I am currently happily performing with AguaSakra Dance Theatre Company in Chile.
I am often asked by people “Why Chile?”, and the answer is simple: “Chileans know how to value a forty five second smile”.
Rob Cartwright (2012)
