In Rome I had a conversation with a waiter about the artists who frequently performed in Piazza Navona. The waiter had been working at a restaurant in the piazza for a number of years, had come to know the performers, and had a lot to say about the nature and quality of their acts.
“You know,” he said, “You can tell the difference between the performers who do it because the are good at it and those who do it because it’s who they are.”
I stared at him, trying to make sense of his assessment.
“You know what I mean?” he went on. “There are those who will go home at night, take off their costumes, and become like everyone else. Then, there are those who go home and stay as they were in the street. The ones who don’t change into something different afterwards,” he said, “are the real artists.”
I spent the rest of the day with Chris and Nick, searching for performers in the crowded streets and thinking about what the waiter said. At five o’clock we stopped in the Piazza Navona for a coffee. Soon, a man in a green suit and tie strolled into the piazza and set a wooden trunk down in the middle of the square.
Adrian Kaye is a clown from London who’s been busking in Italy for twelve years. He slammed the lid of his trunk and wrestled with a plastic gnome in order to get attention. Once a crowd had gathered he pretended to guide airplanes flying overhead with an enormous remote control. He chased unsuspecting pedestrians with his arms outstretched, hollering “Mama!” and mimicked the police patrolling the area. He coaxed volunteers from his audience to participate in his act, turning one young boy into a bull by getting him to charge through a waving red handkerchief. When his performance was over, he bowed, members of the audience cheered, and his hat was passed for payment.
While he packed his props back into his box, we asked Adrian for an interview. He was happy to talk with us on camera. But his demeanour had changed. He was no longer silly and animated. He was serious, giving thoughtful responses to our questions and explaining that life as a busker isn’t easy. He described the difficulty of maintaining romantic relationships as a street performer and said it’s hard to find a partner who appreciates busking as a legitimate form of making money. This is a concern for many buskers. Despite evidence to the contrary, street artists are often thought of as poor or homeless.
Adrian told us about his children and ex-wife. He was looking forward to buying a house in Genoa he said, so he could be closer to where they lived.
Adrian the person seemed very distinct from Adrian the clown. I wondered if this is what the waiter was talking about. Did these two divergent sides to Adrian’s identity mean that Adrian wasn’t a real artist? I tried to imagine an artist whose private life and performance were mirror images of one another.
The following day, we met a female tap-dance duet in matching black and white polka-dot dresses kicking and shuffling across the cobblestone walkways in ‘The Plaza of Artists’. Livia Bettinelli and Ann Amendolagine wore pearls, white gloves, black cloche hats, and boots with metal plates fastened to the bottom.
They waved their arms, twisted their hips, and shook their shoulders to upbeat jazz music. They wore unflinching smiles and sent twinkling, flirtatious glances toward onlookers.
Afterwards they spoke to us about life as public entertainers. Ann, the older and more experienced member of the duet, was born in America. Her parents were the children of Italian immigrants, and she grew up in a neighbourhood in Brooklyn she describes as “a social, cultural, and emotional wasteland.”
As a young woman in New York she battled poverty as she struggled to find work as a dancer. Ann escaped to Rome 13 years ago. The first time she performed on the streets, she was terrified. “I hid myself in a small alley,” she said, “so no one could see me. Then someone came along and forced me to move into a bigger space. I didn’t want to, but I had to if I wanted to make any money.”
But that was a long time ago.
While we sat in a café and discussed her experiences, Ann held her small dog on her lap and told us about her current job as a dance instructor. It was easy to imagine Ann’s present life away from the street, full of the daily routine of normal existence. But does Ann the teacher, Ann the bill-payer, Ann the TV watcher, and Ann the grocery shopper somehow weaken the artistry of Ann the dancer? The waiter would say it does. But I’m not so sure. Unlike the waiter, I’d always taken this performer/person split as self-evident. Everyone is separate from the roles they play, I thought.
But the next performer we met in Rome would make me reconsider this way of organizing identity. Claudio Montuori, with his beaked mask and wild white hair, his collection of squeaking toys, castanets, and bicycle horns, is The Bird Man. He sings in Italian and Spanish. He stomps, sways and gyrates. He smiles at children, and even though he resembles a mystical monster, children smile back at him.
It is difficult to describe what seeing him perform is like. He’s a witch, a gnome, a magical dragon-bird-wizard-parent exuding love and inviting everyone to forget themselves for a moment and dance. After ten seconds of listening to him sing and watching him rattle his homemade instruments, I realized I’d been holding my breath.
When we asked the Bird Man for an interview he refused. The formal question and answer format would detract from the spontaneity with which he normally communicates. He began to speak to the crowd gathered around him about why he chooses to perform on the street instead of more traditional venues. His speech was in Italian, so we had to have a translator explain some of it to us later.
Street performance is an ancient tradition steeped in purpose, he’d said. In the old days performers were respected for connecting people by travelling and bringing with them news from afar. They were regarded with awe for their talents and revered as important members of society.
The Bird Man went on to discuss the social problems we face today. He wants to use his performance to teach people how to listen to each other more deeply. How to appreciate “freedom of culture.” He urges us to regain a lost sense of concern for and involvement in our communities. His message was an urgent one about the importance of healing a fragmented and suffering world.
True to his description of traditional street performers, The Bird Man spends much of his time travelling through Europe and South America, sharing his talent with an international audience. He understands that street performance can act as a conduit for social change and has shunned society’s obsession with endless material acquisition in order to bring something meaningful to a public audience.
During his performance, The Bird Man’s music, costume, and person seem to merge. He is someone so fully committed to his beliefs and lifestyle that he has embodied them to become a living symbol for human potential.
If it sounds like I’m idealizing him, you haven’t seen him.
But does this make what the waiter said true? Are Adrian the clown and Ann the dancer not “real artists” compared to The Bird Man?
Adrian Kaye struggles to justify his profession to a culture that doesn’t appreciate alternative or creative solutions to earning a living. But he’s still out there, making people laugh. Adrian may become a “regular person” when he takes off his green suit and tie, but that regular person’s life is complicated by his choices as an artist. Perhaps a second definition of an artist is in order, one that incorporates a person who is willing to withstand discomfort or loneliness in order to pursue their art.
But where does that leave Ann Amendolagine? She’s tolerated years of economic hardship in order to commit her life to dance. But just because she now has a part time job off the streets doesn’t mean her art has become shallower. She’s still on the pavement, bringing joy and light to an otherwise empty environment. Ann represents a third category of artist, one who doesn’t perform despite the criticism or solitude a life of street performance brings, but one who is motivated by love of her medium.
The waiter’s claim that “pure artists” don’t exist in the world in the same way the rest of us do is as frustrating as the idea that in order to be a great writer you have to be an alcoholic. The Bird Man’s wisdom and the fact that he carries his artistic idealism with him wherever he goes make him important and inspiring. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that he is more of an artist.
The dancer, the clown, and the bird probably all fit into more than one category of artist. Each has walked courageously through a wilderness to bring society something valuable. Each has improved the world around them by bridging the internal with the external. And each is an example of something noble.
Belle