Even when the skies are grey, John Vickers hasn’t experienced a dull moment during the fourth annual Victoria International Buskers Festival.
The days last from 8 a.m. until 11 p.m. for the festival’s executive director since the start of the 10-day event that ends at 5 p.m. today.
Staging the festival that showcases 25 street performers from around the world, including jugglers, flame-throwers, acrobats, mimes and magicians strutting their stuff in rotation on seven stages around the Inner Harbour and the downtown core is a high-wire act in itself.
“It’s equivalent to jumping onto a boat for a 10-day sail. Some days the winds are calm, and other days are choppier,” said Vickers, who emphasizes putting it together is a year-round effort.
“A lot of people think you wake up in June and decide to put together a buskers festival, but it’s a really a collaboration of partners, like 19 downtown hotels providing 200 room nights [for performers] during peak season.”
Sharon Mahoney, 41, a globe-trotting entertainer and former Victorian, has been imparting a “be happy with who you are” message alongside her inspired lunacy as her alter-ego Tallulah.
“I find more people are recognizing that busking and street theatre is wonderful for a community, but there are still people who don’t understand it or look down upon it,” says the actress and comedienne who studied improv at Second City and earned an honours BA in theatre arts and psychology from Bishops University.
Despite inclement weather, a crowd at Ship Point responded enthusiastically to Tallulah and the Ladder of Men, her act that begins with her appearance as a passive-aggressive, ridiculously Canadian character who wears a red-and-white tracksuit. She’s so excessively polite and apologetic she has a breakdown before transforming into Tallulah, her polar opposite.
While street theatre has become a well-funded, respected art form in Europe since she began travelling there in the 1990s, it’s a different story locally, she lamented.
“There are a bunch of issues [for performers on the Causeway] unfortunately,” she said. “Ironically, in Victoria we pay the largest licence fee. And we recently tried to get vocal enhancement, but they won’t allow amplification in the Inner Harbour.”
(Annual fees for performers on the causeway are $190 for musicians and $512 for jugglers/performers because of liability issues and a larger space requirement, according to the Greater Victoria Harbour Authority. There is a no-amplification rule on the causeway, except for Ship Point on Friday and Saturday evenings, unless a special-event permit is obtained from the city.)
“They want to keep everything very grassroots, but Victoria’s growing. It’s a festival city over the summer, with SkaFest, JazzFest, Symphony Splash and Canada Day,” says Mahoney. “There are all sorts of festivals that have a huge noise-bleed. It blows us right out to the point we can’t perform.”
Still, the colourful street performer who like her counterparts relies on donations loves what she does despite the challenges.
“I love the artistic freedom, the fact I can travel, and it gives me freedom financially to do other forms of performance,” says Mahoney, whose new one-woman show The Lion, the Bitch and the Wardrobe will be part of next month’s Fringe Festival. “I’m also my own boss and I write my own show.”
She also views street theatre as a great equalizer that lets her fulfil her passion — to restore our sense of community in the digital age through a rare and affordable human experience.
“It’s social theatre,” Mahoney says. “I love the fact I can be doing a show and a homeless person can be standing next to a millionaire and they’re both having the same experience.”