The Road that Never Ends

Pulling off a national tour means you need a reliable vehicle. Here I am installing my fourth motor into my ’67 Ford. I did all my own work. The first few rebuilds were not so good, but they got better and lasted longer with practice. Note the camper shell. This shell was scrapped and a […]

Worth a Try

I find some of my earliest material from my show embarrassing. I would have preferred to have come out of the starting blocks with a perfect beginning. My first few years consisted of a wide range of elements. There was juggling, magic, mindreading, sketch comedy, puppetry, water-spitting, springboard acrobatic stunts, and handbalancing. I tried […]

Street Show as Heart Song

My career in show business spans almost four decades. For many years I have presented somewhere around 300 performances per year. That’s a solid number. Some years I didn’t do that many shows and in other years it is likely that I approached as many as 750. There were a chunk of years that I […]

Sometimes I Played for Elephants

Touring a show by truck is a different experience from flying to an airport, renting a car, staying at a hotel, and getting all your meals in restaurants. I arranged my pickup truck to fit my show equipment and everything I would need to eat and sleep while traveling. To travel in this […]

Street Performing as Spoken Word

Dana Smith Harlequin Street Theater from 1978 My approach to street theater has placed particular emphasis on words. It is the power of the spoken word when combined with visual elements, and situational moments that can be one of the most effective tools when building a successful show. In the vernacular of the […]

Finally the Finale

I wear two hats now. One is performer, the other is author. Closing a show with a routine that will thrill the audience is an essential ingredient to good street theater. Without this climactic stunt not only will the show fall flat but so will the audiences response to putting some money in the hat. […]

Father Daughter Life on the Road…

Tonight I begin a Father-Daughter Night series at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. Over the next two weekends I’ll do five nights of shows with the irrepressible Bob Sarlatte hosting the stage. Bob’s a Saint Ignatius High School grad. I went to school at Bellarmine. My wife and I have three daughters. Our youngest, Alana […]

Grass Roots Audience, The Small Time Entertainer, The Fully Funded Heart

The grass roots audiences the small time entertainer plays to is located closer to the heart. We are literally physically closer. Venues are scaled to size. Expectations are held in check. We are paid less money but we acquire a greater bounty of intimacy. We begin our performing careers creating material that is both visually […]

Lambrusco with a Steinbeck Chaser…

In 1975 in the Mission Gardens at Santa Clara University the season’s final show with the Royal Lichtenstein Quarter-Ring Sidewalk Circus ended my year long stint with the foundational experience of my new variety arts path in life. By 1977 I had a new show and played dates for the next three years with the talented […]

Long Hops and short stops

In the early 70’s as the counter cultural movement took to the streets the first wave of artists built shows from scratch. We had no templates to work from. By the early 80’s that was over. Acts arrived at venues derived from the first wave shows of the late 60’s to early 70’s. We felt […]