Today we’d like to introduce you to Busking Bus.
Hi Busking, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Towards the beginning of 2020, the three of us (Landon, Catherine, and Jonah) all met through a local theatre mixer. We each had experience in theatre/performance prior to our meeting. Landon had performed with the Children’s Theatre/ Parker Theatre for years, Catherine had worked with New World Shakespeare and film, and Jonah was Artistic Director of ThreePenny Theatre Company. As we started to discuss the prospect of working together on projects, we discovered that each of us had independently had a similar idea: a food truck for theatre.
From that starting point, we started having regular discussions that turned into regular business meetings, and after nearly a year of discussing business models, branding, and concepts, we took the plunge and bought the bus. Over the next few months, we modified the bus to be our stage and started to develop our first show.
We are now closing our second season through the last few fall festivals. We’ve now developed two original vaudeville-inspired shows that we’ve performed cumulatively around 150 times.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
As with any pursuit in arts and entertainment, the road for Busking Bus has not always been easy. Especially in July and August, we often have the challenges of sunburn and heat exhaustion. Doing outdoor theatre, we have had to find quick solutions to wind, rain, and heat. With a business model that relies on busking (performing on the street for tips), we’ve had great nights and nights where the pay didn’t always justify the hard work of development, rehearsal, and performance, so we’ve had to make adjustments to what festivals and events we attend to make it worthwhile for our ensemble.
When your theatre is also a vehicle, you also have to deal with all the challenges of owning a vehicle (gas, dead batteries, mechanical issues, etc., etc.). There’s an anecdote that illustrates this point. We purchased the bus in New Jersey. Due to the van life movement happening in the West, buses in Utah and this side of the country were pretty expensive, but we managed to find this bus in New Jersey for about half the cost. So, we all fly to New Jersey and decide to drive this bus that’s 16 years old across the country. We had spent the night in the Detroit area, but when we woke up, there were some weird lights on the dash and the power steering wasn’t working. We rack our brains, “we’ve driven without power steering before is this really that big of an issue?” but we ultimately decide to take a look with a mechanic, and lucky we did because in this model there is apparently something that links the power steering with the breaks (we’re entertainers not mechanics so that’s about as far as our knowledge goes). We rush to get the repairs done with the mechanic and head on our way. As a side note, even with the, now huge, mechanical expenses, we still saved money buying the bus on the other side of the country.
Despite some hiccups, we’ve been incredibly lucky to work with great festivals and people as we’ve built and continue to build our company.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
The Busking Bus creates and curates shows designed for street performance. There are, basically, two things you can see at a Busking Bus show 1) our original variety show that will usually include sketch comedy, puppets, clowns, etc. or 2) an independent busking artist, usually a juggler, magician, or musician depending on the day.
We really love being a gathering point for what arts and culture in Salt Lake City could look like on the streets. During this past summer, we had a standing agreement with The Blocks/ Open Streets to perform at the Gallivan Center every Friday, and every time someone walked by and said “See Salt Lake City has a culture” or “Wow, I didn’t know Salt Lake City had something like this”, those moments were definitely moments of pride. We love being a little gem that you can just stumble upon in the middle of an evening out.
As far as what sets us apart, our venue and style, while not new, surprises a lot of people. Traveling theatre troupes form, basically, the bedrock for theatre (minstrels, Shakespeare, vaudeville, etc.), so we’re doing something that harkens back to a classic time. For what’s happening in Salt Lake City right now, very few companies produce work that can be seen cheaply, for all ages, and designed to be a community gathering point. We obviously must add that the visual spectacle of seeing a bus with a stage on the side. Even if you’ve seen a traveling show, there’s definitely something about our visual appearance that will be unique to audience members.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
So this a weird question to answer since there are three of us, and we definitely each had differences.
Jonah grew up in Kansas and started being involved in performance through dance when he was young and got into theatre later. While he was much more extroverted when he was young, he’s, probably, the most introverted of the three now.
Landon grew up in the Salt Lake valley with family members being involved in theatre his entire life. He followed in their footsteps and became a theatre practitioner. He first started getting paid theatre work at the age of 18 at the Parker Theatre and has continued to do theatre ever since.
Catherine was always the child that would get lost in a movie, and she always love the performance and storytelling. Her love of film and television took her to film school where she started to get involved with the local theatre scene.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buskingbustheatre/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/buskingbustheatre
Image Credits
Landon Kraczek
Catherine Mortimer
Jonah Kirkhart
Meighan Page Smith
Mallory DeForest
Andy Connolly
Dan Pack
Eduardo Pederoso
