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Street Performance Features Humanoid Pigeons
Produced by Lynette Kalsnes on Wednesday, September 03, 2008
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Part of the charm of living in a big city is the little surprises. Take what happened recently on a lazy summer day in Lincoln Square, on Chicago’s North Side. Chicago Public Radio’s Lynette Kalsnes brings us the story of an impromptu performance with humanoid pigeons.
With the sun filtering through the trees, a small group of actors arrive in bowler hats and fluffy skirts. They puff out their chests, and stick out their butts. They walk around the plaza with this arrogant, halting strut like a pigeon. A man walks up, pulls out an orange folding chair and sits down. Then he pulls out a melodica. The pigeon people cock their heads to the side, and freeze, then slowly edge closer. People in the square stop what they’re doing, crane their heads in curiosity, and then take pictures with their cell phones. The street performance lasts just seven minutes. It’s as bright and fleeting as summer itself.
HUNGERFORD: They seem magical and sort of unreal. It’s that wonderment of (gasp) did you see what I just saw? But the moment someone tries to look, it’s already gone.
Fannie Hungerford worked with Joshua Dumas to create the show. It’s part of their series called “The Summer is for Fireflies.”
DUMAS: When a child sees a firefly, it’s an immediate kind of response. Something that blinks on, and then is gone. Something that inspires wonder.
Dumas says wonder is one word that describes the reaction people had when they saw Joseph Zeman feeding pigeons. Zeman was killed by a van late last year. He was known as the Pigeon Man. He’d feed the birds for hours. Hungerford says the pigeons covered his arms, his legs and even his head.
HUNGERFORD: He became a giant bird, too, in that. It was almost that he had so many birds on him, that he could have taken flight himself. So within that stillness, all this movement that could have lifted him up and away.
The Pigeon Man inspired the recent performance.
HUNGERFORD: Pigeons in the city are this bird we rarely see as beautiful. But if you look closely, they have iridescent feathers and all different colors. It’s finding beauty in the mundane.
The performance continues, and the bird feeder throws out seed. Soon, the pigeon people are eating out of his hand. They start dancing like they’re flying in unison. Then the bird feeder walks away from the crowd, and the pigeons follow him like a Pied Piper.
BROCKER: I really enjoyed it.
Kurt Brocker didn’t know the performers were coming.
BROCKER: It made me feel like I was stepping into some square in Europe or something, because you don’t see a lot of public performance here. At least I don’t, not in the neighborhoods.
When it started, Brocker moved closer and sat on the ground with his daughter.
BROCKER: It feels sort of community building. It feels like connective tissue growing, when you see public performance like that.
Across the plaza, Aaron Hall watched with his wife and son. The toddler wandered up to the actors, and tried to join in.
HALL: It was nice to have a little bit of that fantasy kind of brought into the everyday reality that we have. It was nice to have something unexpected and fantastical happen.
He says the performance let him step outside his normal routine for a moment, and that was a gift. It was a performance repeated across the city six times that day.
"The Summer is for Fireflies" recreates a different reality later this month in a new show.
I’m Lynette Kalsnes, Chicago Public Radio.
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