Backstage with The Bindlestiff Open Stage Variety Show: Quarantine Edition (With Help from Popsicle Kitteh)

I’ve long been fans of my friends in the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, a scrappy and effective organization that has survived for more than 25 years. I’ve shot photos for them, and generally helped out whenever I could. In the before times, Bindlestiff produced a monthly “open stage” variety show at Dixon Place, which is always fun place for circus and variety acts old and new to try stuff out. The sense of community at these events is palpable.

When the pandemic hit, of course, the live, in person show had to go on hiatus. Always resourceful, co-founder/ ringmaster/ producer/ performer/ host Keith Nelson (upper right in the video above) pivoted to live, online performances over Zoom. At first it was a one off, and I helped them with some of the streaming aspects. But that show was so successful that they decided to continue the event weekly. Eventually, I started screen sharing some slides through Powerpoint, and then audio and video tracks through Show Cue Systems on an old PC laptop. We have learned way more about Zoom than any of us ever wanted to know, and have evolved to a pretty efficient process that uses Zoom as the backstage, and then Restream to send out to Facebook and Youtube. That side was sorted and is handled by stage manager/director Ellia Bisker (lower left in the video above), and these days I play back audio and video through QLab on an old Mac tower (lower right in the video above) and we all chat backstage through a Discord server, along with social media house manager Laura Siegel.

When the internet bandwidth gods cooperate, it can be a pretty smooth production, but I have to say I never thought, pre-COVID, that my cat would be interfering with running cues on a live show. I’ve started videos while holding Popsicle kitteh in the other hand more than once, and for some reason she is drawn to the QLab computer (on the right) while it’s running. If she hits the wrong key on the QLab keyboard, the video I’m running out to hundreds of people could stop:

Zoom of course has limitations, but with the number of people we need backstage, we haven’t found any other better solution that is also affordable, since this show is produced on a shoestring. Here’s my signal flow:

We have done more than 50 shows now over the last year, and it’s always been fun; working with Keith and the Bindlestiff organization is always a pleasure. With live, in person performances coming back, the last planned online show is April 26, 2021. Watch live on a Monday night before then if you want to catch it!