How to look like a homeless man!
A story my wife would rather I didn’t share with you.
There were about 20 of us, and very late one night we all decided that on the following weekend we would hold a little competition amongst ourselves…20 bucks each to play and winner takes all.
This was some years ago, long before I met the light of my life, and I was living in a Sydney share – house with a bunch of actors, musicians, artistes and others either unable or unwilling to obtain gainful employment. Our competition was inspired partly by a children’s book titled “The Good Spy Guide” and partly by the usual pharmacological suspects and it had a simple premise. The players would agree to go to a public place at an agreed time. They would remain in the vicinity for a specified time, then leave and reassemble elsewhere to decide the winner.
All of the players had to be wearing disguises and the object of the game was to spot all the other spies without being identified yourself. So you see it wasn’t hide and seek, you weren’t allowed to conceal yourself, all the players had to be in plain view, the game was really about who could come up with the best disguise.
As you have probably guessed already dear reader, I was the winner of this competition, and I don’t want you to think that I just scraped home by a short nose in a photo finish at the wire either, no no no; I can say without fear of correction that I romped home! That’s right, I did it in a canter! I was still pulling away from the field as I flashed past the post! I was saluting the stands through a confetti of discarded betting slips before the rest of them had rounded the last turn! The clear length of the straight I tell you! It was me first and daylight second!…and…well…you get the idea.
(No more turf metaphors I promise, but just by the way, have you ever noticed how often performers describe a successful engagement in terms of how much harm they were able to inflict on the audience? As in…’How was your gig Brian?’ “Oh fantastic! I murdered them! I laid them in the aisles, I destroyed them, tore them apart, they were pissing themselves, I knocked them out, had them dying laughing, killed them, smashed them big time!” etc…
‘Indicative of the basically adversarial nature of the Audience/Artiste dialectic?’ Discuss.)
How did I do it? Because although I was in full view for more than the allotted hour not one person recognised me, including all of the forty or fifty spectators who had come to support their favourites (for news of our little event had of course spread beyond the players themselves).
Before I reveal all I want to tell you a little about my some of my competitors’ efforts: there were basically two camps, those who were taking it seriously, and those who were taking the piss. The latter group treated it as a public fancy dress party and came more in costume than in disguise. There was a pantomime horse for example and some pirates and matadors and nuns and even a Julie Andrews. This group tended towards exaggerated ‘encounters’ with other revellers, their friends and fans and the market crowd at large, and had a great time while being anything but unrecognisable.
Why? Well firstly you need to understand that although cosmetics and hair and prosthetics and all of the abovementioned can look very convincing on film or in the confines of a theatre when combined with skilful lighting, fog, angles, filters, special effects and so forth, in the cold hard light of a cloudless Spring morning in Sydney, it simply looks like a child has drawn on your face with crayons while you slept, and followed that up by super – gluing cornflakes to your ears.
No the real giveaway was the costumes…they looked like they had come direct from an amateur dramatic society’s production of Uncle Vanya. They were dressed for the steppes I’m telling you, you’ve never seen so much fake fur in all your life; or alternatively they were squeezed into ill-fitting dinner jackets or suits or patently fake Southern Belle ball gowns….none of it looked remotely real, in that their clothes did not in any way look like they had actually worn them before.
You’ve guessed already perhaps? Well yes, judge me if you must but I’d filled the can with my own urine the night before. (“At least it wasn’t somebody else’s urine” is what I say to my only one, but she seems equally appalled that I could even think of such a thing.)
Anyway that was it…my master disguise was to simply put on some old clothes, gather some crap, cover myself in piss…and hey presto! Homeless person!
I genuinely gave myself no chance of success but I was encouraged by the reactions of strangers forced to wait near me to catch their bus, who seemed quite convinced of my authenticity. I started to get into it and soon added the kind of semi-audible nonsensical inner monologue of the seriously brain damaged or deranged…I would snarl and mutter under my breath for a while before vehemently addressing some innocent bystander with phrases like…
My crowning moment came when a police car pulled to a halt only metres away from me. The officer in the passenger seat gave me a long, distasteful look before he turned to the driver and said something. The driver leaned forward to check me out. He leant back again. A brief discussion ensued. I was of course thinking ‘Oh well. Looks like the gig is up but we had fun while it lasted’, while spontaneously humming the chorus from “You’re Going Home in the Back of a Divvy Van!” when they simply drove away without as much as a backward glance. I’m sure they decided I was too much trouble!
So after the hour was up I waited fifteen minutes and then walked up to meet my fellow travellers at the pub. They were gathered around making plenty of noise that abated a bit as I approached…I sensed their nervousness…They still hadn’t twigged. ”Who’s this?”…then someone said…
“Oh God! It’s you!”
And within a second they had all recognised me and my triumph dear reader, was as you may imagine, complete. In all my long career before or since, I don’t think I’ve ever had more glowing reviews…I smashed them I tell you! I took them by the throat and I kicked them in the…#%[email protected]…Whoops. There I go again…Suffice to say though I was amazed by my success…
Here’s something to consider when you’re managing or working with teams. It can often be the case that we don’t see beyond our first or preconceived assumptions and this can be a very costly and damaging mistake. Our first impressions are rarely accurate and it can be very easy to overlook warning signs or clues that are glaringly obvious to others but remain completely hidden from our own viewpoint. So how can we counter our natural tendency to ‘see what we want to see?’
The good news is that it’s not so hard! And next time I’ll discuss some practical strategies you can try for yourself at work, home and play.
Hey by the way…I’ve got this great idea for a competition at the work Christmas Party…we all put in fifty bucks…winner takes all…yeah it’ll be fun!..Has anybody seen my Milo tin by the way?
Like this … want to know more… Call Brian today 07 4772 3800
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