By experimenting in the City, we were able to find out what engaged the audience in interaction and what didn’t. The high-five and hug were extremely successful and something we will definitely be using in our performance. We also discovered that when holding the “Lend an ear” banner, most people purposely looked away and looked rather uncomfortable.

We were stopped constantly and asked what we were doing. The public generally looked eager and curious to find out what we were doing and why. For instance, in this video, I had a conversation with two men which went like this:

Man: “What is this for?”. I then gave my explanation of what we were doing, basically trying to create social interaction with strangers in order to interrupt the flow of consumerism. Man: “That’s awesome! Who has even said no yet? Let me find them and hunt them down for you” *Laughter*. “You’ve brightened my day”.

We were extremely happy for this type of reaction because rather than just high-fiving strangers, we were able to give them a reason why we were doing this without the need of forcing the information on them. They were genuinely interested and willing to hear what we had to say. One young man even asked if we were from the show “Impractical Jokers”, so we must have been doing something right!