Street Performer

Head of the Thieves' Guild: He [Vetinari] does have all the street-theater players and mime artists thrown into the scorpion pit.

Head of the Bakers' Guild: True, but let's not forget that he has his bad points too.

—Feet of Clay

People performing stunts on streets (say, a One-Man Band) in order to get money from spectators, often seen at any renaissance fair. Also known as "buskers" in Ireland (a word ultimately of Celtic and Iberian origin).

One common element is having a hat (or some other container) out in front in which passersby can toss money into.

Commonly an Acceptable Target in the mass media, likely to be stigmatized either as New Age Retro Hippie or "wannabe performer with no talent". However, quite a few of these artists have become successful and even world-famous.

Street Musician and Organ Grinder are Sub Tropes.

Examples of Street Performer include:

Anime & Manga

• Yukito from AIR tries to make a living by performing tricks with his magically controlled doll. His level of success varies wildly, though.

Comic Books

• One issue of Simpsons Comics shows Sideshow Bob unemployed after being released from prison. He briefly considers making money by performing Shakespearean soliloquies on the street, and we then see an Imagine Spot of Bob reenacting the "dagger scene" from Macbeth - and Comic Book Guy, assuming that he's seeing a poor imitation of a comic-book story, throwing tomatoes at Bob.

Film - Animation

• In All Dogs Go to Heaven 2, Charlie attempts to help a boy make it as a professional street magician. The boy had to compete against several other street performers for the attention of the pedestrians.
• A number of scenes in Aladdin, in particular the "One Jump Ahead" sequence, where several Arabic buskers (inadvertently) help Aladdin escape from the palace guards.

Film - Live Action

• Dick Van Dyke, The Master of the Cockney Accent, played Bert in Mary Poppins who was a One-Man Band busker, pavement artist, chimney sweep, and kite salesman.
• Also in Tim Burton's Batman, the Joker disguises himself and his Mooks as street mimes to kill one of the dissenting mob bosses.
• Batman Returns features the Red Triangle Circus Gang - many of whose members seem to be right out of the European busker tradition, especially an Organ Grinder played by Vincent Schiavelli.
  • Other members of the gang include a "Native American" woman who throws knives....
  • ....a not-too-bright Tattooed Strongman....
  • ....and a "Poodle Lady" (a woman in pink clothes with curly light blonde hair) and her matching poodle, although it's never made clear exactly what their "act" would have been.
• In Die Hard With a Vengeance, when they're tearing through Central Park in a stolen Taxi, barely missing several picnickers, Samuel L. Jackson asks Bruce Willis "Are you AIMING for those people?" "No, no... well, maybe that mime."
• In Zorro's Fighting Legion, one of the baddies is a Dreadful Musician mariachi who poses as a busker so he can receive and pass on secret messages hidden inside coins tossed into his hat.
• Several such characters appear around Paradise Square in the Five Points (now downtown Manhattan) in Martin Scorsese's 2002 Civil War-era epic Gangs of New York: all of them Irish, and most of them singers or fiddlers. One of them (played by folk singer Finbar Furey) temporarily takes center stage when the camera takes us inside Satan's Circus, a large tavern that is "neutral ground" for all of New York's street gangs. He appears to acknowledge our presence, and then we follow him into the tavern as he sings "New York Girls" to the accompaniment of some unseen musicians.

Literature

• Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, is (in)famous for rarely, if ever, being known to have innocent people just dragged off to dungeons without a trial: The notable exception to this rule are mime artists, whom Vetinari despises. Vetinari banned all mime performances from Ankh-Morpork shortly after taking power. Mime artists who violate the ban usually find themselves hanging upside down in Vetinari's scorpion pit whilst reading a sign saying ' learn the words '.
  • He's also said to hold Views on modern art. Notably, these are considered his good points.

Live Action TV

• Once on Bones, they investigated the death of a dancer who we learn was a busker and meet some other buskers who knew the victim. Bones pontificates (as she often does) on the antrhopological significance of the busker lifestyle.

Newspaper Comics

• Gary Larson spoofed the concept in an installment of The Far Side. A doctor is shown performing risky surgery on a patient on a street corner before an appreciative audience. His profession? "Street physician."

Tabletop Games

• 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons. The Complete Bard's Handbook had a kit called the Jongleur that sometimes performed this way.

Web Comics

• In Questionable Content, when Pintsize wants to demonstrate that women hates a 'voice of reason', he gives Faye the following spiel: "Hey, Faye, you're NOT too fat to eat nothing but ice-cream all day! 500 dollars is a perfectly reasonable price for a pair of shoes! And you should totally kill that mime!" She admits that, while all of his propositions seems highly tempting, the bit about the mime in particular speaks to her. "It's like honey in my ears. I LOATHE mimes!"

Western Animation

• An episode of Goof Troop showed Goofy trying to start up a career as a street mime. After graduating from mime school, he decides to try his hand at performance but can't find a good costume. He finally decides to just wrap his body in aluminum foil - inspiring Max and his friend, who have to make a video for a school project, to also wrap themselves in foil and pretend to be invaders from outer space. The boys accidentally broadcast their video all throughout Spoonerville - so when the local police see Goofy performing, they assume he's an alien and have him captured by the military!
• Invader Zim: Zim and Gir resort to this in order to get bus money.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: SpongeBob and Patrick are mistaken for these when they try to "act naturally" after stealing a balloon.
• Ferb does this in the Phineas and Ferb episode "Ain't No Kiddie Ride" so he can get a quarter to slingshot into the souped-up mall kiddie ride Candace is riding on before she falls to her death.
• The Mr. Bean episode "Mime Games" begins with Mr. Bean pestering a living statue (disguised as Cupid) to perform for him, not realizing that the "statue" will only move if you give him a coin. Later on, a mime pesters Mr. Bean in turn....to the point of outright stalking him: following him home, sneaking into his house, and eating all of his food. Mr. Bean finally gets rid of the mime by throwing an "invisible lasso" around his waist and dragging him out of there.