Arts & Entertainment

Street Performer’s Antics Offend Some, Entertain Others

The Great Perfarter knows that people think he is a raving lunatic. But there is a method to his madness, he said.

“I was always attracted to what David Letterman, Tom Green and Andy Kaufman did on the street,” the Perfarter said, referring to those comedians,  “the crazy man on the street who was always entertaining … [the] trickster.”

His bag of tricks includes farting sounds, running around with purple-blue dye on his bearded face or in only his briefs and a cage made out of bamboo.   It’s his way of “opening … up a portal,” said the Perfarter, one among the hordes of musicians, magicians, jugglers, dancers and assorted other amateur and professional artists who perform on the streets of New York City,

The New Jersey native whose real name is Matthew Silver said he hopes that portal leads his audiences to a place where they feel it’s OK to lighten up.

“My motivation is to make people laugh. I do talk about love a lot. I do feel like love is the most important thing,” said the Perfarter, also known as the Man In the White Dress. “I dance with people … I’m trying to preach about love. But I don’t want to sound too serious, so, after I say ‘love,’ I then make a fart sound to make myself sound less serious.”

Reactions to that vary.

Taylor Cole, 23, is a Perfarter fan.  “A typical reaction is ‘He has mental issues,’” she said. “I feel as if that guy is a comic genius … like he is a mad scientist.”

“My initial impression,” said Richard Clarke, 28, after watching the Perfarter perform recently in Union Square “was that he’s a schizophrenic. I think it’s an act and it takes a lot of energy. It involves a lot of creativity and energy.”

That energy bothers some. “He’s sketching me out,” said Fred Smith, 20, quickly walking away from as the Perfarter approached and dismissing him with that slang word for “creeping.”

The Perfarter’s Web site shows videos of what he calls real-life reactions to his on-the-street antics. One guy punched him. One woman ran as he, in a white dress with fake blood stains on the front, made sounds mimicking flatulence and chanted, “Got to go to work, got to make money,” over and over. “These are the winds of change.”

In a city where residents’ stress levels are higher than they should be—5.3 on a scale of 10, rather than 3.7, which the American Psychological Association deems healthy—the Perfarter believes he is helping people calm down.

“I like when people have a guttural laugh and can’t stop laughing. My ego says ‘I did that, I made that person laugh,’” he said.

“Do you get money doing that?” is a question he often gets when he tells people he is a street performer. He rakes in anywhere from $5 to $20 an hour. “There hasn’t been a consistent average,” he said.

His other job is as a professional wedding video editor, which helps compensate for what he doesn’t earn performing.

But money isn’t what drives him, said the Perfarter, who posts his performance date, locations and times on Twitter. “The Hopi Indian tribe has a clown,” he said. “There is a realistic need for a clown in a society because it’s a way of making fun of the serious and loosening up the world.”

On Twitter @JournalistRaisa.