PUSH BUTTON PERFORMER
2026 UPDATE: Stay tuned for live appearances by “The PBP” with all new content and instrumentation. Inquire here about current availability for bookings.
Mike returns as his audience’s dutiful puppet in the re-crafted “Push Button Performer” after a long hiatus. This live, audience-directed piece has been busked and performed nearly 50 times in classrooms, carnivals, street festivals, theaters and art galleries since 1999. With spoken word in a Shel Silverstein-ian spirt and bot-themed songs (Terminator, Transformers, Mr. Roboto, Paranoid Android et al), this performance is cold comfort for button-pushers in a world of blurred lines between machines and reality.
Do you like getting pushed around? Apparently Mike does. Because as The PBP, Mike is not in control. The audience is. This robo-human beatnik is often left frozen waiting for someone to press “start”, reverse roles, and turn the audience into a performance. Inspired by Nam June Paik, Laurie Anderson, Max Headroom and more, the lore of machine control is poked by a jester clowning in the present-day palaces of techno-kings.
The show-within-a-show is the way young men invariably make The PBP go fast and loud. During the performance’s original run from 1999 to 2005, an audience member at a theater once made The PBP go so uncomfortably fast and loud that the rest of the audience turned on him. With the large gentlemen forcefully clutching The PBP’s chest panel, two other large men physically grabbed the guy to peal him away. At which point the audience - grateful the “mean” man was gone and the “show” could go on - erupted in joyful applause.
The PBP can be booked for appearances by contacting Mike to ask about current availability.
