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.
The “Push Button Performer” is an interactive live performance busked and presented over 50 times in street festivals, carnivals, classrooms, theaters and art galleries since 1999. With Silverstein-ian poetry and songs (Terminator, Transformers, Mr. Roboto, Paranoid Android etc) on the robot theme, this tech-skewering troubadour is cold comfort for a world of blurred lines between machines and reality. The PBP is also a puppet of the audience with push-able buttons to control and alter the content in real time.
As The PBP, Mike is not in control. The audience is. Whether frozen waiting for someone to press ‘start’ or enduring constant interruptions, the audience becomes a performance. Inspired by Nam June Paik, Laurie Anderson, Max Headroom and more, the lore of machine control is satirized by a jester clowning in the modern palaces of techno-kings. The PBP can also be found interacting with urban tech elements, activating inactive spaces, starting unintended cipher circles, and collaborating with other artists in public.
Another show-within-a-show is the way young men invariably test the limits. During the performance’s original run from 1999 to 2005, an audience member at a theater once made The PBP go so 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 by contacting Mike to ask about current availability.
