“Push Button Performer”
Do you like getting pushed around? Apparently Mike does. Because for 6 years, from 1999 to 2005, Mike was a dutiful puppet of his audience. “The Push Button Performer” (PBP) appeared nearly 40 different times in class rooms, carnivals, theaters and art galleries. His repertoire of poetry, drumming and other non-sensical musical playing was acutely directed by his audience - to switch instruments, go faster or slower, get louder or quieter, or stop and start.
PBP was often left frozen for great lengths of time, waiting for someone to push a button... any button. Young boys and men, without fail, made him go really fast and loud. One such audience member at a theater venue once made The PBP go so uncomfortably fast and loud that the rest of the audience turned on him and physically pealed - with two large men - this larger gentlemen away from the push button chest panel. When they did, the audience erupted in joyful applause, grateful that the “mean” man who made The PBP go “too” fast and loud was finally gone and the “show” could go on.