But don't worry about spruiking!

I have to ask... what is "spruiking"? Is it an Australian term or a typo? Hope it is not a typo cause it looks kind of cool!

I have to ask... what is "spruiking"? Is it an Australian term or a typo? Hope it is not a typo cause it looks kind of cool!

Colloquial term for standing on the street handing out flyers. Quite possibly only used by theatre people, I don't know.

Spruiking: see here as it how it pertains to Melbourne.

Regards,
Dorian
(an ex-Melbournian   )

Spruiking: see here as it how it pertains to Melbourne.

Regards,
Dorian
(an ex-Melbournian   )

Ah thank you.

... On a somewhat related note to the thread topic, I went and talked about puppetry today with a group of people from a disabled support organisation. I didn't plan well and sort of rambled my way through showing puppets and answering questions, but the intriguing thing was that I took a whole bunch of really old puppets. I look at them and see how crappy they are (Amy, one of my moppets, is practically peeling because she's covered in felt, and been squashed in a tub for five years) and how many problems they have. I took my bunraku head that I made in 2008 which is made of papier mache and dried wrong and doesn't tilt it's head properly. I took a couple of bought puppets...

The comments that came back were that all of them were amazing. They kept saying how much better mine was compared to theirs (basically a cardboard cutout on a stick) and all I could think of was how crappy they are compared to what I do these days.

Today's lesson: practice, practice, practice. Don't forget to step back and remember how far you've come.

Oh yes, I'm working on one (just to have as an homage to something I love and loved as a child. I don't want to pay Toei/Bandai to use him in shows or what have you) that is a working 1/2 size marionette of Puppetmon/Pinocchimon from Digimon Adventure 01. I've finished the armature for practice. The colours are off, but you can still tell it's him. I planned to begin work on the puppet proper a month ago, but hit a financial snag.

I'm weird, I know. :P

So spruiking is the same as hawking your wares. I love it when I learn something new!

@nimhshambler

I think most of us would agree that finances do tend to strain the creative process. A lot of people I know in theatre and puppetry have projects always on the back burner because they just can't afford to do it yet.

@shawn

From that page though it looks like they differentiate hawking from spruiking, the former trying to actually sell stuff right in front of you, the other is more like leafleting. Ie. spruiking would be handing out flyers about x religion, hawking would be trying to sell bibles. Or at least that's my vague impression from a quick scan of the page.

I learned too, I never knew much about the word except that that's what we used to call it when we were handing out flyers for our shows.

When I think spruiking, I think of dudes in suits selling wares via crap microphones for businesses they don't care for with a forced sense of enthusiasm that verges on aggression... see below for example: