I’m browsing the discount book racks outside the Strand when my attention is drawn to a falsetto voice rising and falling amidst the din of street traffic. I don’t pay much attention to the voice at first, but soon it becomes impossible to ignore. It’s hard to pinpoint the source, and it takes several scans of the street before I’m able to establish that the person speaking is a tall man surrounded by six or seven people at the corner of Broadway and 12th Street. ‘A class,’ I think to myself, and go back to my perusing. But the cadence and the odd embellishments of the man’s discourse keep drawing my attention back to the group. His style of dress, I can’t help but notice, is decidedly un-professorial: he’s wearing a garish plaid shirt, overalls and a rakishly tilted Fedora. His gestures are also comically exaggerated, almost camp, and stand in stark contrast to his passive, rapt audience. I edge closer, splitting my attention between the book racks and the group, until I’m near enough to overhear what’s being said. The man appears to be telling a story about himself – but it’s a disjointed one; he leaps from topic to topic, free-association style, often prompted by the groups’ questions: ‘Where did you learn how to play the banjo?’ ‘Why, on the farm of course! My grand-pappy had a banjo, we used to play in the evenings by the fire. I can still smell that sweet scent of burning oak –’ ‘What kind of work did you do on the farm?’ ‘Work? Well now, let me tell you about milking the cows. See, we had an old sow named Bessie…’ These responses, delivered in a lilting, exaggerated southern drawl, elicit laughs and comments from the group. Everyone appears to be having fun. But what exactly is this? An acting class? If so, why have they chosen this seemingly random street corner to conduct this exercise, rather than a classroom? Or, is this a form of street theater, and the people around this amped-up thespian are just curious passersby drawn into his strange orbit? I hover a while longer continuing my half-observation, expecting I’ll learn more when the session reaches its terminus. But after ten minutes things show no sign of losing steam, so I give up and head into the bookstore.