新西兰英语 392 World Buskers’ Festival

　　What are buskers? They are street performers. They perform circus acts like acrobatics¹ or juggling², or singing and dancing, and they are always very clever and very funny. They get paid at the end of their show when the audience throws money in the hat. If the audience doesn’t like the show, the performer gets very little money.
Buskers like a big crowd to watch their show so they call out to people passing by. The more people who watch, the more money the buskers get. Buskers love involving the audience. They talk to the audience all the time and make jokes. Then they choose someone from the audience to help them. That person has to do something silly or embarrassing³; everyone laughs and feels glad that the busker didn’t choose them.
Christchurch has a 10-day Buskers’ Festival every year at the end of January. This year there are about 50 individual performers or groups and about half of those are from New Zealand. Buskers from around the world enjoy performing in this festival so much that many of them come back the following year. Christchurch people and tourists enjoy the performances so much that they come every year also.
This festival started Thursday night last week and continues until next Sunday 29th January. Each day performances start about 11am with six different shows during the day in six different locations, then evening shows begin. Early evening shows are outdoors in the Arts Centre then later evening shows are indoors⁴ at other venues⁵.
Children’s shows are in the Botanic Gardens during the day only. Evening shows are adults only.
Questions
What kind of personality does a busker need to be successful?
Why do people enjoy buskers?
What kind of street performance do you enjoy watching?

1 acrobatics   

n.杂技

参考例句：

• Acrobatics is hard to learn but beautiful to watch.杂技不好学，但很好看。
• We watched a performance which included a puppet show and acrobatics.我们观看了一场演出，内容有木偶和杂技。

2 juggling   

n. 欺骗, 杂耍(=jugglery) adj. 欺骗的, 欺诈的 动词juggle的现在分词

参考例句：

• He was charged with some dishonest juggling with the accounts. 他被指控用欺骗手段窜改账目。
• The accountant went to prison for juggling his firm's accounts. 会计因涂改公司的帐目而入狱。

3 embarrassing   

adj.使人尴尬的，令人为难的v.（使）窘迫，（使）局促不安( embarrass的现在分词)

参考例句：

• His jokes didn't even raise a smile, which was embarrassing. 听了他讲的笑话，都没人笑一下，真是太尴尬了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• I was in the embarrassing position of having completely forgotten her name. 当时我完全忘记了她的名字，很是尴尬。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 indoors   

adv.(在)室内，(在)户内

参考例句：

• Because of the coldness of the weather we stayed indoors.我们因天气寒冷呆在家里。
• It is very cold outside,you'd better come indoors across the board.外面很冷，你们所有人最好都进屋。

5 venues   

n.聚集地点( venue的名词复数 )；会场；（尤指）体育比赛场所；犯罪地点

参考例句：

• The band will be playing at 20 different venues on their UK tour. 这个乐队在英国巡回演出期间将在20个不同的地点演出。
• Farmers market corner, 800 meters long, 60 meters wide livestock trading venues. 农牧市场东北角，有长800米，宽60米的牲畜交易场地。 来自互联网