Take a cue from script-free theatre

Discovering performances in unexpected places is a delight. But please don't ask me to join in, says Richard Morrison

Few things in life are more serendipitous than being entertained for free when you aren’t expecting it. It happened to me in London the other evening. Passing Somerset House on my way to something stuffy in an opera house, I was drawn into that majestic courtyard by the strains of what sounded like a brass band playing Indian wedding music.

It was exactly that. Ten-strong, funkily rhythmic and equipped with a tuba the size of Belgium, the Bollywood Brass Band is a fabulous hybrid beast. But there was more. While they oom-pah-pahed, a group of people stripped, frolicked and got very wet in the courtyard’s fountains, before disappearing on rickshaws.

What I had stumbled across was a contemporary dance piece called Kool Down, devised by the choreographer Aletta Collins. But at the time I had no idea of this. In short, I had been ambushed. And I loved it.

Art by ambush is quite big now. The theory is that when people walk into a gallery, theatre or concert hall their heads are already cluttered with preconceptions. The same is true of watching buskers on the Tube or in Edinburgh during the festival. Licensed, timetabled and with a repertoire that is usually all too familiar, they offer many pleasures — but unpredictability is rarely one of them.

Art by ambush, however, is all about surprise. Early one morning last year I watched 38 professional singers warbling 18th-century ditties at each junction of the Vauxhall Cross interchange, possibly London’s nastiest traffic roundabout (and that’s saying something). The incongruity of this performance was matched by its apparent pointlessness — for it wasn’t until pedestrians or queueing motorists got up close that they could hear anything above the roar of the traffic.

Yet when they did, the effect was magical. People hurrying to work were at first mystified, then intrigued, and then — almost without exception — compelled to smile. Suddenly, art had brightened up the trudge of daily life in a way that it rarely does when confined within an institution.

The advertising world has latched on to this phenomenon. During her gap year, my daughter was employed to dress up as the grim reaper (complete with cardboard scythe) and prowl shopping malls enacting a small but perfectly formed divertissement aimed at persuading young adults not to drink and drive. I have no idea what this did for road fatality figures, but she certainly got asked to some unusual parties.

Of course, performers need chutzpah in buckets to launch themselves unannounced on the public. “Audience feedback” can be robust, especially when commuters feel trapped. An Arts Council scheme to cheer up early-morning bus journeys in South London with live performances by “emerging hip-hop bands” was a recipe for disaster.

But on the whole I would like to be ambushed by art more often. My only regret about my Somerset House experience was that none of us onlookers had the nerve to frolic with the performers in the fountains. But damn it, there must be some limits. We are British, after all.