Performing
Thank you for your interest in performing on our Center Camp Performance Stage at this year's Burn!
You are a creative and vibrant maker of performance. You’re happiest moving an audience in song, opening hearts with movement, stirring tears with your instruments, inducing belly laughs with your comedy, or lighting up a stage with your other unique sparkling talents. Your work is yours and yours alone. It’s as original and vivacious as you are.
That’s why you are looking to perform on our Center Camp Stage, right?
Well at the moment, we are still wrapping up and recovering from last year's Burn, what with getting our wires untangled and brains dusted off. So we won't actually begin scheduling for the next year's event until around May.
In the meantime, please read through the following guidelines about our humble stage, so you can be fully aligned and prepared when scheduling DOES open.
A FEW GENERAL GUIDELINES
We’ve put our hearts and sweat and blood into creating an environment unlike any other stage in the world, and that makes our stage a little different from other places you may have performed.
ONE
At our Center Camp Performance Stage, we allow all-original music ONLY. That means no covers. No remixes. No mashups of any kind of licensed music. No exceptions. We understand this may be tricky for some, but unfortunately for very important and super serious reasons, we must insist. Srsly.
TWO
There is NO FIRE in the Center Camp. Period. Don't get us wrong, we LOVE watching things burn as much as the next person (possibly more for some of us). But while watching things burn from afar is super awesome, being trapped in a flaming tent of death is not so much. So again, we must insist your acts include ZERO sparks, flames, or any other forms of burning or combustion. (We promise we’re not this serious about everything.)
THREE
Performing at Center Camp does NOT get you a ticket to event, nor do we pay to have performers featured on our stages. We’re honored to provide a place where an established act is treated with the same respect and effort as a musician getting up in front of an audience for the first time. Burning Man is a festival of volunteers, united together under the 10 Principles (see below), where all occupants of the city are treated impartially with radical inclusion and the understanding of radical self reliance. This means that before we can help your artists find performance slots with us, each of them will need to have secured their tickets first.
FOUR
We offer an innovative space for musicians and performers of all formats and flavors. From professional to new performers premiering their first projects, it’s a place of creation and transformation for both performer and audience, free from any expectations or judgment, rather like the larger event that encompasses it. So it’s important to us that everyone who participates also respects and helps contribute to this atmosphere
FIVE
To help get you in the mood and mindset of performing your hearts out in a magical city unlike anything else in existence in the middle of the desert, here are some helpful materials worth reading and revisiting. Take some time to read them over and we promise they'll improve your experience at the Burn, not to mention year-round.
Our Ten Principles and culture: http://burningman.org/culture/philosophical-center/10-principles/
First Timers Guide: http://burningman.org/event/preparation/first-timers-guide/
All you wanted to know about Event Preparation: http://burningman.org/event/preparation/
Still want to be a part of this?
HELL YEAH!
Well then be prepared to follow the steps below, so we can find you a slot in our little slice of dusty performance heaven once we DO open scheduling.
1) Secure a ticket. 2023 Main Sale starts on April 12th!
(Now don't lie and tell us you've gotten one if you haven't yet. It won’t make one magically appear in your hand. And you’ll hurt our feelings. So be honest and don’t move ahead or pass GO until you’ve got one.)
THEN
2) Once you have your tickets, please fill out the dazzling Performer Info Form (keeping in mind our Center Camp Performance Info + Guidelines).
AND THEN
3) Pounce (pounce@burningman.org) will contact you very soon! You can always contact her if you have any questions.
Once everything has been reviewed and discussed, we will get back to you and assist you with finding the right performance slot for your shining moment on our stage.
More interested in the spoken-word side of things? Want to give a talk, tell a story, recite your original poetry, or learn about open mic? Check out these pages: