Tony Sleezay

Tourist 1

Tourist 2

Trey St. Germain

Kendall Roosa

Shad Almighty

Demitrius Grosse

Geoff Masanet

Michael Griffiths

Holly Byrd Griffiths

The Performers moves through New Orleans at street level, following four hustles that overlap without ever quite becoming one story. There are portraits drawn for tourists in Jackson Square, a shoe-shine crew working the corner, a con that travels out past the parish line — and underneath all of it, the same arrangement: someone performing, someone believing, and money changing hands in the gap between.

Shot on location in the Quarter, Lafayette, and Chalmette in a documentary-influenced, observational style, the film stays close to the people doing the work. Nobody here is a mastermind. They're improvising, most of them badly, in a city that has always paid better for a good act than an honest one.

The Performers

Tony Sleezay

More from this production