Street performer to bring fun to folk fest

Four guys picked from the audience in the street hold the pole with guide wires and act as anchors. He slides down the pole with a rose clenched between his teeth, arms out like airplane wings.

The crowd gasps. At the bottom, he unfurls himself from the pole and presents the rose to a woman he’s plucked from the crowd.

The end of a 40-minute show, played out in the street, by a costumed character McAlister calls Adorable Derek.

McAlister is a street performer, and he does what he calls the most honest form of theater in the world.

“I’ve been doing this for 14 years, and I can tell in a breath if I have them or not have them,’’ he says. “Then, I simply chug forward and find the right line to make them laugh. I can tell the fake laughs and the shock laughs. I shoot for the belly laughs. That is the true laugh and, when that happens, I know I’ve got them. At that point, they are putty in your hands.”