YouTube Series Filmed at Kitchen Table Receives NPR Invitation. Kitchen Table Is Not a Desk.
PARIS — Thomas and Claire Arnaud, whose YouTube channel “Petit Bureau Sessions” has gained 240,000 subscribers for what they call “intimate acoustic performances” filmed at their kitchen table with a portable ring light and a condenser microphone, have received an invitation to perform at NPR’s actual Tiny Desk Concert series in Washington, DC — an offer they are describing as “both the best and most terrifying thing that has happened since we started doing this.”
“The Petit Bureau is a kitchen table,” Claire confirmed. “It is not a bureau. It is a table at which we eat, also. There is usually a fruit bowl that we move for filming. The NPR desk is an actual desk. With NPR above it.”
The Situation
The channel’s aesthetic — the warm kitchen light, the slightly improvised sound setup, the visible coffee cups, the occasional cat appearance — has been its primary appeal to an audience who prefers the intimate approximation of professional production to the self-conscious polish of actual professional production. The NPR Tiny Desk format, while similarly intimate, takes place in an institutional environment before a professional crew and an audience of industry observers. The kitchen table does not transfer.
“We’re going to do it,” Thomas said. “We’re also going to spend the next three months practising performing as if we’re in the kitchen, in a different place, in front of people, professionally.” Claire added: “The cat cannot come.” The cat has not been informed. According to Psychology Today’s creative performance anxiety research, performers who have developed skills in informal settings experience specific anxiety in formal equivalents. The kitchen table has prepared them for the desk. The desk is very visible.
Performance ready at Virtuosal.com.
