Posted by Ian on 2010-01-30
in Anecdote
To have two comedy magicians on the same bill may be regarded as a misfortune, to have more than two looks like carelessness. But such was the situation at a recent showcase I did - where there were no less than four comedy magicians on the bill.
A showcase, for those not familiar with the term, is where acts parade before an invited audience of potential bookers hoping that those self-same bookers might give them some work. It’s a difficult environment for a number of reasons.
Firstly, most of the bookers have seen a great deal of acts and are therefore, if not jaded, at least well-experienced in viewing acts; secondly, you only have a limited amount of time to display your wares; and thirdly, there is inevitably a little bit of competition and rivalry between the acts which isn’t exactly healthy.
I must stress that at this particular showcase the first and third of those caveats didn’t apply as much as they do normally. Everybody was very friendly ‘back-stage’ and although it’s possible that the bookers were straight-faced throughout the show, there were a sufficient number of normal members of the public to generate laughter in the room.
But four comedy magicians was still, I’m sure, in each of our unspoken thoughts, three too many. The main difficulty was would there be a clash of material. Although in theory there are thousands of tricks that can be performed on stage, in reality the number actually performed are rather limited. The Torn & Restored Newspaper (the clue is in the title) is one such. It’s an item in my repertoire but was also in the repertoire of two of my colleagues. They both ended up by doing different versions – I decided to leave mine in my case.
I wanted to do at least one audience participation spot. My own best routines involve either borrowing somebody’s watch or somebody’s money. Unfortunately one of the magicians on me did two excellent routines borrowing somebody’s watch and their money.
I ended up doing a routine where I borrowed somebody’s ring instead. The magician before me found his spectator’s watch in a box – which coincidentally was where my spectator’s ring also ended up. I hope the punters didn’t notice the similarity!
There was one unintentionally amusing similarity between the two of us. In order to borrow our respective items, we invited our unwilling participants (or volunteers!) up on stage with us. Unfortunately the man wasn’t wearing a watch and my woman helper wasn’t wearing a ring. We both had to resort to getting our assistant to borrow the relevant article from someone else.
As you can imagine the resulting humour from the supposed smashing and vanish of the watch and ring was rather devalued by the lack of interest shown by the person on stage.
For some unaccountable reason I haven’t yet received a call from the agent organising the showcase to say that bookers were falling over themselves to sign me up!
A showcase, for those not familiar with the term, is where acts parade before an invited audience of potential bookers hoping that those self-same bookers might give them some work. It’s a difficult environment for a number of reasons.
Firstly, most of the bookers have seen a great deal of acts and are therefore, if not jaded, at least well-experienced in viewing acts; secondly, you only have a limited amount of time to display your wares; and thirdly, there is inevitably a little bit of competition and rivalry between the acts which isn’t exactly healthy.
I must stress that at this particular showcase the first and third of those caveats didn’t apply as much as they do normally. Everybody was very friendly ‘back-stage’ and although it’s possible that the bookers were straight-faced throughout the show, there were a sufficient number of normal members of the public to generate laughter in the room.
But four comedy magicians was still, I’m sure, in each of our unspoken thoughts, three too many. The main difficulty was would there be a clash of material. Although in theory there are thousands of tricks that can be performed on stage, in reality the number actually performed are rather limited. The Torn & Restored Newspaper (the clue is in the title) is one such. It’s an item in my repertoire but was also in the repertoire of two of my colleagues. They both ended up by doing different versions – I decided to leave mine in my case.
I wanted to do at least one audience participation spot. My own best routines involve either borrowing somebody’s watch or somebody’s money. Unfortunately one of the magicians on me did two excellent routines borrowing somebody’s watch and their money.
I ended up doing a routine where I borrowed somebody’s ring instead. The magician before me found his spectator’s watch in a box – which coincidentally was where my spectator’s ring also ended up. I hope the punters didn’t notice the similarity!
There was one unintentionally amusing similarity between the two of us. In order to borrow our respective items, we invited our unwilling participants (or volunteers!) up on stage with us. Unfortunately the man wasn’t wearing a watch and my woman helper wasn’t wearing a ring. We both had to resort to getting our assistant to borrow the relevant article from someone else.
As you can imagine the resulting humour from the supposed smashing and vanish of the watch and ring was rather devalued by the lack of interest shown by the person on stage.
For some unaccountable reason I haven’t yet received a call from the agent organising the showcase to say that bookers were falling over themselves to sign me up!
