I did my first stage show a few months back now, and thought I'd share how it went with you...
Let's set the scene a little, it was an east end pub with an open mike night, so anyone could go up and do their 15 minutes... I thought this would be fine to start with as there'd be no expectations on me, no one had paid to get in, so if it all went a bit wrong it wouldn't matter to much, plus I'd been down there before a couple of times to see a friend of mine who's a singer do her stuff and it seemed like a nice friendly sort of atmosphere! Well, I had to start some where...
Now, I've done a fair bit of close up stuff, friends and family to start, work collegues, and also complete strangers... but I wanted the experience of doing this, and also I think it's the direction that I'd like to take my magic in...
So, after a few nights of hours of rehursing, there I was, a bundle of nerves and the compare goes, "A big hand for the magic of Chris!"... there's a smattering of applause, and I'm on the stage, bright lights on me, staring in to darkness!
After a moment or two, the "rabbit in the headlights" feeling sort of went, and I could see out on to the pub floor again... There were about 30 - 40 people there, not so many, but more than I was used too.
I started with Mark Oberons "Odd Ball" (To get the 5 volunteers I needed I tossed out a screwed up bit of paper and asked the first person to say a colour, sadly he didn't say "Blue", but that was ok, I could work with him, so invited him on to the stage) It's quite a learning curve, being on stage, making your volunteers feel relaxed, performing in the direction of the audience, using your eye contact in a different way to close up, and also just doing the trick! I did this one as a psychological reading, voice patterns and tonal inclinations from my volunteers to eliminate them one by one (and a bit of fake body language reading) to reveal which one had the black ball. It went down really well! I was very pleased, I'd put a lot of work into my presentation and it all seemed to go smoothly! Plus I'd learnt a lot, not just about coping on stage, but very quickly about managing your volunteers and the huge difference in stage and close up performances.
I had two more things to do, (well, I'd planned on just one, figuring that I only had 15 mins... but a back up in case!)... and here's where the real learning curve kicked in!
Just for the experience of doing it, I decided my second (and probably closing) effect would be a pulse stop. The pub was right next to one of Londons biggest hospitals, there had to be medical staff from in there in the audience, and I had a bit of a gizmo in my jacket to make it work! What could go wrong???
Firstly, the response to my question "Can anyone take a pulse?" was met with a deafening silence! Absolutely no one could read a pulse! Eventually one chap said he could, came up one stage, but clearly had no idea what he was doing! He couldn't feel anything! It seemed I had no pulse! I made a couple of jokes out of the fact that I was already dead on stage and off he went... My singer friend jumped up on stage to help out but couldn't find my pulse either, which made the whole puilse stopping thing really unspectacular!
That was supposed to be the finale of my first brief exposure to stage work, but I didn't want it to end on such a note, and the compare gave me the thumbs up to do one more. I had Kioku in my pocket, but really hadn't expected to use it. It's an effect I'd done quite a few times close up, and although not ideal for stage work, I felt that if minimal emphasis was placed on the cards (as it should be) and maximum emphasis on the volunteer, that plus a bit of distance between me and said volunteer should make it quite effective. This was certainly an important learning point for me, as the volunteer that came up had been fairly quite in the audience so I figured he'd be "managable" Unfortunately, he was quiet because he was rather drunk! It made explaining what he needed to do a bit labourious, plus he messed around a bit during the "re-enforcement" proceedures. It got a few laughs, but I should have got a different volunteer right at the start, as within 5 second I knew it would be tricky working with him, but didn't have the experience/presence of mind to send him politely back to his seat and get another assistant... That said, the effect itself worked like a charm, the audience seemed rather taken with it all and the applause at the end of the whole thing was great!
It was a great experience though, and I'm really pleased I did it! I'm now working on a longer set, and whilst I'm more than happy to take a risk and have an effect not work, I think I'll keep it a little safer in terms of what will work at this stage so that I can concentrate even more on my presentation. It seems that there'll be a fair bit taken from Richard Osterlinds "Easy to master mental miracles" series... I was told that I had a nice way on stage, seemed very relaxed and made my volunteers comfortable. I was happy with that. And it seems that both Odd Ball and Kioku did the job, and that the audience enjoyed the magic!
Can't wait for step 2... (although am feeling nervous about it at the same time!)
Thanks for wading through such a long post!
Chris
