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any ideas for a ww2 themed stand up? struggling to find some, or changing some to fit the theme..

cheers.. been racking by brain over this one. have some beginnings if ideas..

Maurice Fogel predicted the D-day landings (sort of).

Also, Bob Cassidy has a crossword routine based on the crossword puzzle that happened to contain the code-names for all the beaches, and the operation itself.

There are no end to the effects you could do surrounding the Enigma cipher.

Erik Jan Hanussen and Wolf Messing were war-era psychics, Messing fled the USSR before WW2, claiming that he had caught the attention of Stalin. Hanussen (Hitler's psychic) was murdered for "predicting" the burning of the Reichstag (probably), the day before it happened.

Why do you need a WW2 theme?

you need to buy magic books published at the time, they are full of unusual "topical"magic.
writers to look out for include Eric Lewis, Vereal wass,& brunell white.

many of the deamon publications put out by Davenports also had loads of patriotic magic.

Doing magic at a 1940s style event. Will do close up but thought would be nice to a themed stand up act too

It's a sensitive topic for some, and you might want to make sure there are no veterans of WW2 in the crowd (they should be relatively easy to spot, due to their age). Obviously you should REALLY look out for extermely sensitive subjects like the Holocaust, or maybe the bombings of Dresden for german citizens.

Maybe you could have a story where you track a young soldier who went to war to defend his country, and was foretold by a gypsy about the date in which he would be released (which means the war would end). The date is growing near but the war is nowhere towards ending, then he gets shot in the leg, is hospitalized and dismissed from service - and the war ends for him. And that soldier... was your father!

Um, yeah. Now who would expect that?

But seriously, you can develop the idea, along with letting the audience choose a date, then producing the letter/document from the hospital stating that the soldier was shot at that exact date.

Good luck, in any case.

thats way too deep.

you need to watch Julies act.....

http://youtu.be/iIlPJmUgUNk

I couldn't make it past the third minute. It wasn't very interesting to me - maybe due to the cultural difference.

If you're looking for something more humurous, you could make your 'father' become ill with syphilis - a disease that was much more common back in the day. The story could build to a nice point when the audience realizes that he wasn't exactly the veteran war hero you're trying to make him to be.

Then again, syphilis might only be funny to us biologists...

stick with it, because the reason why iposted the link, was to show how Standard effects ( proff nightmare for example) can be routined to fit the theme.
Julies been doing this act for quite a while now. In fact she won oriinality at the British ring convention with it.
I 'm notsugesting that anything is copied from it, But offer it as inspiration.

another idea would be to watch magicians from the period. There are tons of themon youtube, and British Pathe.
items like the egg bag were popular. maybe you could do the egg and hankie trick, using a silk stocking, and a spiv character. Remember, that there were more than soldiers in he war... Dads army would be a good ground there.. Wartime vicar, Arp warden, old butcher..... its a goldmine of character ideas.

Bear in mind it was a very patriotic time so the Union Flag making an appearance would probably go down well. Rationing was strict so routines involving food being created out of awful ingredients would strike a chord as well. Real eggs were hard to find and powdered egg was used instead - cue for egg based tricks? Chewing Gum and ladies stockings were traded on the black market so you might be able to adapt an existing routine around them,

Places like 'Pastimes' ( http://www.pasttimes.com/ ) have bricks and mortar stores and sell packs of replica Wartime documents such as ID cards, Ration books and cautionary leaflets about national security, gas masks and so on - they might be useful props and give inspiration.

Powdered egg... You could make a cone out of newspaper,tip in some powder,then remove a load of those sponge eggs, plus one real one.

if you get a no tear torn and restored news paper, you could have no end of fun, just by starting off the patter " I found these on a nail, out in the little shed at the bottom of the garden"

oh, and dont forget rob Wilton.. the day the war broke out.

Or bake a wartime cake in a pan. They used all kinds of strange ingredients

Card to shell casing?

daleshrimpton wrote:Or bake a wartime cake in a pan. They used all kinds of strange ingredients

Don't know what you mean potato cake is gorgeous.

interesting ideas. might try and see if ican add some old stories to "nirmal"effects such as prof nightmare etc.. wondering where i can get good ww2 bank notes. maybe even print some replicas out.?

i have a shell casing as well.. hmmm intersting