Your "First Routine"

I want to talk about, what is for me, the hardest part of the actual show.  It is not creating novel routines ,dealing with the venue, or handling hecklers; those are easy in comparison to the first “routine” that you do during a show.  I normally don’t have the benefit of either having someone who warms up the audience for me or the benefit of having enough of a reputation that people already know who I am before I even start the show.  So I have to “earn” my audience’s attention.

The traditional tactic of entertainment, and I hear this a lot from musicians, is that your first bit of material should be your second best routine.  But my response to this is now; “best at what”?   The act of performing variety entertainment, especially anything that smacks of illusion or danger,  can very easily take on an “adversarial” tone to many audience members.  They might think everything I am doing is fake or that you shouldn’t play with fire. 

In circus arts, the performers refer to those scripted moments of a show that are designed to elicit applause and cheers as “applause points”.  In illusion I have heard these moments as being referred to as “moments of amazement”.  But neither of these are really guaranteed to make the audience want you to succeed or support your successes during your show.    So your second best “moment of amazement” might only service to reinforce an adversarial tone or distant tone to those audience members.

What I focus on in this first routine is not my moment of amazement but my “moment of connection” to my audience.  I choose something that not only will make my audience laugh, applaud, or cheer but will more importantly connect “me” to them in some way.  I will sacrifice sheer awesomeness of a routine for a different one that helps create or give this “feeling” or “notion” of being connected to an audience.   This serves a number of purposes for me

1. -      It relaxes me.  The moment that I feel a crowd is supportive of what I am doing any of the pre-show stress I feel usually goes out the window.
2. -      I have a buffer zone.  I am a juggler on top of everything else; this means that I do occasionally screw up a trick.  If the crowd is supportive of me they are more likely to actively want me to succeed.  If a crowd is adversarial the act of dropping means that I lose a lot of the interest that I had built up because they were interested in seeing the “tricks” rather than the performance.
3. -      It is easier to deal with hecklers, if a crowd is more interested in me than I am doing with my hands then the crowd will be a lot less supportive of hecklers if they should pop up.
4. -      It sets the tone for the rest of the show.  Creating that moment forces me to “choose” what kind of show that I am going to do so that I don’t drift off center doing the show..
5. -      I am longer the guy “showing” off.  I am the entertainer.

What these moments consist of change depending on the individual and the type of entertainment.  I found  that making light of some of the “paradoxes” of being a juggler and an illusionist was what worked for me in this way for some types of shows that I did.  For other types of shows I have discovered other “methods” that accomplished the same thing.

Some Food For Thought

Why Entertainers Can Be So Expensive Part II: Revenge of your questions.

I received a lot of feedback over the last week about my article on “Why Entertainers Can be So Expensive” and there are two responses I got that I really wanted to respond to.

The first question relates to the concept of “Star Power”; or the capacity (to quote the original source) to put butts in seats.  The notion that a performer’s worth is really only in his capacity to put butts in seats.

The second question relates to pricing and “special” deals”.  It’s a question of interacting with venue owners, individuals who want to hire your services, etc.

#1 Star Power

Star Power is the capacity for performers to put butts in seats.  It’s the difference between saying the name Mr. Massado and the name Penn Jillette or if showed you a picture of the chainsaw juggler from the Geico add or Anthony Gatto.  If you talk to someone in the industry and say both names chances are both will be recognized.  But chances are your doctor has never heard of the man who put Linking Rings back into the public eye or the most technical juggler of our generation.

Star Power works really well when the only reason you are going to the event is to see that person.  I would have ticked if John Water’s Christmas special had some other guy up there for 45 minutes of the hour long show.  Adam Sandler made a movie a few years ago about Star Power called Funny People that introduced a really strange idea.  That if your popular enough for being funny than everyone assumes that what you say is funny even if it really isn’t.  It’s sort of the Emperors New Clothes but in reverse.  Everyone thinks the clothes are there but the Emperor knows there not.

Star Power isn’t necessarily related to the entertainers actual capacity to entertain (though most of the time it is; google Criss Angel and stooges for more information and internet arguments).  Promoters often use Star Power in order to spread the word about an event and bring people in the door.  But there is an exception to this.

festivalprose.com/playing-by-the-numbers-part-1-patron-vendor.html

The link is to a blog on venders and ren faires about making actual money at ren faires and discusses techniques to deal with the various problems that come up.  But the nitty gritty is this; ren faires don’t actually make enough money from the door sales.  They make their money from vendors paying fees in order to set up shop and also attempt to make money.  The longer a patron is at a fair; the more likely they are to purchase something.  

The purpose of an entertainer at a ren faire is to give the patrons something to do in between shopping trips.  Normally this has nothing to do with that entertainers “star power” and everything to do with their capacity to entertain.  Occasionally, a ren faire will bring in a special guest star on a weekend to take advantage of “Star Power” but usually that means one “thirty minute- hour set” with another 5-6 hours of time that others have to cover.

Different businesses cover different models.  A good entertainer does not need to have “star” power in order to justify his cost.  But he does need to know his market and what his market wants.  I deal primarily with what I refer to as “Normals”.  These are just average run of the mill folks who want to hire an entertainer for something.  I also occasionally work out of ren faires, steam punk cons, and some of the associated groups with those.  They have a pre-existing reputation and name that I can trade in in order to bring people to my show (though there is another article about dealing with rennies, steam punkers, and associated jaded audiences versus normal people).

The issue frequently is that the justification for some of these events (in my experience ren faires tend to be really fair but fairy fests and steam punk; not so much) for paying me is “How many people can you bring us”.  The truth is that this motto is every where.  If you don’t believe just think about how many facebook event invites you have had from people trying to bring you in because they are expected to bring people in.

So my response is this,  what is your business model and how do you plan on bringing money in.  If your model is “ticket sales”, then paying someone more who can bring in 500 guests is more important than paying someone who can bring in 50 guests.  But if your model is, say the ren faire model,  than the quality and length of entertainment become far more important than just the pizzazz factor (at least in the current steam punk climate) of seeing someone you love for thirty minutes.

#2 How Much Does Your Show Cost.

I was asked after writing the previous article, how much I generally charge for my show (which is in many ways a giant social foopah and therefore you should not ask if you are in competing markets so I will not answer again).  I rarely actually tell my clients how much I charge.  I have in the back my of my head, an idea of how much cash I need to earn before and after taxes. I normally never list this number unless I am explicitly asked.  Normally I prefer to be given an offer and if it’s fair and reasonable I will take it (or counter offer).

This idea in my head is pretty much I feel that I am worth, what the customer is capable of paying, and what I would have to do.  I translate it into a question of how much time I would spend on this project and therefore think of it as an hourly rate.  I don’t normally tell clients that it is an hourly rate unless of course it’s something where I am being left to my own devices for an hour.

Negotiating prices and follow up shows is sort of a like a magic trick where you don’t actually tell your audience what you're going to do until the very end.  This gives you more out’s, more options, and more possibilities. If there is a reason they might bring me back or more work that might come out of it and I feel the need to play the "price reduction card" then I can play it. But if there is no need and I do so anyways (because I "want the sale") then I have just limited my options because if you have offered a cheaper sale then I can't go back on that. A lot of the people you are going to be interacting with will have little appreciation for your talent and a great deal for how much you are going to cost them. So keep that in mind as you negotiate.

A Trick Versus An Illusion: Illusion as a form of art.

I wanted to talk today about the difference between a trick and an illusion.  Many demonstrations of cardistry and card illusions come off as more tricks or displays of skill than they do as a form of illusion or "magic" (From here on I will use the word illusion as I prefer it).  I will also use an artistic concept from a modern art philosopher (Arthur Danto).

Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself- "V: V For Vendetta"

There is a vast difference between doing a show for kids and doing a show for adults.  Far more seldom do adults that I perform illusions for believe that an act of illusion is actually something else than a child does (This gets into the topic of mentalism and belief structures).  The quote that I used above was written by Alan Moore and in a way gets into the topic that I want to talk about.  

One of the primary differences between using illusion and juggling on stage is that illusion in many ways seems to act as a voice as an idea independent of the illusionist own words.  If I were to use a modern philosopher's words illusion can be a work of art in the sense of what Arthur Danto refers to as a metaphor.  A metaphor is when a creation of the artist stands in for an idea or statement of the artist.  For example a blank canvas may represent an artists inability to create.  The artist is attempting to communicate an idea via his artwork standing in as a metaphor.

If I present illusion as a method of simply demonstrating my own expertise and capacity (within the persona of the expert), I demonstrate technique but I don't demonstrate artwork (I feel that technique is not necessarily artistry but rather the capacity to create art).  The moment that I use illusion for this purpose, no matter how entertaining the trick is, it is still a trick.  The power of illusion here is in creativity; to often though we simply ctrl-c ctrl-v someone elses creativity and put it forward as our own success.   How and why do I place it before the audience becomes more important than what I place in front of them.

When we enter the theater the goal of the theater is to create within us a state of suspension of disbelief.  This of course to me equally applies to stage illusion and shows as it does to traditional theater.  In this way my goal is to use the lies of illusion in order to demonstrate a truth as I perceive it.  In suspending ones disbelief if only for a moment, than the metaphor of each act of illusion becomes more acceptable; more capable of hitting home.

The Two Drives Of Performing

One of the greatest challenges that I have as a performer is balancing the two drives that make me do what I do.

~The need to create something that I find beautiful and amazing

~The need to be admired

Many aspects of the artworld since the end of World War 2 and the rise of pop art during the time of Andy Warhol and such have become more like forms of entertainment rather than objects to be admired.  With the rise of installation pieces and performance art in many ways the nature of art has changed and what drives the artist to create has changed.  A performer who I often refer back to from philadelphia, David Darwin, ends many of his acts with an idea.  That what he creates isn't necessarily entertainment, but something for people to talk about.  That when people see his show it allows them to connect to each other in a way that they might not necessarily be able to do.  The role of the performer, the entertainer, becomes incidental to the nature of the entertainment itself.

In this instance what David has done is to share something beautiful and amazing with an audience so that they can appreciate it and talk about it and share in that conversation.  When I started juggling and practicing fire performance this is what drove me to become a performer and is the reason that even if I were to travel half the world away and have no one to perform for; I would still make sure that I had a small little bag with juggling equipment (and at this point in my life a deck of cards as well).

However, I have to admit, being admired and praised is one of the biggest drugs that I have ever experienced.  I can understand why a comedian keeps coming back, that feeling of being loved and admired; well, it feels good.  In fact, it feels incredibly good.  The first moment I realized what it felt like I was coming out of a bar in northern philly were my act consisted of (among other things) my fire contact juggling routine.  As I was coming out I was stopped and asked for some photos and handshakes.  That feeling of being praised was powerful enough to keep me happy for weeks.  

When you spend weeks developing a routine and practicing until your sick of it; being praised for it an amazing feeling.  I got a chance to meet Daniel Hanson Danson a local "celebrity" sideshow artist.  He looked at me and said that in sideshow the only kind of magic a person should do is "comedy" style magic (as well as comedy style sideshow in general).  Some people refer to "lowering" your style of performance as playing to the crowd.  In modern entertainment this is done frequently by danger, sex, and physical humor (What Danson was referring partially to),

Honestly if you play to the crowd,  you are essentially traveling down the same road as so many other performers have done before.  The crowds become essentially jaded to this approach and the viewpoint on what entertainment is capable of sinks.  Until of course you are reducing art to comedy and tragedy in order to get a rise out of the crowd.  It is easy I believe to become a performer who relies on these sorts of styles in order to get that praise and admiration, but it feels and seems like an endless hole in the artistic community (and I think this theory could be applied to other mediums as well). 

The only other option then is that love for the performance itself and learning how to meet the crowd half way in terms of what you present.  I know that this is the harder way to travel,  but I feel it is far more rewarding for society seems to reward novelty and creativity in the community though the community only sees the aspects that sell sexuality, violence, and their cousins.