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
- - 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.
- - 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.
- - 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.
- - 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..
- - 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
Some Food For Thought
