An Illustrated Coming of Age Story

Sorry I have been MIA this past month - but here I am again with an update. I have most definitely not abandoned this blog, even if I have been, at times, exceedingly late with my supposedly 'weekly' posts.

This week, I am going to talk about the transformation of my show - mainly because of a major shift in the script of my act that came about after a rough weekend sharing a spot with other buskers.

So! In the beginning...

Audience watches as I roll around on the floor,
super-dramatically trying to escape from my straight jcket.

I am silent struggling as an audience member counts down from 2 minutes. There is a Youtube video of this somewhere on the Interwebs. Look for it if you want to, but I am too ashamed of it to share. I might have shared it anyway on this blog at some point in the past, before I knew enough to be ashamed.

The First Two Months

This... hand in pocket thing is not completely out of left field!
It's a pickpocketing demonstration with a deck of cards in my volunteer's back pocket simulating a wallet.
The line is: "It might take me a while. You have a very tight... um... pocket."

I nailed down a show! I was living in Memphis and unemployed. I didn't write down my show, but I performed regularly enough these first two months to get the cadence of it into my muscle memory. I tried out the University of Memphis campus, then Beale Street, and finally at a number of festivals around the city that a fellow magician looking to start street performing helped me find.

I remember being happy with how I was doing back then, even if foot traffic there paled in comparison with what I've seen up north. It felt like I was doing well. Granted - I can't remember how I did it, or if my perception as a novice was a bit off.

The core of the show that I created then continues to be the core of the show that I do now. One bad outcome of this stage in the development of my show: the creation of a few jokes that worked most of the time. Though these jokes worked fantastically when they hit, I later found them to be awfully awkward when they didn't - mainly because they were part of a persona that I couldn't really pull off. It's taken me up to... these past two weeks to decide to drop them.

Some of them were stock jokes. The original jokes were built off of those stock jokes - but the thing was that they were the easy jokes. Unfortunately, I wouldn't learn that until much later on.


Three Year Break

I am on stage! Aaaaaand that is a metal coat hanger around my neck that I had warped into a microphone holder.
Cuz I need both hands free to handle cards.

After Memphis, I moved back to the Northeast for half a year. I tried performing in Philadelphia twice before I left the States and moved to teach English in China. With the rougher northeastern audience, the weak spots of my show began to manifest.

When I left for China, all street performing stopped. Magic didn't stop, of course. I performed in class all the time, and I had one huge performance on stage at an event for English language learners.

This was the time I grabbed a wire coat hanger and used it to hang a microphone around my neck. Lots of fun. And very different from the kind of show people would do on stage. When the audience is captive and seated, performing is far easier.


Chicago, IL

A street magician and a mentor suggested that I script my show at some point.
I put it on my To Do list.

I busked for a summer, once a week for about one to two months after spending six months just observing and interviewing Chicago's street performers. After watching musicians, statues, magicians, balloon artists, and acrobats, I thought I'd give busking another try. I learned that theory and practice are completely different things.

Like I mentioned before, I stuck with the same core performance that I developed in Memphis three years prior. There were more pedestrians in Chicago, but they were harder to stop. While sharing a pitch with the Windy City Wizard, he suggested that I try using a mic and amp. He pointed out a few spots where I could clean up my transitions. And oh. He suggested that I try scripting out my act.

I agreed that it was a good idea.


Cambridge, MA

I.. didn't end up scripting that summer.
And I didn't end up writing down my show either this past summer in Cambridge.

I moved to Bostonish the winter after and got myself a permit to perform in Cambridge as soon as t warmed up. I started out again with mostly the same show. There was one major difference: I had a new opening act. The second difference? I was rusty. This is what happens when I don't perform regularly.

Also, because I never got around to scripting, I pretty much had to revamp my show every time I started performing after a short break of not performing. Sometimes it worked out great. Other times, not so much.

I remember making a blog post, making an excuse for why I hadn't scripted. I knew I should. But when I had the time, I wanted to be performing instead of writing.

Then I went to Faneuil, hoping to seek out and semi-stalk (*shifty eyes*) the street performers there.

Then I continued performing in Harvard Square. When I was performing by myself, I felt that things went mostly ok.

The Shift
(Cuz I'm shifty!)

Finally! *typetypetypetypetype*

The turning point came when I was sharing a spot with other street performers.  I'll keep my shame brief, just by saying that it was rough. But I learned a whole lot each time. The last time this happened (about three weekends ago), I decided that enough was enough. I spent my weeknights after work sitting down and writing out my show.

There are far less jokes. I cut an entire trick out of my original routine. I wrote in new jokes, though I don't have as many as I would like.

What there is more of, though, is structure. The structure is better, my transitions are smoother, and the jokes that I do have are jokes that I am proud of. The hope is that the jokes will come with time as I perform.


The Test

This is one of my new cheesy jokes!
It's a completely pointless gag where I give someone a rubber hand at some point,
only to refer back to it later.
Um. It's funnier in person?

I performed two weekends ago at Rock the Woo, an arts festival in Woodbury, NJ, with a freshly-written show in hand. I stumbled a little bit with my first show, reinserting the trick that I had cut out, and tripped over the new hat line that I had rehearsed the day before in my 6 hour drive down from Boston. But after that, my next shows were great. I built my audience, kept my audience, and hatted them without a hitch. My parents saw my show and weren't ashamed (That is huge, dude). A cousin that I hadn't seen in years stopped by. I got a stalker of my own - a kid whose mom was a nearby vendor - who watched pretty much all of my shows. I even got offered free wine!

Next step? Keep on performing to keep this show in my head.

But...

This is Boston in winter. If you don't see the image above, that's because there's nothing to see - nothing but white.
The Winds of Winter are here.
(But COME OOONNNNN!!! I'm hoping it'll come out before the show this season. We will see.)

Winter is here. I have performed once since the festival. But as the weather gets colder and I get lazier (now that I have a real bed instead of an air mattress... yay!), I'm going to get fewer opportunities to busk.

The good news, though, is that with a written script, I won't have to relearn my act every single time I hit the street after a break. So.. er.. yay?