The quiet moments on stage...

My job is to rile kids. I get them to a fever pitch of laughter, then leave them in the hands of their parents, completely mad with laughter and cake.

I balance on a thin point as a children’s performer, I can get kids laughing so hard, they fall over the edge and get completely out of control. I’m playing with fire, it does happen.

As a performer, I think I have to keep everything at a fever pitch but that’s tiring for an audience, it’s tiring for me. Think of Raider’s of the Lost Ark. They have great action sequences then moments of quiet and calm. The giant ball rolling, the natives chasing, getting to the plane, then safe and calm. The next scene Indiana is teaching a college course.

Children have the most fun laughing screaming and generally going nuts. Making kids go nuts is not too hard, it’s the order of your show and the calm between bits that takes a lot of thought and what makes a show a show.

I love story tellers. A story teller, is closer to being a musician than an actor. When you watch a story teller work, when they go into story telling mode; Everyone sits, jaws slack, eyes diffused, very similar to an audience listening to an orchestra.

Within my show, I go into the story teller “voice” and calm the children down. It happens fast, I mean really fast. I have the kids bouncing off the ceiling and suddenly I say, “Long long ago, I used to work for a circus...a tiny itty bitty little circus...called Ringling Brothers Circus...” It’s a joke but establishes where the story is going. The children stop in their tracks and stare at me quietly. It’s by far the biggest magic trick I do within my show. The complete control at that moment is amazing.

I’m not an expert at story telling, in fact of all the arts, story telling frightens me the most, I feel completely emotionally exposed. I can’t really explain what happens but when I tell a story, it takes over and pulls me along. The few stories I use in my show pull me and pull the audience.

I’ve taken some small workshops in story telling, it’s an amazing craft, it’s certainly no wonder it’s been done since the caveman days.

Performers look for “honest” moments within a show. It’s the moment a musician completely lets go while playing or singing, the moment an actor can’t tell where the character ends and their own personality begins, the moment in a movie that sweeps you away and you forget you are in a movie theatre with 200 people.

My “honest” moments are within the quiet moments in my show. When I get swept up in my own story. It’s really no wonder this moment captivates the children, it’s the moment of me being on my own tight rope, I don’t know if my next step is failure or safety.

If you find these moments, the audience is in the palm of your hand. At the moment you realize you have them in your palm...the honest moment is gone.