Putting Together Your Show...

When I first started way back, before the cell phone and the internet...

I went to the library and looked for magic books, clown books, children's performing books.  I was looking for books on how to structure a show.  I didn't find any, I went through trial and error.  I work on this blog, as a gift to someone starting out now.

If you're putting together a show, I'll address some basics in this post.  Hopefully this will bring up questions for you.  Feel free to ask me any and all questions.

First off, go see shows.  In the back of your mind, while your watching, observe, enjoy the show your watching, but observe.

Go see a play, go see a magic show at the library, go see the circus.

All shows, grab an audience to start.  Come in with a bang.  If you're a tramp clown and move slowly, a bang might be 6 minutes of finding a chair to sit down.  A bang is attention getter. All shows also end with a bang.

Again, a bang might be sad or shocking as in death of a salesman but there is a real ending.  A magician produces a tiger, then says thank you for coming and takes a bow.  Those are your bookends to the show.

Do some sort of audience warm up.  In stand up comedy, this is "how's everyone doing tonight?"  In the theatre the lights go dark, the curtain opens.  In children's shows, you might have the children clap as loud as they can.

The warm up is just establishing who your character is and establishing expectations.  When the comedian says, "how's everyone doing tonight?"  it says, hello to the audience.  it says, I'm a different comedian than the guy that was out here a second ago, it also says, this is who I am.

If you're a bumbling clown, bumble. If you're a slow moving clown, slowly sit in a chair.  If you are a slap and fall clown, try and sit on a chair and miss. Get your story written.  We humans can write a whole story about someone in the blink of an eye.  We see Santa and have a long narrative about elves and presents, fireplaces, Santa in Hawaii December 26th etc etc.  A clown can have that same story just by coming in and falling off a chair.

If you do birthday party clowning, you probably want to do magic.  Spend some time just staring at the magic trick you like.  Let it wash over you.  If it's the coloring book, just be a child with a new coloring book.  How would that make you feel?  Excited?  Let that emotion guide the magic approach.

What words come to you?  "I got a new coloring book today"  or "wanna see what I got for my birthday?"  My opinion, say what's there.  A coloring book is a very familiar item to a child, acknowledge what it is.

You should probably have about 5 tricks in your show.  Realize that even a pick a card card trick has some build to it and takes a couple of minutes.  When you do magic for children, there will be wrong directions, asking about colors, getting colors wrong, dropping things.  Magic with children is a funny journey.  5 magic tricks might be a 20 minute show.

When you approach children to be volunteers, make sure you do it from a distance and ask the group as a whole.  It's easy to freak a child out if you bee line to them and say come here!  Let the children guide you.

If you do facepainting or balloons.  It's best to do these things after the show.  If you make balloon animals before your party, kids will play with the balloons, make noise and ask for more balloons while you're trying to pull the rabbit out of your hat.

If you start with balloons, you become the give away person, it's tough to overcome.

As you begin the process of designing your show, try to discover the tricks along with the children.  Children don't look at the magic coloring book as a magic trick, they see it as a coloring book.  Acknowledge that you have a coloring book.  If you are doing hipity hop rabbits, have the children hop like rabbits, name the colors of the rabbits, ask what rabbits eat.  Pretend, discover with them.

Leave the "magic" with magicians.  It's likely, as a clown, you are silly, be silly, be outrageous approach the show in these ways.

As always ask questions below!  

My Yearly Clown Trek...

The trek through my neighborhood...

Every year I visit Family House.  (Family House is a place families live, while their children are in treatment at UC San Francisco Children’s Hospital.  Mostly children with cancer).

Every year, I trek from my house, two and a half blocks through my busy neighborhood, to Family House.  I live in an area, with plenty of restaurants, small jewelry stores, coffee shops, farmer’s markets and florists.  It’s a slightly upscale area of San Francisco, near Golden Gate Park.  

As I walk, very few people look at me smile or say hello.  Always interesting, I mean, I am a clown, you can react in any way, I’ll take it.  You want to become invisible, become a clown.  

It was evening because I visit the kids after their Thanksgiving banquet.  Plenty of people coming home from work, more looking for a place to eat or coming back from the store with bags of groceries.  

Of course some people say hi, or smile.  Of the 75 people that saw me (yup, it’s a busy neighborhood), 3 or so acknowledged the clown walking down the street. 

I’m not a creepy clown, I always smile when I’m in make up, it just looks better.  I am carrying juggling clubs, my little pink case, I’ve got big shoes and a red nose.  

I think I’m pretty cute.  But then again, I always think I’m pretty cute, except when I get out of the shower and scream at my reflection.  

The kids and Family House loved me, I would say I “killed”  but that might not be funny dealing with sick kids.  

Then I walk home.  Sweaty and pretty full of my own success.  

Today I’m a sociologist.  Yesterday, I was a strange character walking down an Urban street.  

That’s the life of a clown.  

Balloons, Funny Balloons, Funny Balloon Animals!

I get a lot of readers of my posts on funny routines with balloons.  Blogger shows me what people are reading.

Is there a topic you want me to cover?  Would you like more routines with balloons, balloon animals?  All you have to do is leave me a comment, I'll write about it.

There are so many things you can do with balloons, they snap, they are colorful, they transform.  You can love them, you can hate them, you can send them flying around the room.

Just let me know a topic.  If I'm not sure, I'll test it out in front of my own audience and report back.

Leave comment below!

Staying Vulnerable

Here is the brilliance of taking classes/workshops.  It takes you down a notch or a peg, you get knocked down the stairs.  Yet, you don't have to go through this in front of an audience. 

To be an artist means you must be moving forward, take on new challenges.  My contention, if you don't put yourself at risk of failure, you are not an artist.  

Picasso, would challenge himself to explore newer forms of art.  Art is plenty hard to create, he dumped what he knew, to push his own boundaries.  

I took a physical comedy workshop yesterday.  I had way more experience than just about everyone there.  Many had been taking similar courses for a long time, they were better at certain exercises.  

I didn't do well on one exercise, I consider it a fail for what I saw in myself.  

I try to stay very present as a performer, in this case I didn't and couldn't.  I was caught using my clown tricks.  Using tricks does not make me a better performer. 

It's very hard not to create a little shell around you doing what I do for a living.  I have so many tricks to get people laughing, I have so many tricks to create clowning.  But they are only tricks, I'm not vulnerable and present.  That's a boring or stagnant performer. 

When you watch a movie or a TV show, if the acting isn't very good or you watch a comedian that isn't working for you or a singer that is just not quite there, it's because they aren't present and vulnerable.  They are using tricks, we, the audience, sense it.  

You can have a million tricks but they are just tricks, they keep you separate from your character, separate from your audience.  

This is why you take classes, there will always be an exercise you can't do or need to work on.  It feels crappy but you know you can always get better.  

It comes down to be more and more present.  If you rely on critiquing your own work, you'll end up thinking you're pretty wonderful.  To become more present, you need to fail every once and a while.  

The path to greatness is to continually challenge yourself.  Keep taking classes, take a risk.  

Sick or Not. Here I Come!

Man was I sick last week.  Hacking, coughing, feverish.

The show must go on, cause, what are you going to do?  It's my job, I have to be there.  I've built a reputation, the kids really want to see me.  And the benefit of spreading my disease is very appealing.  Those little devils have been spreading all their sickness to me, my entire adult life.  This is just a little revenge.

You know, I'm kidding.  Just a little.

If you go back in my blog, I talk a lot about your go to move.  This move became more important during this time of sickness.  My go to is being frustrated with my hat, it won't stay on my head, leading to fun and mayhem.  Because I've got a couple of these go to moves, I can go near auto pilot and get laughs.

NEAR autopilot.  It's a trick for my body.  My body knows how to do hat tricks but I have to still have to time it properly and pay attention to the audience.

Since I know the routines, I know what moments will work I can find them even feeling cruddy.  Each show, I try and create on the spot.  Sometimes you just can't.

The good part, adrenaline can get you through, it can get you through a show.  Adrenaline is my best friend.

Plus I really needed the money.