Doing a Theatre Show...

Just for background, I rent a theatre and do a children's holiday show each year.

Why?

What makes me put down the deposit on the theatre are my sons.  Each year, they rehearse me, design the lights, music and have a great time being in the theatre.  It's a real strong memory for each of us.  We've been doing this for years.

A theatre is a very special place. A theatre without an audience is spiritual, you feel magic oozing from the walls.

Each year I say never again.  The stress of getting butts in seats, writing the show, publicizing, worrying I won't break even.

Each year I do it again.

I get to be the clown I want to be.

I get into lots of trouble in my life.  I say things I shouldn't, I offend people, I get kicked out of places.

In my theatre, I say whatever burbles out, I do the routines I feel like doing.

I'm thankful people come and laugh like crazy but it's a relief to just not hold back in any way.

I sold out yesterday and came close to selling out the first show.  Things look good for breaking even.  My sons are making money, I pay them before myself for all their work.  I'm helping a bunch of charities with my show.

I just get to be Boswick The Clown...

Ho ho ho, being Santa...

Being Santa, is peforming, performer lite.  

I have seen far too many bad Santas. Not as in the movie but just bad performers as Santa.  And it's just so easy.  

Santa is like playing Monopoly. Basically the game was written many years ago.  Everyone knows the rules.  

Stay in character.  This is such a duh.  People will try and try to make comments to draw you out.  Respond with a big ho ho ho.  If someone says, boy you must be hot in there, respond with a big ho ho ho, I'm used to much colder weather in the North Pole.  

So easy.  

Walk like Santa. If you must run, how would a really old fat man run, probably very slowly.  Don't walk like yourself.  Walk slowly, Santa is in no rush, except Christmas Eve, he always  has time for everyone, that means moving very slowly and being open to hugs everywhere you go.  

Asking children what they want?  Easy.  Just listen.  Kids want legos, dolls, trucks, stuffed animals.  Easy to make those promises.  Parents and Grandparents always know.  

If they ask for an ipad, a puppy, a kitten.  I say, elves use hammers to make things, the elves keep breaking the screens, how about something else?  A puppy?  Elves can't make living things, they can only make toys and clothes.  You can throw in God but I don't see a need, it just complicates things, just an explanation and a what else would you like?

Just follow the simple Santa logic.  It's all there for you.  

There's no wonder so many people play Santa, it's like doing stand up comedy for your company.  All the inside jokes are done, you can just do the punchlines and get a laugh.  Santa is a big shortcut as a performer.  But bad Santas forget the basics.  Say yes, stay in character, maintain your physicality.  

If you want to play Santa, just use all the shortcuts.  Where are the reindeer?  Why they're on the roof, but very shy, you might not see them but you can hear them.  What kind of cookie do you like?  I like a good oatmeal cookie with raisins.  Just have an answer ready.  

You have a finite number of questions and you can repeat the same answers over and over with a ho ho ho.  People say the same things.  

And smile, even though it's hard to see under the beard smile.  You can see it in the eyes.  Santa is a physical character.  Smiling changes your physical presence. 

Crying kids, yup.  Have the mom hold them and take a family picture.  

Drunk people.  Yup, take a picture and act like they are kids.  You love everyone, even the ones that smell like a brewery.  

Santa is a big happy character.  It will backfire if you get negative (you're never tired, you always love children, you love Mrs. Claus, you are never distracted by flirty women).  

Stay positive.  Say yes, say yes, say yes.  Would you take a picture? yes.  Will you bring me a doll? yes.  I would like a Porche.  What color?  

Have fun.  Ho ho ho.  

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.