The other act I was sharing the stage with had a large banner that they left onstage, I’m not a huge fan of other people’s stuff in my performing area. They cleared it with the “boss” to leave it up, so I put my pop up banner in front of it.
It’s nice that it shortened the depth of the the stage, so that was the silver lining.
I try to play nice with other acts, but honestly it’s not a big deal for them to move their back drop off the stage after each show.
-Louie
This week I’m sharing a stage with a show that has a large structure for puppets.
This structure can’t move between shows, so I have to perform in front of it. I don’t like having other acts stuff behind me while I perform and normally I will make the other act move their stuff to the side during my show. However that’s not an option this week. Luckily I had my pop up banner with me that I use at library shows.
This was a decent solution to covering up their puppet structure. The bonus is that it also has my name onstage behind me while I’m performing.
-Louie
One thing that always surprises me the fear that magicians have about spending money on things that will help sell their show. I get most of my work through booking conferences. I needed to make a new banner for one of the agents that I work for, so while I was doing that, I also made a generic one for me.
These were made in a rush, and they’re good enough. If I had more time I would make a couple of changes, but the more important thing is that I have the one the agent requested by the date they needed it!
In less than two weeks I’m showcasing at a booking event and my retractable banner is missing. I needed to order another one ASAP, but of course, I’m on the road and can’t find the original files.
Working off a picture of the old banner, I had it recreated with a couple of more recent pictures and some new credits.
Having to remake the banner was sort of a blessing in disguise as it needed to be redone anyway. That and the retractable base was getting pretty banged up, it didn’t work very smoothly.
If I was at home I had pictures on a hard drive that I would have rather used, but sometimes you just need something that’s “good enough”. This will get me through the event and with banners at about a hundred bucks, if I only use it once before I redesign it, it’s totally worth it!
-Louie
