Yesterday I posted about writing a line to try to solve a problem where I had a spot in the show where a kid would frequently shout something. I needed to add a line to tell the audience that the fruit I was using wasn’t real. The line I wrote was, “they’re not real, I got them from Ikea…So they’re made of particle board and Swedish meatballs”. That line didn’t get huge laughs, but seems to have solved the problem.
I tweaked the line a little bit to be, “they’re not real, I got them from Ikea…So they’re made of swedish meatballs and sawdust”. This new line is getting a laugh from the adults AND the kids. I think both particle board and swedish meatballs is too much for the kids here to understand. However they do know what sawdust is!
A little tweak like that upped my laughs per minute and solved the problem of how to address the fruit not being real.
-Louie
Tag: School assembly magic show
Preemptive Line…
In the new school assembly show I do a trick with apples and oranges. It’s based on Jim Steinmeyer’s Apples and Oranges trick from his book Conjuring. The concept is the same, the the routine is completely different.
I’ve notice that about every 2-3 shows I have kid in the audience when I introduce the apples and oranges that will yell out, “they’re fake” and the kid is correct, they’re plastic. What puzzles me is that kid will fixate on the fact that they aren’t real and keep yelling out “they’re fake“, even after I agree with the kid that they aren’t real fruit.
I’ve tried different ways to deal with this, and yesterday I wrote the line, “they’re not real, I got them from Ikea…So they’re made of particle board and Swedish meatballs”. The goal is to address the issue before the kids says anything. I’ve done it at 2 shows and so far I haven’t had anyone yell out anything.
One challenge with this line is that I’m in North Dakota and there isn’t a Ikea for about 700 miles! The line gets a small laugh from the adults, and not much from the kids. this is better than nothing, however I think I need to write a better line…
-Louie
Mentalism For Kids…
Years ago when I was a teenager I saw Lee Earle lecture and he briefly mentioned his thoughts on performing mentalism for kids. It was only a sentence and it fully stated his position. Lee said, “In order to have your mind read you must have a mind.” He’s not wrong, however it doesn’t mean you can’t do mentalism for kids. You need to frame it differently.
In the school assembly show I’m out doing right now on this tour, I have two mentalism tricks that I’m doing. After writing the show, I realized they are the exact same trick, luckily they are 30 mins apart in the show and are presented very differently. Both are essentially one out of five predictions, but they aren’t predictions. The kid(s) pick an unseen item that turns out to be different from the rest of the items. There’s no formal prediction, but it’s clearly obvious that they picked the outlier.
After doing the show for a week and a half, I think the first effect strengthens the second one. In the first one, it’s a surprise however the second time, I’ve very blatantly foreshadowed what’s going to happen. When I finally get around to the second reveal, it’s a huge release of tension when it confirms what they were thinking.
This isn’t my first time doing mentalism for kids. I used to do a routine that used a billet switch and peek that was essentially me reading someone’s mind, but framed as a game. The general presentation was that I was the worlds best 20 Questions player and could guess what they were thinking of in 5 guesses or less. I had them write down the item so that they couldn’t lie and change their mind. I also did this as an open preshow. I would do it while the classes were coming into the show, but I did it on mic so everyone was aware. This routine is written up in the book Performing Mentalism for Young Minds Vol 2.
Mentalism can play very strongly for kids, as long as it’s framed with a presentation that they can understand.
-Louie
Emergency Show to the Rescue!
Week two of the school assembly tour starts today, I was off on Monday due to the holiday. This show was written for elementary school audiences and is a language and literacy themed show.
On Friday of last week, at my second show of the day was for a small school, so they invited all grades, kindergarten through 12th grade! That’s a huge swing of kids. When I learned of the age range, I went to my car and grabbed my emergency show prop bag.
I took out the deck of cards and did ACAAN as the warm up and won over the high school kids.
One cool thing that I noticed was that elementary school aged kids were who the show was written for, it mostly works for high school aged kids. There’s some silly stuff that wouldn’t get laughs if I was doing it just the high school kids, but the every trick got a good reaction from the older kids. That means the magic in the show is strong!
This is something I’ve always said that a lot of kid shows are missing…strong magic!
-Louie
Working on the Show
Today I’m starting day four of the doing the new school assembly show. The show is called Incredible Idioms and is at, language and literacy themed shows. This is very different from themed shows that I’ve done in the past. This one has a flow all the way through it. The way it’s written, I can’t easily swap out routines in the show. I really like the way it flows.
In the past with school assemblies, I’ve always had a section where I explain the rules for the audience. This show doesn’t have that, and so far the kids are behaving really well. I think I owe this to the scripting of the show and that there aren’t really any dead spots. There are slow spots, but not really any dead spots.
The warm up to the show is an alarm clock that I put a remote control into and it rings whenever I want it to. This prop is used as the warm up, a running gag and a trick in the show. The trick is that it vanished in a devil’s hank. In my test shows, that clock vanish really fell flat, and I felt that the audience knew the clock was in the hank. The first couple of days in the tour I really focused on making the vanish work for me. It turns out I wasn’t show the back of the hank after the vanish. Once I added showing the other side of the hank, the trick started to hit much harder.
That’s the fun of tours like the one I’m going, it gives you a lot of time to work out problems in the show.
-Louie
Good Structure, Okay Routine…
There are two things that are surprising me about performing for kids on this tour. The first is the lack of rules that I have to go over and the second is that I’m not needing to coach applause. I don’t know if it’s me as a performer getting better, or if it’s them being used to watching TV shows where people applaud for variety acts.
I figured out that the first real magic trick in the show I do is a production of a tennis ball. If I display it and just freeze, they will clap. This is done with no coaching or bits that tell them how to respond. It’s kinda blowing my mind that they are doing it on their own.
I’m closing the show with the vanishing birdcage and I’m getting kids to jump up to their feet and clap…also without any coaching. I’m essentially getting partial standing ovations from kids at a school assembly. I will say that my routine for the vanishing birdcage is structured fairly well, with how it’s paced and with the music cues. Also unlike most vanishing cage routines, my has a reappearance. It’s just the bird that reappears, but it’s a release of the audience’s tension and gives them a moment where they know they are supposed to applaud. I will say it’s the structure of the routine and not the routine that is what’s getting the reactions. The routine is just okay.
I’m working on the routine this tour and it’s getting better, but still has a lot of work that needs to happen. Most of the new bits I’ve been trying have been falling flat. This is just a case of continuing to write and hopefully it will eventually stick.
This is the work.
-Louie
Laughs Per Minute…
Last night I reviewed the video of the first show of this tour and calculated my laughs per minute. I came in at 1.57 laughs per minute or about three laughs every too minutes. Normally my goal is about 3.5 LPM’s, however this show has more content than my standard magic and comedy show.
I think my short term goal is going to be two Laughs Per Minute, but ideally getting this close to three LPM’s.
If you’re a comedy magician and don’t know your laughs per minute, you need to know them. I’m always amazed by how many comedy acts I talk to and when I ask what their LPM’s are, they either don’t know or say a crazy number like 10. To put it in perspective a stand up comic is in the ballpark of 4-6 LPM’s, maybe as high as 8. You need to know the actual number that you’re getting. Once you know this, it allows you to improve.
The way to figure out your LPM’s is to record your show and count the laughs. Then divide the length of your show in minutes by the number of laughs and you get your LPM’s.
Another metric is “reactions per minute”, so this is more than just a laugh. It could be applause, the audience going whoa or whatever. Having a metric allows you to set a goal.
-Louie
Learning a Show Quickly
I’ve completed day one of the school assembly tour. The show went better than I expected. One way that I worked on the show was listening to recordings of it while I drove my car. This is a very effective way to learn a show. It’s also a great way to work on the show. While listening to the show you will hear bits where you need filler or it will spark ideas for bits.
After the first two shows, I learned that my audio needed some tweaking, it needed to be louder or quieter at different spots.
Another thing I’ve notice is that my style for school assembly shows has really changed. I’m lower energy, but still fairly energetic. I also am not doing rules for the kids and for two shows it seemed to work. We’ll see how it plays out in the long run.
I also noticed that I have two tricks that are virtually the same trick in the show. Both are essentially a one out of five prediction, but both are presented very differently and also 30 mins apart in the show. I don’t think anyone notices that they are the same effect.
I’m also thinking that next week I’ll be doing the show with just a hand held microphone and not a headset microphone. This will allow me to set up quicker, but also I need to keep up with my handheld microphone technique.
I took this tour to work on stuff and I’m definitely doing that! There’s only one trick in the show that I’ve done in a show before.
-Louie
School Assembly Tour Day 1
Today is the first day of the school assembly tour and the first full performances of my new show called Incredible Idioms. This show is themed about the language we use and it’s been a lot of fun to work on.
The whole show fits inside one case and here’s what it looks like:
Unfortunately it doesn’t really travel set up. It’d be nice to just open the case and go, but there’s a lot of crushable things in there AND that picture doesn’t show things like my mics and audio cables which need to travel in the case.
The show is going to probably go through a lot of changes over the month of performing it on this tour. This is where the work comes in. I need to record, at least audio record and hopefully video record as many shows as possible and review them as often as possible. This is how a show gets good in a short amount of time.
Well, off to the first gig…
-Louie