In this episode we record on location at Hales Ales where we welcome in Moisture Festival favorite and clown extraordinaire Hilary Chaplain.
Hilary discusses how she develops her material and all the things that goes through her mind when she is debuting a new routine. We cover her over 30 year career that includes her one woman show, a play about a rat, appearing in the movie Forest Gump and clowning at children’s hospitals. We talk about almost everything from her birth in a car to how she came to perform at the Moisture Festival. A great conversation with an even greater performer.
One of the tricks that I do in my show is the Hoop and Glass juggling stunt, I don’t know it’s official name. Last week on my facebook page I posted a gif that I made of pics by John Cornicello that he took at the Moisture Festival.
I had a several performers contact me asking me where to get the hoop. I called my “hoop guy” and had got some extra ones and making them available. You get a hoop and a (plastic) glass for $75 with USA shipping included!
Click here to order the Hoop and Glass props! currently unavailable
If you’re unfamiliar with the Hoop and Glass juggling trick, it’s a classic juggling trick and it’s been in my show for over a decade! The trick is you balance a glass of water on a wooden hoop and then you shake it, spin it and throw it in the air…all without spilling any water.
Photo by John Cornicello
Photo by John Cornicello
What I love about this trick is that it plays really big, however the props since it’s a hoop and glass (which are hollow), they don’t take up much space in my case. It’s also a nice break from the magic in my show.
The final show of the 2022 Moisture Festival had an amazing line up!
I always look at the lineup of every show and think to myself that I don’t belong in the line up.
The amount of people that it takes to make these show happen is much larger than you’d think. Here’s a some of the cast and crew:
Normally I work as a solo act, however it’s always fun to be a part of something bigger. Being a bad ass cog in a big machine that creates amazing art is something that fills my soul!
Doing things that you love for the love of creating, not money is something that I think everyone should do! -Louie
Last week at the Moisture Festival, one of the acts was Just Felice. She’s a street performer out of the Boston area. We did some magic jamming back stage at the festival. Here she is doing an in the hands three card monte routine for one of the stage crew:
We also did some BSing with the second deal, which is a move neither of us really use, but can do. We both have decent technique, but still kill our wrists a lot to hide the move. I think if I ever had a need to use the second deal in a routine, I’d put in the extra time to be able to do it without turning my wrist. For me, the second deal is an emergency move that’s in my tool box. -Louie
Yesterday I posted a video of me trying out a routine using cardboard milk caps in place of coins for a Three Fly style coins across routine. I sat down and wrote out a little routine for it.
These are milk caps, if you were a child of the 90’s they’re POGs and if you’re an alcoholic they’re coasters for your shot glass.
These were used in the early 1900’s to seal glass milk bottles to keep flies out and tuberculosis in.
There are three of them.
They switch hands faster than cooking a rare steak!
The news one goes hand to hand faster than milk goes through someone that’s lactose intolerant!
The last one disappears faster than a vegan in an ice cream parlor!
All three of them move hand to hand faster than you can applaud!
I feel like there should be a joke for the line, “There are three of them”. It could be something silly, like “Three milk caps, one for each of my twins“. That might be what is needed there.
I also don’t know how I feel about the tuberculosis line. It’s an interesting historical line about milk giving people tuberculosis in the 1800’s (read about it here). I don’t think it will get a laugh, and I try to not joke about illnesses. It’s not a dig at anyone who has tuberculosis, it’s a historical joke. People don’t process things with what was in my head when I wrote it, they hear a “trigger word” and there’s nothing you can do to convince them otherwise.
One thing that drives me nuts is when a magician will post a picture to social media of a craft store and say something like, “I could make so many magic tricks here” but then they don’t say what they made. These are people who are lazy and want to appear creative without doing any of the actual work. It’s not hard, but something that’s visually interesting and figure out a trick with it.
When I was performing last month in Casa Grande, AZ I went to a few junk shops. I’m normally looking for things for my oddity collection, but sometimes I find props to use with magic. One of the shops had about a dozen vintage milk caps.
Milk caps were used in the early 1900’s to seal bottles of milk. These are made of cardboard and slightly larger than a silver dollar, but about one third as thick. These were stuffed into the neck of a glass milk bottle. They didn’t create an airtight seal, but they did keep out debris and bugs.
The size of milk bottle caps lend themselves to coin magic. I’m sure in the 1990’s during the POG game’s popularity, tons of magicians used them. I had the idea of using them for some platform style coin magic, and figured I’d give it a try at a virtual magic meeting the other night:
I think it went well for a first run, now I need to write a routine for it and some jokes and I’ll be up and running! -Louie
The new season of The CW’s Masters of Illusion starts tonight!
I should be in an episode or two later this season. I recorded 4 or 5 bits for the show about a year ago. I’m betting that I’ll end up with two routines in the show this season.
This show is a blast to work on. You get to hang out with tons of really talented magicians backstage and in the dressing rooms. If you ever get a chance to do it, I highly recommend it! -Louie
Tomorrow I start my final weekend performing at The Moisture Festival in Seattle. I was in the show last weekend and it was a ton of fun. This weekend there were be a bunch of magicians, Mike Caveney, Tina Lenert and Just Felice
I’ll be doing hand shadow act and probably my bullwhip act during the shows this weekend. One of the things that the festival likes about what I do is that it doesn’t really conflict with things that other magicians do.
One huge thing that’s really helped me with my career is having a “novelty” act that I can do. It really helps out when you are in variety shows, or even in just plain ol’ magic shows with other magicians. It makes you a lot more versatile as an act. -Louie
The thumb tip began being used by magicians in the late 1800’s and it’s actual creator isn’t exactly know, there are two people that clam it’s use. Recently I was at a museum and they had some Egyptian finger and toe caps:
These are essentially thumb tips, but used for decoration, and not for magic. There’s a lot of stuff that exists in the real world, that magicians notice and start to use for magical purposes. I wonder if these could have been the inspiration for the thumb tip?
We’ll never know for sure, but they sure do look usable!
Coming up at the end of the month is WonderBash in Michigan. I was going to go, but a weeklong gig came in that’s keeping me from going. However I did contribute an essay to the WonderBash book:
If you’re free you should check out this convention, Trino the organizer has some great ideas for it!
