We’re finally hitting the “light at the end of the COVID tunnel” and things are starting to reopen. I just updated the calendar on my main website that lists my public shows. Moving forward, I’m curious how much interaction in magic (especially close up) that people are willing to do.
Having spent the last 10 days helping out at a drive thru zoo that was operating when my state lifted its mask mandate (for vaccinated people), it was very interesting how people reacted to the interaction. Before the mandate was lifted about 60% of the cars were wearing masks, and after about 5% were wearing masks.
For close up magic, will people be willing to hold sponge balls? Personally I thought they were gross pre-COVID. If 95% of the people are willing to hold them, what do you do for the 5% that doesn’t? If it’s your main trick, then you need to have a strong backup. Thinking about this now will give you a huge advantage when the situation presents itself.
Tag: drive thru zoo
Writing Jokes…
A little bit ago I was helping out a friend set up a Drive Thru Zoo and stuck around to hang out during the actual event. It was a lot of fun, and people are really excited to have things to do (even if they had to stay in their cars). This is a good sign for when in person shows come back.
While I was there, the performer in me started to think about how to engage people, instead of them just reading the signs. What I did was look up some basic facts about the animals and write out a rough routine to engage and educate the audience.
For example here’s what I was doing when people got to the emu:
Me: This is Louie the emu. He’s the oldest living emu in the USA, can you guess how old he is?
Car: 17 years
Me: 273 years old
Car: what…
Me: no, he’s 27
Car: *laughs*
Me: Emu’s live to be 15-20 years old in the wild
Me: He’s an omnivore, that means he eats plants, animals and tacos.
Car: *laughs*
Me: Can you guess where he comes from?
Car: Africa…
Me: An egg. He comes from an egg.
Car: *laughs*
Me: The emu’s egg is green and sorta looks like a giant avocado.
Me: Louie can run up to 30 miles per hour, do you know what that is in kilometres? Without looking at your speedometer
Car: *laughs* I didn’t think to look there. 40 kilometres?
Me: Close, it’s 50.
What I did was come up with a conversational series of jokes, that makes the car full of people think and laugh while delivering jokes. It was fun writing this kind of stuff for the animals. It’s a bit different than writing jokes for a magic show, but it’s good to get outside your “box” every now and then.