matt baker – MagicShow.Tips

Preshow’ing your show

One of the great things about performing at fairs is getting to see all of the other acts at the fairgrounds! You can learn a lot from watching other acts!

One of the huge lessons is watching everyone’s preshow audience build/warm up. The different act have different goals with their starting audience. Some want as many people as possible and some want to select their audience and try to get the people who aren’t into what they do to leave. Neither approach is right or wrong, but which ever way you do it, it should be intentional!

Tomorrow my week starts with performing at the Moisture Festival in Seattle. This is a variety arts festival and the shows are in a theater, so I don’t get to try to select my audience. I get to perform for whoever bought a ticket. This festival is a blast, so it’ll be fun!

-Louie

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Tom Noddy

If you have been to the moisture festival before you have probably seen the bubble man Tom Noddy.

In this episode, Tom joins us in person in the Jungle Wagon for almost two hours of great conversation. In part one of our two part interview with Tom, we dive into his early career, what drew him to bubbles, how he integrated bubbles into his street act and how that has led to over 50 years of delighting audiences with bubble magic. If you loved blowing bubbles as a kid, you are going to love this interview with the man who literally wrote the book for making cool shapes with bubbles.

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The Moisture Festival Podcast – Jim Page

In this episode we welcome Seattle folk legend Jim Page to the Moisture Festival Podcast studio. Here, we talk about Jim’s lobbying efforts to legalize busking in Seattle, as well as his adventure organizing the first Busker Fest at Pike Place Market. Jim also brings his guitar and plays us a few songs.

A great interview with one of the most influential Seattle musicians of our time.

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The Moisture Festival Podcast – The Luminous Pariah

In this episode the multifaceted performer, Luminous Pariah, joins us in the studio. Lumi explains the art of Burlesque and how stories and comedy play an integral role in Burlesque. We learn about the transition Lumi made from a whale watching tour guide in Alaska to a world renowned burlesque entertainer.

Lumi also talks about getting involved in the Moisture Festival and how that led to being one of the producers for the Moisture Festival’s Burlesque Week. A great interview with a lot of laughs, great insights and a nice dose of awesomeness.

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Bill Robison – The Moisture Festival Podcast

In this episode of the Moisture Festival Podcast we welcome one of the festival’s favorites Bill Robison into the studio. We discuss Bill’s career performing for 10,000 seat arena’s opening up for people like Willie Nelson and Bill Cosby.

Louie Foxx, Bill Robison and Matt Baker at The Moisture Festival Podcast

We also hear about his time performing in a comedy duo called the Shneedles, and how they became one of the most popular variety acts in the German spiegaltent circuit. Also, we talk about his time doing mask theatre and how that has influenced his permanence style today. A great chat and a lot of fun to have this hilarious clown on the podcast.

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Odd and Offbeat Variety Show

On Thursday (5/28) my buddy Matt Baker and I will be hosting the Odd and Offbeat Variety Show. We’ve got some fun acts and all will be performing live and we’ll do a Q&A with the acts after they perform.

I think this is a great format for a virtual show, you get a lot of acts and it’s done live. Check it out on Thursday!

My First Virtual Show

I’ve now gotten my first live virtual show completed and it was a huge learning experience. First of all, it wasn’t a full of show of me, it was a variety show that I co-hosted. Pulling together all of the technical things to make it work was a huge challenge for me. There’s a huge learning curve.

In the show we did, the format was Matt Baker and I hosted live acts. Bringing in those acts was a bit of work after reviewing the video I’ve learned to make the transitions much smoother.

I think the key to doing virtual shows is to actually go back and watch them and see what you could do better. Treat not just the show as something that can be improved, but the medium it’s delivered in. Would the show be better if it had title cards, or a canned video as a transition? Things like that, you’re not doing a magic show, you’re doing a live TV show!