This week I’m performing at a fair and it’s a fairly challenging experience. The crowd is fairly far from the stage and the seating is socially distant. It’s challenging to get them to unite as a crowd. Hopefully I’ll have it figured out by the end of the run.
The other challenge is that I can’t use people on stage. It’s a no contact show. This is fine, but has some problems. The big one being the audience is masked, so talking to them is difficult. It’s hard to tell who says something, and it’s hard to understand what they are saying. Indoors in a theater where there is less ambient noise, it’s much easier. This is something I didn’t anticipate (I should have).
I’m working out how make my show more successful this week, hopefully I’ll only need it this week. It looks like most COVID restrictions on the west coast are going to be lifted in about a week. Too late for this fair…
Tag: outdoor magic
Dealing With The Wind…
This week I’m an a conference for the fair industry. A good friend of mine, who is a great magician was also there and we were chatting magic and the subject of the Torn And Restored Newspaper came up. We were chatting about doing the trick outdoors, and the challenges of doing it in the … Continue reading “Dealing With The Wind…”
This week I’m an a conference for the fair industry. A good friend of mine, who is a great magician was also there and we were chatting magic and the subject of the Torn And Restored Newspaper came up. We were chatting about doing the trick outdoors, and the challenges of doing it in the wind.
He doesn’t do it outdoors, where I do. There’s one difference that allows me to do it outdoors (usually) and that’s the style of newspaper tear we do. He does the Gene Anderson Newspaper Tear and I use Nick Lewin’s Slow Motion Newspaper Tear. The Newspaper Tear that I do has less pages to it, so that means less changes for the wind mess it up.
The routine that most people use with the Gene Anderson Tear, is the one that I think was popularized by Doug Henning:
In this routine the newspaper is held open and flat a lot. Also all of the tears happen from the newspaper in an position where it’s flat. In Nick Lewin’s version, the newspaper is tear is started from a folded position and that helps a lot with wind.