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Interesting Gig

Justin.Morris

Justin.Morris

Elite Member
Aug 31, 2007
2,822
902
Canada
www.morrismagic.ca
Hey all, just thought I'd share, but I just landed a gig at a movie theatre for tomorrow. I got a call from the GM of a movie theatre that just finished some major renovations and is having a grand reopening. He hired me to perform for all the (well, as many as I can get to) preshows (where usually the movie trivia plays).

Interesting gig. I never really thought about that as a potential venue. After calling some buddies, I've discovered that it is not that unusual at all. It seems lots of theatres do this sort of thing (Ive never seen it before).

So I only get 12-15 minutes, so I will be performing two routines (which the patter ties together nicely): first is (I call it) Twins from Guy Hollingworth's drawing room deception (also a similar version on TA set), using jumbo cards.
Second I will do Gazzo's Tossed out deck.

It will be 12+ shows and then a bit of walk around, all over the course of ten hours.

Very stoked. Thought I'd share. (If you don't care, then please ignore ;) )I will let you know how it goes.

Justin
 
Very cool. I wish you the best of luck and would loveto hear how it goes. How are you mentally preparing? Do you think there will be tough cookies in the crowd such as rowdy teenagers? I do not know you at all, so don't be insulted by such questions. I am merely curious. But again, good luck!
 
Hey no offence taken at all.
It's a bit silly because he just called me yesterday to book. I did rehearsals last night at home, and tonight I have a meeting until 11 pm or so. So mentally there is very little prep time! I'm not one to get nervous on stage, so that should be fine. As far as crowd goes, I'm sure there will everything from little kids (I'll bring some extra routines in case it is all kids at one show) to seniors. As far as teenagers go, I'm not to worried, I work with teenagers in my day job. If anything, the TOD routine could get messed up by a rowdy teen, but I don't think it will be a problem, because I have them stand right away, look at a card and toss the deck again, all fairly quickly. Bringing a lot of attention on them helps to manage the audience.
(I have to admit, this will be my first public performance of TOD)

Thanks,

Justin
 
Sounds like this could be fun. Good luck and I hope it goes well. Performing that much magic over that amount of time is going to be a lot of work. I suggest to bring extra equipment just in case something breaks/bends/etc. I've found this to be very helpful when I've performed many shows one after another.

Would love to hear how it goes!
 
The update::

Hey all, so I had the show at the Movie theatre, and well, in short it went very well. I was reminded of some very important lessons though and learned some good lessons too! To clarify I was hired to do twelve 12-15 min “shows” in the preshow time before the movies begin. I planned the to do two effects: Guy Hollingworth’s “twins” (my name) (from Drawing Room Deceptions), and Gazzo’s Tossed out deck (Which I had never tried for an audience before).

The night before I decided to do all the prep for twins ahead of time. I had decided to use a jumbo deck, and quickly learned that the finish on the Jumbo cards is very different than a regular deck! They do not burn the same way, and as a result, the necessary preparations were fairly sketchy. I did the best I could and in the end I figured out a way to get the prep done right, but I’m glad I didn’t wait until the next morning to do the prep (which I would normally do because to prep one time takes a couple of seconds normally).

Well I arrived at 11:40am and was shown my greenroom where I was able to keep my gear. I set out all my stuff and got ready to do the first theatre; a 12:15 matinee. There was a whopping 5 people in there... Okay so both my routines went out the window. So I came in (and I was introduced for that particular one), so I just went up into the seats and did some close up card stuff for them. It was a lot of fun. One down.

The next bunch were all quite similar. One started out with three people and by the time the fifteen minutes were up, there was probably 50 people. I started with close up and by the end was trying to do stuff that more people could see. I did everything from ambitious card (with Paperclipped finish), to liquid metal. Thank goodness I game over prepared!

As the night went on, I got to do some larger groups. Those went very well for the most part. Tossed out Deck was actually awesome. Big gasps and lots of applause. It worked great as a “closer”. I might just try using that in my full show as a new closer, because there is a huge cue for applause built right in.
The first time I forgot one of the cards and there was one guy left standing. Awkward pause. It came back to me and I said the last card and the last guy sat down. Everyone went nuts. Funny enough, it worked to my advantage (thankfully). But the second time I did the TOD, I learned two valuable lessons. Two of the five people “lied” about the cards they saw. More likely they forgot their cards and just picked new ones in their head. So I only got three out of five. Grrr. But It let me know very clearly that I had to direct my audience to make sure they remember the cards they saw. No more trouble after that. The second lesson, is because for that one theatre I was using a lapel mic. After I got out I thought it was so funny that two people had just lied about their cards, and I really wanted to say something to someone. Two managers came up to me and asked how it went, and I said it went really good, and that the audience was really fun. I held myself back from saying what I really wanted to which was “two turkeys totally lied about the cards they saw!” a second later a person came out of the theatre and told me my mic was still on! Whew! Just goes to show that you should NEVER bad mouth someone EVER. They could have been standing right behind me, or worse, the whole theatre could have heard. Very unprofessional.

Finally, I did some lobby close up stuff between show times. I wasn’t sure how to approach people in that setting because when I go to a movie, I’m usually a bit late and my wife and I split up, one to get in line for food, and the other b-lines in to get the good seats. I had no clue that lots of people show up early and just hang out in the lobby (weird). So I hooked up the hummer card and played with that and make eye contact with passing observers. When someone stopped to admire I would smile and ask if they wanted to see more magic. They were all very enthusiastic. I did some magic for the line-ups, and that was pretty silly because I was walking along the outside of the rope as the line was moving, and people kept laughing about it. It was a bit funny, but a lot of fun at the same time. After performing for a couple of preteenagers in the food line, a random lady (with her husband) came up to me, pulled me aside by the elbow and said how much she appreciated that I wasn’t condescending or rude to the kids I was performing for (I’m guessing she was at the Fringe Festival here and saw Gazzo performing ;p ). Interesting and very direct comment.

So all in all everything went very well, but very different than I expected. Just goes to show that you have to always be over prepared, and always be professional. Good times. And now I have a huge stack of movie tickets (they paid half cash and half movie tickets!) ha ha!

Thanks for reading!
 
Thanks for sharing this story. It sure sounds like you learned a lot of valuable information doing this gig. Sometimes the lessons / info we learn is even worth more than the $$$$.

Keep up the good work.

I have a funny story that your "mic" situation reminded me of.

As a school teacher we are encouraged to wear our microphones on us so that the entire room has the surround sound going on....well....while my 3rd graders were working one day I decided that I had to go take a leak in the teacher's restroom and came back to a classroom full of roaring laughter.

Yup..you guessed it. I took a leak with my mic still on and they heard me peeing...into the toilet loud and clear. The kids said, "We heard you peeing....ha ha." So my response being the quick witted guy that I am said, "Well boys and girls, at least it wasn't poop." Ha Ha. They laughed so hard.
 
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jtmorris said:
Hey all, just thought I'd share, but I just landed a gig at a movie theatre for tomorrow. I got a call from the GM of a movie theatre that just finished some major renovations and is having a grand reopening. He hired me to perform for all the (well, as many as I can get to) preshows (where usually the movie trivia plays).

Interesting gig. I never really thought about that as a potential venue. After calling some buddies, I've discovered that it is not that unusual at all. It seems lots of theatres do this sort of thing (Ive never seen it before).

So I only get 12-15 minutes, so I will be performing two routines (which the patter ties together nicely): first is (I call it) Twins from Guy Hollingworth's drawing room deception (also a similar version on TA set), using jumbo cards.
Second I will do Gazzo's Tossed out deck.

It will be 12+ shows and then a bit of walk around, all over the course of ten hours.

Very stoked. Thought I'd share. (If you don't care, then please ignore ;) )I will let you know how it goes.

Justin
Click to expand...
damn, i can't get gigs for nothing...kool for u my man...i'm happy for ya.......i usually have to travel....this part of town is really sick....thats why i perform every saturday to try and bring the interest level up around these parts....
 
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