Recently I got asked by a nurse at a hospital to perform at her house during a family gathering. She saw me perform some mgic for the patients at the hospital and she thought that I owuld be a great entertainment for her party. She told me there will be around 20 kids ages 2-8 and about 50 adults so I decided to bring most of my best effects in my repertoire that plays well for both kids and adults.
When I got to her house, I saw that my performance space was HORRIBLE. The kids have their own little table to one side but the table for the adults are a long table that extends almost 270 degrees around my performance space. Therefore, the adults won't be able to see some of the effects unless I constantly turn back and forth from the kids to the adults table. So I found a way to deal with this problem and started to begin my show.
When I asked for a volunteer from the kids, ALL of them are very shy and do not want to come up (hard to believe but it's true). I have to beg one of the kids and after about 2 minutes, he finally came up. So after the kids saw that he is having fun a few more of them started to have the courage to raise their hand.
So a few more mimutes after interacting with the kids I decided to do some magic effects for the adults and decided to have some of them come on stage. I was getting ready to perform my comedy rope escape and asked for two volunteer, and NONE of the adults wanted to come up. They stare at me with such a monotone look and a dead silence that you can literally hear a person swallow. After about 5 minutes of polite talk and arguments between the adults, I finally found my two volunteers. All in all, I ended the show right after this effect and perform some close up magic for the seated adults.
So my question is, what would YOU do if no one volunteers to come up? Do you just grab their hands and pull them up or do you just stare at them?
My performance style is very engaging and I do not make my audience feel stupid in anyway. Here is a sample video of my kids show so you can see how I interact with the audience (this is not the show I am referring to in this thread)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV3F7JQDly4
When I got to her house, I saw that my performance space was HORRIBLE. The kids have their own little table to one side but the table for the adults are a long table that extends almost 270 degrees around my performance space. Therefore, the adults won't be able to see some of the effects unless I constantly turn back and forth from the kids to the adults table. So I found a way to deal with this problem and started to begin my show.
When I asked for a volunteer from the kids, ALL of them are very shy and do not want to come up (hard to believe but it's true). I have to beg one of the kids and after about 2 minutes, he finally came up. So after the kids saw that he is having fun a few more of them started to have the courage to raise their hand.
So a few more mimutes after interacting with the kids I decided to do some magic effects for the adults and decided to have some of them come on stage. I was getting ready to perform my comedy rope escape and asked for two volunteer, and NONE of the adults wanted to come up. They stare at me with such a monotone look and a dead silence that you can literally hear a person swallow. After about 5 minutes of polite talk and arguments between the adults, I finally found my two volunteers. All in all, I ended the show right after this effect and perform some close up magic for the seated adults.
So my question is, what would YOU do if no one volunteers to come up? Do you just grab their hands and pull them up or do you just stare at them?
My performance style is very engaging and I do not make my audience feel stupid in anyway. Here is a sample video of my kids show so you can see how I interact with the audience (this is not the show I am referring to in this thread)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV3F7JQDly4