Hey guys.

I am going to get a Dube Top Hat pretty soon, and want to know what you guys do with the hat. Or if you guys even wear a hat.

Do you wear it throughout the whole show, wear at the start and then use it to put props into, etc.?

Just want to get a feel of that you guys do with your top hat and if it is worked into the show at all; and how?

Thanks!
-Vinnie

Vinnie,

That depends.. I know of magians and comediens who wear it and use it in their comedy routines.

The first question is what are you going to do with it?

Hi Vinnie
Brian Dube at http://www.dube.com has an inexpensive book called "the juggler's manuel of Manipulation Miscellanea" by Reginald W. Bacon "Mr Slim" along with a visit to http://www.trickswithhats.org, a good hat, and you are on your own.

Are you getting the heavy felt juggling hat, or the collapsible top hat? If you are planning to learn hat juggling, you'll want the heavy felt hat and don't do anything to mess it up for juggling. You can still use it for magic, but limit its use to an occasional production by separate load bag. Also, you'll probably end up getting more than one hat if you really get into hat juggling.

Hey guys.

Yes, I'll be getting the Wool Heavyweight Dube Tall Hat.

Well, mostly, I will be wearing it on my head. Maybe I'll produce something out of it, but I don't think so for now.

I'm not going to be juggling A LOT with the hat, but there will be a small bit of hat manipulation throughout the show.

I want to know what you guys do with your hat.

-Vinnie

Vinnie,

I am half asleep as I am reading this and I could have sworn your first line read "I'll be getting the world heavyweight title belt."

I gotta drink more coffee.


I have found that a neat routine is to talk about magic and magicians in general and tell everyone that a classic of magic is to produce a rabbit from a hat (do the trick with a rabbit load from behind your table) and then tell the audience that "but that was then, and this is now, and since I don't do that particular trick I'll do something different for you folks."

S. Patrick

Haha that's funny!

I like the routine. But then what do you go into?

-Vinnie

Work on some of these moves:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6e36Td92U4g&a......;search=

Both. As a costume it give a great first impression, as a prop it is almost infinitely versatile. (almost infinite! ha, I'm a moron of the oxy variety)

I love my top hat. It's a Nils Polls felt juggling hat.It cost me more than a dube but that might have just been poor shopping.

There is so much you can do with a hat; tricks to impress and some of the funniest visual gags out there. Here's some guys who know how to use a hat:

Charlie Chaplin (& Johnny Depp),George Carl,Charlie Frye, Buster Keaton, Stan and Olly,Pat Page,Slyvester the Jester.

My favourite gags are the ones that use manipulation skills to comic effect.

A hat is also an extension of your face and you can combine it with an expression to exaggerate it. Stan and Olly tip their hats forward when they purposely stride forward, tip it back to compliment an expression of surprise, tip it to the side to enhance a disorientated or dizzy expression.

Clean it, chase it, squash it, fight with it, lose it, throw it, flip it,pull stuff out of it,vanish stuff into it, love it.

George

Both here as well. I enter wearing it but after my oeping effect promise to pull a live elephant from the hat. When the audience sounds skeptical, I pretend to misunderstand and say ""OK, if you don't want to see that one, I'll do something else. I go back to the hat periodically, using it as a running gag in the show, each time claiming a less preposterous animal (rhino, bear, tiger, dog) each time acting like they don't want to see that trick. Finally, I work my way down to rabbit. I produce a paper rabbit with a long neck (a clippo), trim the neck, then put the rabbit in my Rabit Reconsititutor (a rabbit wringer), produce a live rabbit and take my bow. So actually, the top hat ends up being the unifying prop of my whole show.

Marc the magic Man

I use the Top Hat for a prop.
I produce a silk rabbit (joke).
Use it for six card repeat.
Use it for a bank night routine.
Etc.

I produce my "run rabbit run" rabbit from it, twice. I do the Hindu hangman with it, and of course my two balls, and a hat juggling routine.

I use my collapsible top hat pretty much as a dump box. (It's two sizes too small for my head anyway).

My wand sticks out of the hat and I dump a sponge ball in the hat when I pick up the wand...otherwise it just sits there as a prop, that is until:

The block for Mel Babcock's Block Box (a Die Box on steroids) which is SUPPOSED to appear in my top hat when it vanishes from the box, gets misdirected and ends up in my rabbit-puppet's top hat by mistake.

He (the rabbit) complains that there are UFO's flying around the room and one landed on his head...poor little guy!

(This was a work-around I came up with because the Block Box uses no s***l).

Andy

I do a comedy disappearing top hat at the start of the show.
This routine gets the children involved---yelling, laughing and screaming.
Just some nonsense with the hat that create the right atmosphere.
Richard Lyn (Tricky Ricky)

Definitely check out charlie frye's eccen-tricks dvds....well worth their weight in gold for visual gags..Adam

Children have very specific expectations. If you bring out a top hat, their initial expectation is that you're going to produce a bunny from it. Now, you don't have to do the bunny thing, but you really should do something "magical" with it.

Kent

I agree, Kent! I just need to find what will suit me while using the top hat, though. =]

-Vinnie

In the past I had lots of hats on a brass hat rack..(on stage..) Though the hats are still there, I don't always bring the hat stand.

Hats are used by this nearly normal guy to..

1. Establish Character
2. Magician in trouble...hat won't stay on head, hat moves ahead of me...hat is wrong size..hat has to be screwed on my head...
3. Coins vanish, appear and change in and out of the hat..
4. Production out of hat...(no rabbit hear..other interesting things..)
5. Fan face, arm pits and...on these hot midwest daze.
6. Hats have included..Top, bowler, carmen miranda,frank sinatra, .....

Hats off (or on ..) to all of you.

Harris