This is the second of the two pieces I wrote for this column about twenty years ago, which I never got around to posting.


I caught myself daydreaming this morning about many years ago when I wanted to take an illusion show on the road, and how I wanted to do it then, and how I would do it now that I’ve spent many years in theater, and then thought it might be an interesting topic for a column.

Besides, I’m overdue for another one.

The funniest thing is how close what I would do now is to what I wanted to do when I was fifteen or sixteen. Back then I wanted to do a show with a line of singer/dancers, several production numbers, some comedy, big illusions, and several smaller “cabaret” pieces, i.e., stage manipulation or the old nite club stuff. But I didn’t know how to put all this together into a show, even after reading Fitzkee and several other authors.

I do remember that, although I had all the major catalogs darn near memorized, especially the sections on illusions, I didn’t want to just pick illusions out of a catalog or book just because I liked them. And here I’m going to digress a bit and try to make a point.

Years ago, when Donna and I were looking for a new house, we spent weekends driving around, just like a lot of other people do. We’d look at older sections, new developments, and everything in between. But what I started to notice was how the exteriors of a lot of renovated older houses seemed to be so eclectic. We saw houses that had been built as split ranches, but now had “half timbering” decoration (which is an oxymoron) on the two-story part, maybe brick on the one-story part, the original front door with glass sidelights and 1950-s era wall sconces, Victorian wrought-iron railings on the front stairs, a modern garage door, and sometimes a chandelier of indeterminate vintage hanging from somewhere.

It was like the owners picked this detail from this magazine, that detail from that magazine, this item from this catalog, that color from someone else’s house, and so on, and put it all together because they liked the individual pieces. But those pieces didn’t work together. And, sadly, in many cases the owners probably didn’t realize this because they were too close to it all and could not stand back and look at the house from someone else’s perspective.

It’s so easy to put a show together the same way and not see what the audience really sees. And it’s just as sad.

One of the things I read in Fitzkee’s book on showmanship was that stage shows are put together according to a formula: start big and fast, then give the audience a break, then get big again, then another break, and end up with a bang. Okay, so this was written over sixty years ago, but the same general principle is still used. What it does is create a rhythm: a series of highs and lows that is easy on the audience but builds up steadily to the finale.

The same rhythm is used in novels, short stories, movies, and lots of other forms of entertainment. Even in a book where “the action doesn’t stop,” like The Da Vinci Code, the action does slow down now and then to allow us to catch our breath before the next wallop. The Harry Potter movies are full of this rhythm.

It works.

So how would I apply this to a big magic show, and where would I start? I would start the same way that a novelist or screenwriter would start: I would write a short summary of the show as I would want a spectator to tell it to a friend the next day.

“So how was the show last night?”

“It was fantastic. He started with this really cool song-and-dance number, then did a monologue, and then did a whole routine with big illusions and some comedy. Then, after the break, he did some smaller stuff and ended up with a huge production number.”

Okay, that’s my first pass, and it’s okay but not great. Actually, it’s so-so. Or not even that. Remember what Papa Hemingway said about writing: “The first draft of anything is ****.” Of course, he didn’t use the asterisks.

One of the things I noticed as I was reading that summary just now, however, was that I wrote “he” a couple of times. That was intentional, even if I wasn’t consciously aware of it when I wrote it. I would want a spectator to remember me first, and then what I did, and not the other way around.

Better late than never!

It is ironic that we start thinking we've got it figured out, and by the time we do figure it out, we're often not able to do much about it.

Nevertheless, I think I prefer the experience to the youth.