So much going on!

This last month has been truly insane. I have visited the Magic Circle twice now and will hopefully blog about that later. The master plan of becoming a full time magician is in full swing and I have to admit that this is more down to others than myself.  My friends and I have formed a Slight Club which meet around my house once a week. The four of us each have our strengths and the idea is for us to motivate ourselves and learn from each other.  Mr. Leopold Thorn himself (or Darren) has been something of a guiding light in this. I have owned a few web space over the years but have struggled to  keep up to date with the best practises for hosting a site. As the owner if Truelove Tours he had recent experience, With the help of a friend of mine he has managed to host our new collective site of http://nothingupoursleeves.co.uk . He was then given a gig for Colchesters Art Centre's Variety night special. He saw an opportunity to  raise awareness of our venture and a chance to help me improve my stage craft.We had under 2 weeks to devise a show and rehearse it. \We used an initial idea for an illusion that Darren had for publicity the Leopolod Thorn gig. Namley the Lazar pointer reveal. When driving home from one of our slight clubs I suggested we could try to make the effect better by allowing the selected playing card to be SIGNED. No mean feat, but the next evening I was demonstrating our first prototype to him. We then  spent an afternoon just shooting out things to say during the effect, be they jokes, smaller tricks or points of science to explain the illusion. Darren then took all these random sound bites and forged a script. I  truly loved working like this. He had an idea of an effect, we both worked together to make it possible, then using my library of books and dvd's to improve on the original, Then we both came out with jokes and lines for the script then he used his skills in stage craft to make the script work. True teamwork.

  To maximise the potential for the gig Darren even got us business cards made (his design which is rather fantastic) using the photos taken at the photo shoot (he arranged). As you can see from this Darren really s the driving force in us turning pro, NEVER under estimate the drive and determination of a man who hates his day job!

The gig went incredibly well. The political jokes we put in for a simple silk colour change went down incredibly well with the politicians in the audience. Darren handled some kids who came into the show half way through very well. I even heard one ask "is that Doctor Who!"  For me the big surprise was how well the effect itself was received. I thought we would be take as a 10 minute comedy act with a bit of magic, however people did LOVE the magic, we were a 10 minute magic act with comedy! The  best thing is we now know what worked well and how to make the show even better. Also a local event manager has taken an interest in is :) so the future s indeed looking bright, mainly due to being given a gentle push by a mate .

http://www.colchesterchronicle.co.uk/2012/03/04/variety-spice-of-sunny-colch/http://www.colchesterchronicle.co.uk/2012/03/04/variety-spice-of-sunny-colch/