The Magicanada Project

Michael Kras · Posted: Wed Jun 18, 2008 10:50 pm Post subject: When Magic Goes Wrong

Don't you just hate it when that happens? What are some of your worst experiences involving an effect which you screwed up during performance?

My worst was the following: I was doing a show at a summer camp, and my sister was assisting me by helping prepare props I would need next and helping with crowd control. Anyways, there was a chair for me onstage for when I was to perform an effect seated, although I can't remember what it was.

Anyways, what I didn't notice was that a few moments prior to my sitting effect, my sister had pulled the chair off to the side to sit down herself! So I walk backwards, thinking I knew exactly where the chair was, and sat down in midair, falling flat on the ground.

As if that wasn't bad, my normal finale was a disaster as well.... I was doing The Zombie Ball, and the foulard I was using to cover the ball was very slippery... I think you can see where I'm going with this. The foulard fell off and exposed a ball on a stick to the entire audience! This whole presentation was based on ghosts for the kids, and luckily I found a way to recover.

I remembered I had D'lites in my case, so I said to the children "Ok, so that of course was not a real ghost... many people used to stage events like this for audiences to make money, billing it as an apparently paranormal spirit seance. I will, however, produce a real ghostly apparition for you today, because I know there are unseen forces in this very room".

I then proceeded to do a very successful spirit themed D'lite routine to close the show.

_________________
Michael Kras
Forum Administrator