Comedy Festival Update

If you're interested in getting some free tix to our Comedy Festival Show ILLUSIONARIUM, try the Corinella page in today's Herald-Sun, or listen to LIGHT-FM for a chance to win family passes.

For free tix to SOMETHING ABOUT NEEDLES & RAZORBLADES, try InPress magazine in a week or two and check out their Comedy Festival guide where we're giving away five double passes.

It's interesting rehearsing the Razorblade show. As any entertainer will tell you, it's not rehearsing that's difficult, it's getting yourself into rehearsal mode. With all the day to day phone calls and business to attend to, it can be easy to find distractions and tasks that are easier to complete that rehearsing.

This show is especially challenging because it is so different to anything I've attempted before.

Until a few weeks ago I was totally at a loss. The script had come to a standstill, the show just looked really awful from my point of view, though thankfully others disagreed. Then suddenly, after a few hours in the iTunes Store, I had some fantastic tracks to go with the tricks. Some music told the story better than my dialogue so I changed two entire sequences to musical interludes. The show had new life and I became obssessed with it again. I rewrote some of the dialogue and threw a few clues here and there into the storyline and I was excited about it and went into a frenzy of rehearsal.

Last week I got the video projector, hooked it up to the micro-camera and my new DVD player which will run the show. I tried out some new blood Teller recommended. I tested out some variations with 'Fleshwound' and 'The Horror Cutter' and, essentially, got weighed down in the technicalities. Most of my rehearsals last week ended up with me modifying props, reblocking the show and fixing gimmicks that kept breaking.

One major achievement was tracking down 20oz polystyrene cups for the shows penultimate scene. These were hard to find and in the end I had to buy a whole carton of them.

In fact, this show has an awful lot of "expendables" used up every time I perform (or rehearse) it!

Jumbo playing cards, razorblades, thread, pens, blood (several types), wineglass, polystyrene cups, plastic bags, t-shirts, tissues, napkins, wet ones, alcohol swabs, superglue, cans of Coke, spray on gloves and several more items I can't mention for fear of revealing secrets!

Now I'm at the stage in rehearsal where I can't see the magic anymore.

Every magician knows this feeling. You're standing in front of a mirror rehearsing a routine where things are floating or disappearing or linking together and you just can't see the magic. After all, magic only really happens in the mind of the viewer.

In a normal show that's just a phase you move through. In this show it can be dangerous. I just stopped myself before actually slicing right through my finger. I wasn't seeing the difference between the illusion and the reality and now I have a tiny slice on my finger that's just stopped bleeding.

Two more weeks of rehearsal to go.

The studio floor is already starting to take the toll of the "blood runs" despite the newspaper we lay down. There's not a lot of blood... it just spreads really quickly if not "contained". Hopefully we'll solve that problem next week.