Tonight's Razorblade Show

Just back from cleaning up after SOMETHING ABOUT NEEDLES & RAZORBLADES (the blood gets into everything!) Last night we had Tom Stevens, Jason Varga, Brendan Croft, Alex Bremner, Ben Whimpey and a few other notables in the audience, and we got some great constructive feedback. Tonight Rex Reeve, Adrian Kebbe, Michael Sullivan and Anthony DeMasi were in the audience and again we were given some great ideas.

It's really wonderful when magicians are able to support each other and help each other improve. One small detail for example - during INSANITY (our version of SMASH & STAB) one person slammed his hand down so hard on a paper bag it blew another person's bag over (and boy, did that guy look relieved!) However, it did reveal an inherent problem. My solution had been to hope it wouldn't happen... but now it has happened I realised my solution was pretty useless. Rex Reeve suggested blu-tac on the stands which we modified to double-sided tape. Now, when we put the paper bags on the stands they'll be pressed to the tape and stay in place. Brilliant!

Tonight's show was better than last night's because we used some ideas including: A better camera to show the knife slicing through my finger (we were using a wireless micro camera but it seemed prone to interference), some "foot lighting" (because shadows from above were making it hard to see the thread being pulled through my throat), and last night I dreamed up a way for the video image to remove a jacket when there was nobody on that side of the stage to take it for him.

There was one problem. Tonight the guys who chained and handcuffed me did what appeared to be a sloppy job but was actually really hard to get out of. As I'm doing the escape to music (in a body bag with a plastic bag taped over my head) I ALMOST didn't make it in time. Add to that in my panic to get out of the chains, I lost my orientation in the pitch black of the body bag and couldn't find the opening to get out of it! Lesson learned, give the volunteers a few helpful instructions so, if nothing else, the escape will actually LOOK challenging. I don't want to go through all that effort again on what looks like a really loose tie!

Tomorrow night is our first "official" night (the last two nights have been previews) so we're really looking forward to our "Premiere"!

Hope you can be there!