Magic Festival - Day 11
Friday, October 03, 2008
Every day gets bigger and better!
Our day time shows were a whole lot of fun as usual, but tonight was yet another example of the variety of magic out there.
Brendan Croft was set to debut his new escape in the MagiComedy show, so immediately after the 2pm session of 'The Wizards of Aus' he set about erecting his self hoisting unit and ran final tests on his escape with Mat Unwin, Lee Cohen and me. Meanwhile Anthony DeMasi was bumping his show in and Rex Reeve and Sue-Anne were preparing for the night's activities as well. It was a real sense of community as magicians shared ideas, worked together and helped out in many different ways.
Anthony's show was totally sold out and we had lots of last minute walk-ups adamant they had to get in to see Anthony in action, so we had people sitting everywhere! His show, as you can imagine, was a likeable catalogue of classic DeMasi madness. Several AIM members turned up specifically to see what he'd conjure up and they were not disappointed! Like Barry Govan though, we need to give Anthony a longer slot next year.
Tim You was a whole lot of help too as the change over time between shows was truly impossible. At 8.30pm Anthony's crowd was still leaving and magicians were frantically tidying up a glut of playing cards, re-rigging gimmicks, shifting chairs and working as a well-oiled machine in order to get 'MagiComedy' up asap.
At 8.36pm we let the audience in!
As Brendan was performing, I was tech for this show and unable to set my 9.30pm 'Razorblades' show like I normally do, so I bit the bullet and concentrated on hitting everyone's lighting and audio cues.
Matt Unwin and Sue-Anne did great jobs as usual and Brendan, in his first stage performance, came across well. When he walked out he looked like he'd just come off the set of 'Prison Break'. Several magicians including Simon Coronel and Kamal Bhushan had come along to see what on earth Brendan had in plan, and as it turned out he was (with the assistance of Lee Cohen as Trixie) tied in 30m of Glad Wrap and suspended by his ankles while being slowly lowered face first into a cake! You definitely get something different every show!
By now, it was almost 9.30pm and everyone jumped into action and turned the theatre around for Razorblades. It was an impossible task made possible by AIM's co-operation, and the show went up at 9.45pm. One or two props were missing due to the fast turn around... but they reappeared throughout the show thanks to eagle-eyed Tim You, and the audience had a really good time! We'd only pre-sold 5 tix, but ended up with another 20 walk-ups and they were really into the show - especially the new knife-thru-finger-in-your-lap scene!
Tomorrow, as well as a 7.30pm evening 'Wizards of Aus', is MAGICO ITALIANO - a very special Italian edition of MagiComedy featuring Lee Cohen, Anthony DeMasi and Al Cappuccino! Should be a fantastic show so please come along and be amazed!