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FEBRUARY 1976
all, you can't afford to disappear from your audience, behind your props. You never turn your back on your audience. You wouldn't think of walking into the wings and leaving the stage empty, with nothing for your audience to look at while you are absent. If you do these things, you lose contact. As an entertainer, you are the center of attraction. You must maintain that attraction throughout the whole show.
These problems are usually solved by personal experience. The more you perform, the more polished is your act. Complete familiarity with the act leaves you free to ad lib, to interject extra little bits of business which enhance the presentation. Ideas, gags and funny bits very often occur to a performer in the middle of the act. When he's completely at ease in his presentation, he can throw in an extra bit of business and get an extra laugh, or other effect. It need not always be a funny bit. It could well be a sudden inspiration for a new move or misdirection. He tries it out and sometimes is very pleasantly surprised at the effectiveness.
Then the important thing is to remember that gag or bit of business, to be included in all future shows. That's how a good act is built up and polished, bit by bit over the years, until it looks so easy to accomplish, with so much grace and skill and timing. (Then someone comes along and steals the act, and eventually, wonders why it doesn't go over as well as when you did it!) But we are getting away from the question of applause. You can, of course, encourage applause. As you come to the denouement, the surprise finish, the punch line of the patter, raise both hands high in the air and take a bow. Instinctively, someone will applaud.
Admitted, young kiddies have no experience in applauding. It's silly to applaud a TV show at home, or a film in a movie house (if you can find a movie that's worth attending!) and it's only in the theatre, or at a live concert that the opportunity presents itself. Unfortunately, many sections of the
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public do not have the opportunity to attend theatres or concerts, where applause is the natural response to the performance provided. Thus they do not learn to applaud, especially young children. With children, one could ask, "Did you like that trick?" and the-response will be cheerful shouts of approval, in most cases.
I am confident that applause will come to my young correspondent, as he matures and gains more and more experience with his magical entertaining. Youth is always impatient. It's hard to wait. We all want to learn quickly. We want too much, too soon. Then, when we get it, it doesn't seem so important to have it anyway. I guess that's life. But it's a process we all have to go through no matter what the sages tell us. Youth may listen, may profit by advice or disregard advice, but come what may, he has to go through the experience of learning. Those with experience can pass on their knowledge but even so, the young folk still have to go through the mill, in their own way, to learn. It was ever thus.
We know that youth is a precious time of life, all too brief. And our weary old world is a marvelously exciting, new, adventurous experience for young folk growing up so fast. We are privileged to entertain the wee ones with our manic and our reward (apart from the money!) is when a little child approaches you after the show and says sweetly, "Thank you for your magic!" Now THAT is applause.
I'm always happy to hear from readers, write, anytime, but preferable NOW, to BRUCE POSGATE, 70 Mayfield Ave., Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6S 1K6.
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