The crucible

It's miraculous that I haven't done a solid freakout yet, though it's been patiently waiting offstage for a while now. Luckily I knew what to expect, so I haven't thrown in the towel and I'm just moving through it.

What happened was I was thinking about the dress rehearsal I'm doing for the big magic show and I pictured, just for a second, myself performing for all my friends and thought...

"They aren't going to laugh. I'm going to try to be funny and they aren't going to laugh."

It went downhill from there. I started questioning my potential, if I have what it takes, if I should bother, etc. I told myself, "I'll never be as good as Mac King." The whole nine yards. I got very resigned, very quickly.

And then I stopped myself. I stopped letting my mind go in that direction.

Instead, I started thinking about the situation until I came up with an inspiring way to relate to working on my stage show. I realized that, honestly, I am somewhere between amuzing and funny, depending on the day, and the show WILL be entertaning, all the more so, the more work I put into it. I do have the capacity to entertain. Cocky perhaps, but I am reliable for it.

BUT, it won't be as funny as Mac King's show is. It couldn't be. Hell, when Mac started out, you can bet your boopie he wasn't as funny as he is now.

And that's what got me excited about improving my act. I got inspired by the idea of performing over and over again, discovering what works and what doesn't, writing new material and trying it out, improvising and keeping the winning bits and ditching the ones that bomb. That's part of what I'm up to and, frankly, it's one of the most exciting parts.

Related to that, the length of the stage show has been decreased to 20 minutes, which I think is fantastic. Instead of trying to fill a 30 to 40 minute show, I can focus my attention on doing solid material I'm really committed to, have experience with and want to hone.

The crucible begins.



By the way, if you didn't get an invitation to the dress rehearsal, it was not intentional. Let me know you'd like to come and I'll give you the details.