There is only a week and a half left to enter the Gig Horror Story Contest. Please consider helping us celebrate the month of October by sharing one of your performing horror stories for a chance to win a $30 online gift card to the Albuquerque Magic and Juggling shop.
The deadline to join is the 21st of October. Starting on the 22nd you can vote for your favorite at the facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/#!/creatingperformingliving
This is a contest where performers share their worst and/or most hilarious performance experiences. In some cases the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Entry By Bob Abdou
Horror Entertainment stories should end with a shotgun or a drink, many drinks
here is mine:
A family from Philadelphia Pennsylvania hires me for their daughters birthday party. I arrive at the home and ring the door bell. All the children run to the door and look out the window and scream “Mr.Puppet is here, Mr.Puppet is here!!
I remember telling myself “this is going to be a party to remember”, and was I right. This party happened to me 8 years ago and I still wake up sweating and screaming at night.
Back to the story: So the door opens up and everybody welcomes me inside the home. Lovely family and fun children, all waiting for my show to begin for the birthday girl, Karen who is turning 5 years old.
The mother tells me the show is in the basement. As I pass through the whole house and kitchen I see a door leading downstairs. I am not used to a basement because I lived in Atlanta, and homes don’t have basements there. I look at the thin area that I have to walk down and think “no problem”. I go back to my car and have to carry by hand all 4 suitcases down the stairs. I do get some help which is nice to have with so many suitcases to carry by myself. All the while, the children are running around the house and the adults are all in the kitchen getting drunk. When I go downstairs, I notice I have to bend down to walk because the ceiling in the basement is low and there are beams going across. So I walk straight, lean down, walk straight, lean down (get the picture) I realize I have to set up between the beams so I can stand up straight and do my puppet show.
Ok, I am done and ready to perform. I go upstairs in the kitchen and tell the parents the show is ready to start. All the children run downstairs and NO adults, they all stay upstairs and keep drinking. Ok, showtime: I start my show with a funny silly skeleton marionette named “Bob” and he plays a baby piano, really cute and funny act. I have been doing my “Bob” routine for 7 years with great success. Not this time, when Bob appears on stage, Karen the birthday girl screams bloody murder and runs upstairs crying. All the rest of the children stare at me like I just told them there is no santa claus. I also froze, I am standing between beams holding “Bob” a marionette and don’t know what to do. All you can hear is Karen screaming upstairs. I tell the children, ok this act is over time for the next. Within a few minutes Karen, her mother and a few adults come downstairs and stay and watch the show. I can see in their faces, they are NOT happy because they are stuck watching a “puppet show” and not drinking with the rest of the adults upstairs having a grand time.
I go to my next act, it is a ventriloquist puppet routine. As I start telling silly jokes, one adult in the audience says to me “do you make your own puppets?” she says this out of the clear blue sky. She has no idea I am doing a routine and her question just interupts the act. Knowing they are already unhappy being downstairs, I say to the woman “No, mam I don’t. When I say this to the lady, the rest of the adults start laughing at her and making her feel really bad, I have no idea why? All of a sudden the lady, who asked me the question makes a fist with both hands and starts to yell at me at the top of her voice “DON’T CALL ME THAT, DON’T CALL ME THAT!!! I have No idea what she is talking about, then one of the laughing adults says to her, “The puppeteer called you and Old mam” (which is not true) I then realize she thinks I called her an “old mam” what I really said was “no mam”. Remember I come from atlanta where we say “yes sir and no mam”. She was FURIOUS!!. All of a sudden I realize this is beginning to turn into a show from Hell, with Karen running upstairs crying and now this lady screaming at me, I don’t know what to do. I apologize to the lady and keep going. she does not like what is going on and leaves, she storms upstairs, pounding the staircase with her feet like a big baby. I then look out in the audience and the look on everybody’s faces is white as a ghost.
What do I do? I just continue, nobody laughs, there is a dead silence throughout the rest of the show. When my show is finally over, I take a bow. I am not kidding when I say this, as I lean back from my bow, the room is EMPTY. When I was taking my bow, everybody and I mean EVERYBODY runs upstairs to end not only their nightmare but mine.
For the first time in my career, I needed a drink and I don’t drink. I am now downstairs packing my stuff away and I can hear everybody upstairs singing “Happy Birthday” to Karen. I usually sing along but in this case it was better I keep my distance.
All of a sudden, Karen the birthday girl comes downstairs holding a piece of paper, I thought it was a home made thank you note or something about my fun puppets. It was not, it was the check. The mother sent Karen to pay me. Karen runs up to me, sticks out her hand to give me this piece of paper, when I take it out of her hand, she turns around and runs upstairs never to be seen or heard from again.
I felt lower than a snakes belly. Wait, there is more. The worst part was that I had to make 4 trips back to my car, no help walking up and down and through the party in the living room and kitchen, nobody talked to me or even looked at me. I felt like I had just
did the worst show they have ever seen and I felt like I just performed for the worst family ever.
Once I got all packed, I sit in my car crying my eyes out. I was 44 years old and I’m crying in my car all by myself. I took my index finger and stuck it in my mouth like a gun and pulled my thumb back to make it look like I just shot myself cause that is how I felt. Now 8 years later, I still remember this show as the only one where I wanted to blow my brains out.
Bob Abdou/Mr.Puppet
www.mrpuppet.com
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This is a contest where performers share their worst and/or most hilarious performance experiences. In some cases the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Entry By Martin Ewen
One of 26 stories from my book, ‘Panto Damascus’
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005E1JXF8
EDINBURGH
Call me deluded, call me a muckety-muck, but the Scottish and I have this thing. I was at the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, working off the main pitch, down a small lane. I had a corner. Just down from me was a four-piece jug band whose music I used from time to time to wiggle about to, as I temporarily overcame my ‘Lurk’ character’s utter boredom.
After a couple of hours, the jug band stopped and passed me on their way to a pub across the road, inviting me for a drink when I finished. I finished immediately and hurried inside. The band and I got on famously—I liked beer and they liked beer, I have a mouth like an un-tethered firehose and they were probably sick of listening to each other anyway.
They hadn’t finished for the day, however—they had a gig later on in the evening at a club and they invited me along to dance for them. I was into it, so we got ready to leave by buying about another six rounds, then left.
The club was large, holding about three hundred people. We got there early and met the cool and casual management who bought us all a drink. I checked out the dance-floor in front of where the band would play and the surface was OK, not too slippery when wet and the ceiling was high enough for my stilts. There were two rows of ceiling fans that were not yet turned on and I marked out their positions with gaffer tape on the ground, but it still left me lots of room to move.
The night wore on and the place started filling up a bit. The band only had to do one set, so we waited till about 10PM before going on, by which time the place was pretty much packed. The Edinburgh Festival was in full swing. It had been a long day, so I arranged to come out for the last ten minutes of their thirty-minute set. I dutifully pranced out and wiggled and waggled and kicked my legs about and generally simulated being groovy wearing my white face and tank helmet until about halfway through, when for reasons still a mystery to me to this day, I strayed into the territory of the now rapidly whirring metallic fan blades.
The first blade merely dug superficially into my tank helmet and flung it from my head, thankfully without damaging the blade or slowing the fan down at all.
My reactions (which is why I could have been a fighter pilot or game show host) were lightning quick and I tilted my head back as I moved forward so that the next impact only broke my nose at the bridge sending a minor torrent from both nostrils and the gash at the top of my nose itself. All this paled into insignificance with the third strike, which carved a six to eight inch slash right across my forehead.
Now as some of you know, head wounds tend to bleed profusely, but even with my prior head-bleeding experiences this one immediately impressed me.
I staggered blind ‘round the nightclub with blood pouring down my white face and cascading from my chin. I think people found it hard to ignore me, which was a shame really, and there were loud screams and panicked footfalls as people tried to avoid being bled on (I did hear later that at least three people fainted). As a true professional, I stayed upright, eventually found a wall, and sat on a ledge, where I peered curiously through my scarlet veil at the enormous pool of blood forming in the lap of my stilt trousers.
A barman holding a huge handful of sodden tissue appeared and pressed it to my face as I wrestled with my stilt-trousers and then my stilts. Towards the end I could hear the wail of an approaching ambulance. I was led through the crowd pressing a red soggy mass of toilet paper to my head. I can remember seeing a few sympathetic looks my way by pretty girls, and had it not been for the medical professionals I might have stayed.
At the hospital I spent three hours getting stitches across my forehead and having my nose plugged. I also seemed to be a source of entertainment to a constant stream of nurses who peeked into my cubicle while trying to keep straight faces, then departed giggling down the hall.
Released at about 3AM, I faced a choice: I could wander back to my hotel and wake the next morning all streaked and swollen and potentially embarrassed, or I could return to the bar.
I walked back in and ordered a beer. The barman said,
‘You were really good. If we’d known, we’d ‘ve turned the fans off.’
I found the next day that my helmet covered the stitches on my forehead nicely, and my whiteface covered the mess of my nose (only bleeding a bit when I removed it) so luckily I wasn’t without an income.
It was years later other performers told me that everyone had been calling me ‘Frankenstein’ behind my back and laughing. I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. The best memory I’ve kept from the affair was walking into some bistro days later and having a table see me, stand and clap. I must have given them a dirty look from underneath my stitches, and one of their number approached quite gently and explained that they weren’t taking the piss, that their ovation was sincere, that they were all staff at the bar I’d gotten my head chopped up at and were applauding me for having returned to the bar from the hospital.
As I’ve said, the Scottish and I have this thing. Call me deluded, call me a muckety-muck, but alcoholism can sometimes possess a certain brittle dignity.
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This is a contest where performers share their worst and/or most hilarious performance experiences. In some cases the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
OUCH — By Happy the Human Pincushion.
As an Extreme human pincushion act I always have a concern that something may go horribly wrong on stage. As a professionally trained Body Piercer I do everything I possibly can to ensure my safety as well as the Venue Staff and patrons. I do live torture shows involving Needles, Hooks and spears. My biggest fear when I do public hook suspensions is that I will tear. Well on Wednesday November 25th 2009 I realized that fear at Exit Nightclub in Chicago. I was contracted to do a Happy the Human Pincushion show. My set or show theme varies with every booking. As a Professional stage performer and socially conscience person I try to inspire and enlighten people through my performances. That is one of the things that sets me apart from other human pincushion acts. So in this instance I decided to perform a Self Atonement Ceremony. Consisting of A frontal two point chest suspension, commonly referred to as a “suicide suspension” a two point chest pull and a chest cinder block dead lift.
I pierce my self with 12Ga. Hooks live on stage but with hook suspension that needs to be done by someone that I know and trust, someone that specializes in hook suspension. Unfortunately the two piercers I normally use were unavailable so one of them sent me two replacement Piercers. I knew both of them and trusted them that wasn’t the problem. The problem was I didn’t listen to my gut. The 6Ga. hook in my left Pectoral (CHEST) felt a little shallow. It just didn’t seems right, I mentioned it to the piercers and we agreed it was a little shallow but I decided to do the show as is.
I started my performance by piercing my cheek with a 12 Ga. Spear. Then I pierced my chest in between the 6Ga. Hooks with two 12Ga. Hooks. As part of my Atonement I proceeded to pull on the smaller hooks using two chains attached to a fence that was in the venue. I then proceeded to lift a twenty six lb. cinderblock off the floor via the two smaller chest hooks. Everything was going smoothly. As part of the finale I hoisted my self up off the floor by the two six gauge hooks and began to swing back and forth. (Hey this is a contest about gruesome performance stories so if this is too graphic for you, then just click the like button and move on because it’s about to get worse]. So here I am swinging back and forth with a 12Ga. Spear through my cheeks a 26 lb. cinderblock hanging off my chest suspended two feet off the ground and all of a sudden I can hear and feel my flesh tear! And then I shifted slightly and looked down and sure enough the left hook tore all the way through leaving me hanging there on one hook! The crowd gasped, and my safeties quickly supported me, lowered me down and got me back stage. Now for most people just watching “Happy” in action is horrific enough Can you imagine the shock and horror people felt when they saw me tear.!!!!!!
So they get me back stage and Steve starts stitching me up. At one point I asked Steve if this made me cool because I didn’t a Lidicane shot before getting the stitches. He got mad at me for making him laugh. Truth be told even though I had a one inch piece of flesh hanging off my chest it really didn’t hurt at all. And Steve stitched me up better than any doctor ever has. Happy’s honor. I felt bad that the show had to be cut short but everyone cheered when I came out all stitched up and fine. It really sucks though as a performer to have something tragic like this happen, but if it were easy and pain free (pun intended) everyone would be doing it.
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This is a contest where performers share their worst and/or most hilarious performance experiences. In some cases the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Entry By Dan Menendez
Two months somewhere in Korea
What was just a phone call for my agent , was three shows a day no days off for two months in the outback of Korea for me. It was late summer and the shows were outside at a Pottery and Ceramics Festival in a small filthy town, four hours drive from Seoul, very close to the DMZ. No stage or covering just cement, hot sun and occasional monsoon down pours.
My hotel was on the other side of a freeway, which I crossed by foot and walked a half mile to the festival site. The hotel was called a “Love Hotel” because it was where Korean Men took their mistresses for a few hours romp. Inside the hotel; no lobby but smelly dark hallways lined with shelves of pornographic VHS tapes. The room had a small space for shoes inside the door which reeked of Kimchi and then another door into a very small room with a tiny bed. Outside my window was a fenced enclosure with about twenty dogs who seemed to fight amongst themselves all night long. The longer I was there the less dogs were out there (you can guess what would happen to them). My TV had two blurred channels of Korean soap operas etc.
No one at the site spoke English although later I learned that several did but would never let me know they could. After doing three strange shows the first day. I walked a mile into the dusty little town trying to find food. When I entered the door of the first restaurant I came to, I was physically chased out the door by an old women. I don’t know why. I found a small market and got some bad western food- peanut butter, bread etc. four weeks later I found a large grocery store which was hidden in the town on a road I would have never walked down. I existed on Spicey Ramen, big sushi rolls (kimbap), a large radish with kimchi flavor sauce cut in to crunchy squares and chewy hunks of squid from a airtight packet.
Every day during my second show a long line of US attack helicopters would fly right over the festival to the DMZ and then fly home after the third show. It became part of my show, we would stop and watch the sixty or so choppers go over in a straight line. It put a strange vibe on the show every time.
One day I was walking to the store and in the ditch next to the path was several soldiers with rifles right down by my feet. I realized that they were everywhere (about 400 of them) dug in at the intersection I guess doing a drill. I just kept walking right through the whole thing.
My favorite thing to do was to watch the locals play a game called “Joe Kool” which was two person team tennis with a soccer ball using their feet. I am an avid soccer player and kept asking if I could play but no would would ever let me?
The other entertainment at the festival was very traditional Korean dance and singing. The singing was the loudest worst thing I had ever heard and I could tell the Koreans hated it too, as it would clear the seats.
I found someone who would translate for me and started putting Korean words in my show. One day I asked him how to say “Big Finish” and he said “Golae” So I tried it several times thinking I wasnt saying it right but he said I was and I got strange looks. I later found out I was saying the word “Whale” because he thought I wanted to say “Big Fish!”. I would say “And now…whale!” and do my big trick.
This is just a small sample of the experiences I had for the two months and 180 shows in Korea. Everyday was a challenge.
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This is a contest where performers share their worst and/or most hilarious performance experiences. In some cases the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Entry By Anonymous
I got my car washed and I emptied it out including all of my performance equipment. The next day I forgot to reload the car and ended up going to show without most of my equipment. Good thing we’ve though hard about what I would do if this scenario would occur. So we borrowed fruit to juggle, performed Slydyni’s paper balls over the head, did card tricks, pickpocketing, acrobatics, and did our rope escape.
Another horror story was performing at a nudist colony for a guy’s funeral wake but that’s another story.
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This is a contest where performers share their worst and/or most hilarious performance experiences. In some cases the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Entry By Keith Cobb
December 24th 1997. I wake up sick as a dog but have to get up because I have 7 gigs booked that day as Santa and there is no way to get them covered. The first one is a two hour gig at an office downtown. Have to wear a hankercheif over my face under the beard so I don’t cough stuff up on the kids. Stagger back the three blocks to my car soaking wet in my suit from sweet as the downtown winds cuts right through me. I some how manage to drive home and head to bed because I have six more house visits scheduled that evening. I wake up 4 hours later to find that 2 1/2 feet of snow have fallen while I slept. I dig out my big van, get into my suit and the van won’t start. When I had staggered in eairler I had left the door ajar and the battery had run down. I dig out my minivan in the santa suit. This is a toyota van that has no traction at all in the snow and fellt like it is going to tip over everytime the wind blows. I slip and slide all over the city and suburbs at 5-10 miles an hour and can barely see straight as the snow is still falling and my fever is so high. By the time I get to the last gig I am 2 1/2 hours behind schedule. I get home just before midnight and my drunked abusive, screaming COP neighbor has his mentally unstable teenage home from the mental hospital who is hanging out of their upstairs window throwing cans of food at anything that passes. I get inside, peel off the suit and see my answering machine is flashing. Maybe it’s someone who called to wish me a happy birthday. Did I mention it was my birthday. No such luck, two messages from clients earlier wonder where I was and one from my mom telling me my uncle had earlier that day had a heart attack and died.
What do I win?
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This is a contest where performers share their worst and/or most hilarious performance experiences. In some cases the names have been changed to protect the innocent.
Entry By Nina Cheney
We landed at LAX a day before a gig at the Casino Ballroom on Catalina Island. Our friend Peter and his brother met us at the airport, ready to escort us to the ferry at LA Harbor. The airline lost our luggage which included most of our juggling props and my costume, so we hurriedly found a prop shop (this was 23 years ago, mind you), bought some “acme” brand of clubs and arrived at the ferry just in time to board. Peter’s brother had a leg cast on and was hobbling across the parking lot, so I ran back to accompany him. When we reached the dock, the ferry had left. It was 5 feet away and departing fast. Believe me, I considered jumping. My juggling partner and Peter sadly waved to us from the ferry as we stood in shock; no amount of shouting or begging would make it stop or come back. We were stuck there in the terminal for several hours until the next ferry was scheduled to leave.
Finally arriving at the island, I scrambled to find costume pieces and ended up looking like a middle-aged tourist. We fashioned props. The clubs were awful. We pulled off the show, of course, but needless to say, it wasn’t our best! Luckily we had our torches. Our lost luggage was delivered the next morning, and we relaxed and proceeded to enjoy the rest of our time on the island.
A year to the day later, we were driving across country to perform at the Vermont Comedy Festival. I was pregnant, and not due for 10 weeks, but my contractions started around Chicago. We stopped in Cleveland to have a pizza, but instead we had a baby. Callie was 3 lbs. (Thank goodness this didn’t happen on the cruise ship we’d been working on just a week prior). Now Callie is 22 and a college senior!
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Walkaround Tip #22
Take It Seriously
Walkaround entertainment is not simply something to make money with when you can’t book a regular show. It is not simply something that inferior entertainers do because they can’t do a solid show. It is a serious art-form in it’s own right and should be respected.
There are many challenges associated with doing well at walkaround. There are many fine entertainers with award-winning stage shows who don’t have the knack for it. It is not something that just anyone can do. If done poorly it is an embarrassment for both the performer and for the audience. If done well it is a joy, a memorable moment, a real connection to the art that we love.
Part of what makes it work is the temperament of the performer. They have to have a lot of the qualities that I address in many of the other tips this month, namely: good hygiene, friendliness, and confidence. You don’t have to be a born performer to become a great walkaround entertainer. You just have to appreciate the art-form for what it is and have a sincere desire to improve.
Most importantly, taking walkaround entertainment seriously will give you the proper attitude to begin a serious study of the genre. A truly great performer is always looking to learn new things and to improve what they do.
I wish you many happy hours of sharing joy and helping to further our beloved art-form.
Walkaround Tip #29
Pre-planned Comedy
Or, Using Lazzi to Strengthen Your Improvisation
The way to be really entertaining when you improvise is to have lots of bits of business in your repertoire that you can fit into different situations. In this way, you can punch up what you are doing and you will seem absolutely brilliant. This works for both verbal and non-verbal comedy.
This technique is very old, probably as old as comedy itself. There is an art-form called Commedia Dell’ Arte, that capitalizes on this technique and calls these little bits of business “lazzi”. Commedia Del’ Arte is a theater style that was very common in Italy many hundreds of years ago. Literally, it translates as comedy of the artists.
These lazzi could be dropped into almost any scene to liven them up or draw them out and make them longer. Often they would revolve around a problem that would happen and would need to be solved— there was a fly that kept bothering the performer? He would catch the fly and prepare it as a meal. Or the performer might need to make a very important speech, but forget himself at the sight of a beautiful women. Every time he tried to make his point he would lose himself again in reverie. The comedic situations and problems to be solved are endless.
This is why you need to pay attention as you are improvising. Problems will come up. Remember them! Think about them after the show is over. Problems are a blessing, because it is through problems that comedy occurs. It is through this process that you will build up your own stock of lazzi.
After you have been doing walkaround for a while, you will notice that the same kind of problems seem to occur over and over. People will try to heckle with the same lines time and again. This is great because you can be prepared for a heckle with a line that is totally appropriate. Your retort will seem organic, even though you may use it in every single show.
When you start to notice where people are likely to make a comment, you can even set it up, and encourage them to say the line. Every time I go to balance a borrowed shoe on my nose, someone says “Eww!”
I always reply, “Oh, grow up!” It isn’t a very funny line, but because it seems to come out of the moment, it gets a huge laugh every time. I always pause extra long before bringing the shoe near my nose, to give them time to make the predictable response, so that I am set up to say my line.
The most important thing to remember about using these little pre-planned bits of business is that you must only use them if they seem to naturally come out of what is happening. If it looks to your audience that it is a stock piece of your repertoire, it will lack impact. Be prepared at any moment to ditch what you have planned and move on to something else.
Don’t forget: even your killer material requires improvisation to sell it.
