First Traveling Underground Magic Theatre Show Debuted Today!

It's always nice to get the 'first one' out of the gate. This year's Traveling Underground Magic Theatre 'The Steampunk Magician'. It's a VERY COOL show. However, I have to say that the show I did today was not quite the full Steampunk Magician show. Rather, it was a good solid magic show with a few steampunk routines thrown into the mix.
Show is called

Why was it NOT the full version of the Steampunk Magician. Mainly due to illness. I caught some sort of cold about 2 weeks ago and it's been dragging me down. I spend my free time resting or sleeping trying to recover. But it seems to no avail. Today I almost lost my voice during the show. OH, the illness has caused me to be a bit delayed in introducing a couple routines. I need to finish building a table for the new Time Machine routine and there are parts that have not yet arrived for the new Shoe Shine Box routine. That being said, I still have plenty of material so there was no shortage of fun stuff to see. I think the problem will come when these two routines are ready to put into the show because I'm going to have to take things out that are playing really really well right now.

The show opened with a routine I am calling Whif Whaf. It's a ping pong ball routine...for those who might not be aware, when Table Tennis first made it's debut in the late 1800s, it was referred to as Whif Whaf and also as Flim Flam because of the sound the balls and paddles made. Eventually in 1901, the name Ping Pong was trademarked and it became the office name for table tennis.

My fun take of the Die Box is next, filled with historical references and jokes about the 1860s (when the trick was invented). I have never used a die box in my 30 years of doing magic because it seemed like a very out of touch/dated magic trick. But when you give the prop some context, it suddenly is usable and quite fun to perform.

I'm not going to give away the entire show, but I will say my Temporal Accelerator has finally made it's way into the show, and the Mustache Trick has a nice spot in the show. The show ends with an effect with an automaton. But I won't say what kind, as I don't want to give away the surprise. I will say, it delivered the punch I was expecting.

The first show ran about 53 minutes, so about 8 minutes over. I'll have to drop something from the show to get it down to 45 minutes and I might need to pull a couple things to get the larger Time Machine routine and the Shoe Box routine in the show. But so far, I'm off to a good start!

The New Steampunk Show Continues to Take Shape

I can't recall if I've mentioned this show on this particular blog. But for some time now I've been developing a Steampunk Magic Show. But more than a magic show. The desire is to actually create a magic play of sorts. In the mean time we are working out material, testing costumes and enjoying the process.

I've presented a lot of the material already but it always can be improved. And there is nothing like a video of the show to put it all in perspective. Our most recent performance garnered a standing ovation. But it was not without some holes.......these known only to us. One of the things that became apparent from watching the video was 'scale'. Many of the early performances were more platform based performances or small audience performances. But if you put this material in front of a large group, several hundred+ then it becomes apparent that the scale is a little small.

Thankfully, that is an easy fix and we've already begun to alter the material for much larger audiences.

The next issue is converting some existing material over to steampunk. My philosophy is 'why re-invent the wheel?'  So I'm taking routines from my Artist of Mystery Show and putting it into the new steampunk show. An interesting thing has happened when I did that. The material for Artist of Mystery began to grow. In other words, I began to discover and create new material for that show. So basically, we have TWO really wild shows to offer.

One of the shows this week was actually a dual show. Meaning, we did Artist of Mystery in the first half and Steampunk in the second half. It was quite strong. But now, it leads me to some new ideas, new ways to further develop this program. By the way, if you are interested in checking out the show you can go to www.SteampunkIllusionist.com