Posts
Okay, I feel like a magic polygamist! My two “ladies” are not women, but IBM Magician’s Rings. For years I was active with Ring #170, Orlando. I was brought into Ring leadership by Bev Bergeron to help in doing the newsletter (when we used to print and mail it!) as soon as I finished the intensive work on my Masters degree from Rollins College. And then… 2 years ago my wife and I moved to the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and I hooked up, pardon the pun, with Ring #320. Over Mother’s Day weekend, I was back in Orlando to see my youngest daughter graduate from Rollins College and to be with our grown children who still live there. It so happened that a magic name, Tony Clark, was in town for his lecture, so I got a chance to get together again with some of the Orlando Ring members at the IHOP meeting room.
This month’s column will be a double report on recent ring events in both rings:
The first was the May 10th lecture by Tony Clark at Ring #170 in Orlando. Tony is well known in the magic word and has been seen many times on a number of Gay Blackstone produced TV shows such as, The World’s Greatest Magicians and Masters of Illusion. Tony is known as a consultant for magic in movies and just finished working on Nicolas Cage’s latest movie which features magic. Clark was a student of Slydini and learned well from the master. He stressed the concept of “tension” and “relax” in misdirection.
He opened with a Slydini jumbo coin and silk routine. All the moves were logical and justified in secretly moving and loading the coin. The jumbo coin appeared in an empty silk and kept disappearing and appearing and finally the coin vanished in a shower of silver confetti. Tony followed up with a Slydini Classic, the Knotted Silks. Anyone who has ever witnessed the white silks magically tying and untying knows the power of this simple effect. Clark used two Champaign goblets and made the knots migrate from one set of silks to the other.
Tony then took a seat for some examples of Slydini’s table magic. Most know that Slydini was an expert at “lapping” or secretly dropping items or retrieving them from his lap. The cleverness is in making all the actions undetectable. Tony Clark showed an impromptu knife-swallowing bit that blew away the crowd of magicians. At just the right moment and combined with the “tension and relax” technique and body shifting, he was able to convince the crowd that he actually swallowed a table knife. He then invited up a magican in the audience and immediately taught him the technique. Tony followed up with cigarettes and coins, the same coins he exchanged with Slydini a generation ago. Tony Slydini was New York based and Clark took lesions from him once a week by commuting into Manhattan from his home in Connecticut. He credits Slydini and a love of magic instilled into him with saving his life from steroid abuse. Clark had been a power-lifter and “ripped” at over 225 pounds. He focused on magic and is now a healthy 165 pounds at 45 years old.
Clark wrapped up the lecture with some dealer demos such as his beer bottle-through-the-body or through-the-table. It is a new updating of the old table-magic bit using a salt shaker and a clever gimmick. He did his version of 3 borrowed rings in tissue paper, the classic Slydini migrations done to music. He showed a clever small box without a back that made loading the rings simple. As I watched Tony, I could see the same movements that Slydini used to make. Tony did them naturally and well. The old Chavez Magic School uses to also teach a series of identical body moves and poses so that the look of a Chavez graduate is almost identical.
Tony Clark then demonstrated his handling of the Keller Robe tie and Gypsy Balloon. He had a helium balloon and did the Classic Gypsy Thread routine using the string on the balloon! Eugene Berger would be thrilled. Clark then told about how his young son helped him create the illusion and how he used it as the finale of his Lake Tahoe Casino show followed by a balloon drop over the audience. Both Dan Stapleton and I saw the possibilities of an equally intriguing and emotionally powerful finale for a stage show in the same vein as the Chinese Snowstorm.
Tony Clark is a likable performer and good lecturer with valuable information and products. President Craig Fennessy and the Ring are keeping up the quality and fun of the Ring experience! The next morning it was back in the car for the 14 hour car-ride back home to Virginia.
I had a great time performing with Ring #320 the Saturday before Easter at the annual Waynesboro Theatrical Alliance Festival in Waynesboro, Virginia. They are a local group of boosters and supporters for restoring The Wayne Vaudeville Theater in downtown Waynesboro. The job is almost completed. The theater had been a vaudeville showcase and began to decline, as most downtown theaters did, in the late 1950s as suburban flight gutted many downtowns. This theater did hang on into the 80s. Mark Cline, the owner of several tourist attractions and the Haunted House at Natural Bridge, Virginia told me that as a youngster he sneaked in through a bathroom window , in the Wayne Theater, without paying the admission to see Phil Morris’ Ghost Show. Years later, Mark said he sent Phil the $1.50 admission with an apology! The old theater is still there and will soon be ready for a new generation of shows and art films.
The festival was held in the park by the river that runs through the town. Waynesboro was the old industrial center of the Shenandoah Valley and filled with factories such as DuPont Paints and Mohawk Carpets. Then in the 80s the deindustrialization of American began as factories moved to the third world seeking cheaper labor. The impact on the town, and many towns across America was devastation, depopulation and dilapidation. The collapse of jobs left unemployment and poverty. The simplistic answer from some politicians is that the workers should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and with no help from anyone settle for permanent poverty from odd-jobs and part time work with one-third of their former income. Other politicians grudgingly approved of minimal welfare relief along with calling those displaced by the industrial decline, lazy, stupid and deserving of what happened to them. The blame game has led to the current political war in this country. The fact is that the modern world is built on Industrial power and there is no way to assure world leadership and a large and prosperous middle class and employment without it. The past 30 years has been with the gluttony of financial speculation, market bubbles and personal and government debt all in an attempt to smother over the jobs problems that caused a Waynesboro, Virginia and Luray, Virginia and Detroit, Michigan and Youngstown, Ohio and Camden, New Jersey and thousands of industrial towns across this great land.
Perhaps American can experience a national Easter, a Resurrection. At least in a small way, The Wayne Theater may be a part of the resurrection of Waynesboro.
Our IBM Ring performance area was set up in the open air Pavilion and the wind was strong. Those that have never performed outdoors can not appreciate the effect of wind on silks, ropes, tables on wheels, props on tables and backdrop curtains. Steve Pittella set up a great pipe and drape backdrop and we struggled all afternoon fighting the wind. He braced it well and it did help cut some of the wind. Ring President Eddie Tobey was the magic Master of Ceremonies and opened the show with a cute Trevor Lewis Clap-o-meter where audience clapping moves a thermometer. He introduced Steve Pittella. Steve is an old pro who spent many years in New York City as a children’s performer. He had a colorful routine with lots of audience participation and engagement with the kids. I loved his packing tables all Formica covered and cleverly foldable. He got a lot of mileage out of a three kids in costumes and a comic kazoo version of the Blue Danube Waltz. Eddie was back on with some MC fun.
Richard Gimbert followed with a nice Stratosphere routine, What’s Next and orange silks and oranges and Hippity Hop Rabbits. Eddie kept up the momentum by pulling a gigantic mouth coil out of a marshmallow. John Coleman did a Professor’s Nightmare and the classic comic “Vanishing Bandana”. Eddie then introduced Dennis Phillips who brought up three young volunteers for a comedy version of 20th century Silks with a Breakaway wand and Fan . The center silk vanished from a change bag which only contained a string of sausages. He then asked for a mother in the audience, who was the best cook. Naturally all the kids volunteered their Moms but one was chosen. Dennis put her hand in the Disecto carrot-chopper, which he called the Kitchen Magician, but all ended well.
Dennis Phillips
L to R: President Tobini, Secretary Dennis Phillips, Richard Gimbert, John Coleman, Steve Pittella
Photo by Yvonne Tobini made at River Park in Waynesboro, Virginia April 23, 2001
No comments:
Post a Comment