Musings of an Edinburgh Magician

So, where have I been?

After the usual trip to Spain to visit the in-laws (which is always fun) we are now back in Edinburgh doing the magic thing. The Fringe, which some would say is my raison-d’être, started yesterday in its unofficial capacity, and tomorrow officially.

This year I’m doing only one show, on the 21st, and the rest of the time I’m doing street magic shows on the High Street. This means I get time to spend watching the world on this frighteningly crowded road instead of manically flyering as I’ve done for the last fifteen years and more. And it’s very interesting.

There are the usual groups of young actors lying in the middle of the road hoping that someone will take a flyer and come to the show. This doesn’t work. There are other young actors rushing up to people shouting the name of their show hoping that someone will take a flyer and come to the show. This doesn’t work, either. There are the obligatory men in nuns’ habits, scantily clad leggy actresses who wish there were not half naked in Scotland and people in bad makeup. There are the flyer teams for the big names who can’t be bothered to do the work themselves, with no ticket price on the flyers. And there are the jugglers.

I’m really enjoying being one of the Street Performers again. I started out doing shows on the Mound in 92, and once you have been there, you never become a real person again. It’s why my visits to Covent Garden were always so strange; for many years I was not one of the performers, but there was a strange history. To a certain extent this has been the situation for the last decade or so – since I spent so much time on the Mile flyering, I got to see my friends who only come to town once a year. But it wasn’t the same. This year, however, there’s the good feeling that I am once again one of the great unwashed (at least for a month) and it’s a good feeling…

It’s raining now, and I’m performing magic at a wedding in North Berwick this evening so in Street terms, it’s a day off. I need the sleep.

The Edinburgh Fringe magician. Step on up to the rope.

Last night was one of my favourite gigs of the year; the Dundee Graduation Ball. This was the fourth year I’ve performed walk around close up magic at the Ball, and it never fails to be an absolute joy. The weather was kind to us again (not as hot as last year, but not the movie set rain of 2008 either) which meant I could spend most of the time outside at the garden tables. I found myself being taken from table to table by enthusiatic audience members which does take the sting out of the cold opener at a table – there’s little need for the ‘Hello, I’m the magician this evening’ when ten people are shouting ‘hey, magician! Over here!’ at you…

Tammy at DUSA always brings in interesting acts and last night was no exception. I was chatting to Edele and Keavey from B*Witched (who are lovely, and had no objection to a tall magician invading their dressing room to grab some pre gig chocolate), but left before Danyl Johnston arrived. On a plus side, I finally got my Polaroid photo on the office wall, along with Make Sparks, who were suitably impressed with some after gig wind down magic in Tammy’s office.

Ian (back from some magic in Dundee)

I got the Scotsman on Sunday this morning and turned to page 10 to read about the magic scene in Scotland. There’s an interesting section about Gordon and his love of books, and then two paragraphs about me (to be fair, the two paragraphs before them are from our conversation, but for all intents and purposes, I start later).

I think what was most interesting about it was how a two hour conversation about the skill and dedication required to excel in this job turned into a depiction of a bitter hack living on benefits. Oh well, there’s nothing I can do about it. Such is life…

Ian, apparantly hack du jour.

At the start of the week I was interviewed by Peter Ross of Scotland on Sunday for an article about the magic scene in Scotland. After a while of getting the various photographs taken (which involved springing and then picking up about three hundred playing cards) we had a lovely chat about magic in Scotland, and how things are changing.

Peter was most interested about the various skill levels involved, and the teaching aspect (at least from my point of view). We talked about Gordon Bruce and Roy Walton (Gordon was another interviewee) and the current problems with performing shows for real people.

I’m told it should be in this Sunday’s issue, so anyone reading this in Scotland may like to pick up a copy of the Scotland on Sunday and look for the Spectrum magazine. I know I will

The Edinburgh Magician (in the Scotland on Sunday magazine).

This time of year tends to be more full of weddings here in Scotland. Performing magic at these special days is always rewarding, and for several reasons. First, everyone is there for a good time – it’s very rare that you come across any real animosity at a wedding, and if the guests are happy it makes the job of the wedding magician that much easier.

Secondly, I get to see some of the more spectacular venues in Scotland. Earleir this year I was performing magic at the wedding of Nick and Amanda at Dalhousie Castle which is a stunning building just south of Edinburgh (which made the commute that much more relaxing!). The whole venue is a self contained wonder, and the staff were efficient in a way you normally associate with romantic comedy films.

My main reason for wanting to go back is that they also run falconary sessions. Nuff said…

The Edinburgh magician. Dreaming of flying hawks in Scotland.

The year was 1997, and it was time to be a magician in the Edinburgh Fringe again. This would be my first year in the Southside without my friend Mitch Benn and to make things more interesting I was also planning to do a show in the Lab with another friend Stuart Potter called Science Made Easy. Things were not to go to plan…

The Lab was Southside maestro Lance Buckland’s idea to make the Edinburgh Fringe more accessable to ‘experimental’ shows. Based in a very small room in the new Southside ‘over the road’  it had twenty seats, basic tech and cost fifty pounds to be in the Fringe Programme (as opposed to the three hundred odd for a full show). It  was now possible for performers to try out a show without taking a second mortgage, a full ten years before the main onslaught of the various Free Fringes.

The idea of Science Made Easy was simple – Stuart and I would explain all of science in a humerous and entertaining way with the aid of many hats and a whiteboard. I still have the script somewhere, and some of it is still quite amusing. We rehearsed a bit, but I spent far too much time concentrating on my magic show, which was, after all, my bread and butter.

Disaster struck three days before the start of the Fringe. Lance had come up to Edinburgh to oversee the get in and discuss the box office computers with me (I built the machines for him from spares I had lying around the flat). After a very pleasant day I bade him farewell and he drove back down to Oxford. In the small hours of the morning he turned a corner to find a flatbed lorry being pushed up a hill, rolled his car and two days later he was gone.

I remember Mitch’s phone call the next morning – ‘have you heard about Lance?’ he asked. ‘He had a car crash last night and is in a really bad way. They don’t think he’s going to make it’. I was stunned, shocked and all kinds of other grief, standing my the war memorial clock at the Haymarket. All Fringe preparations ground to a halt.

The first show of Science Made Easy was easily the most uncomfortable performance I’ve ever done. Neither Stuart or I could remember the lines, and the general feeling of misery that filled my mind did little to help the seven people who had come along to watch us die on stage. After the show I really wanted to run after them and offer them the five pounds back.

The next morning Stuart and I had a serious chat. The show could not go on as it was, and neither of us had the time to work on it. What to do? That afternoon I was in the courtyard of the Southside and noticed that British Comedy Legend Lenny Henry was sitting on a bench while his daughter, who was waiting for a show, played nearby with some other children.

I approached gingerly and asked ‘Excuse me, can I ask your advice about something?’. He put down his notebook and looked up at me as I explained the situation – we had a bad show and no time to make it better. It was an insult to the audience, and should be cancel the run?

He was blunt – do the show. Make time to rehearse. And stop whining.

‘I’m not whining’, I said, ‘I’ve lost my voice’. He shrugged. We cancelled the show.

The Edinburgh magician, chilling in a Sunny Scotland

On Saturday I drove up to the rather splendid Carnoustie Golf Hotel in Scotland for a surprise 50th birthday party for Derek. His wife had planned a full weekend with eighteen of their closest friends, and I was asked along to perform some magic for them.

I arrived and had to hide in the car park until they were all in the restaurant before I could take my stuff up to the Hogan suite (more on that later), get ready and come back down for the close up magic session. I approached the table, said hello to Derek and quickly lost the one apprehension I had – you see, Derek had no idea that I was going to be there, and if he didn’t like magic then there was the potential for this to be really quite awkward. Luckily, he loves magic and I did a fun fifteen minute set at his table. Starters arrived, and I returned to the lobby for a few minutes.

Once the tables were cleared again I went through for the second table, and had another blast. This was one of those really fun gigs where everyone is in a good mood and appreciates the magic. This makes my job so much more rewarding, and then it was time to set up in the suite.

I got back to the third floor and the Hogan suite, which is one of the three Presidential suites in the hotel. The first bedroom was bigger than my first flat, add the living space and you are bigger than my second flat, add the second bedroom and you are approaching the size of my first house…

I set up my table, and after a while everyone came up and took their seats for the parlour magic show. Since everyone now knew what to expect (or at least who I was) there was a really good atmosphere in the room and I performed a half hour stand up show with the usual amount of audience participation and a whole lot of laughter.

All too soon it was time to hit the road back home to Edinburgh again. It was one of those gigs where I would happily have stayed all night doing more close up and parlour magic for the group, because they were that much fun

The Edinburgh Magician.

Since the Fringe is about the land on the city like a huge alien robot foot crushing hapless National Guardsmen in a 1950s horror movie I seem to be spending some time mulling over the last couple of decades, and how things have changed in recent years.

One of the more quoted facts about the Fringe in general (apart from it being the largest arts festival and how good the ticket system is now) is that anyone can take part. While this is true in principle, the reality is a long way off.

Yes, if you can stump up the three hundred odd quid it costs to be in the programme you will be able to perform your show, but these days getting a venue is a much harder proposition than back in the day. Venues now are run like businesses and there is a lenghty period of courting venue managers to try to be allotted a valuable slot at a good time. The larger venues (Assembly, Guilded Balloon, Pleasance and the slightly smaller Underbelly and Zoo) all have a surfeit of people wanting to take their spaces, and competition is hard.

Managers have to turn a profit, and there is a concerted effort to have a varied and good quality lineup so that ticket sales are better than the simple guarantee. The cost of most venues means that many of the self funded acts simply cannot afford them (I applied to the Pleasance once, in 1998. I was told that without a promoter there was no chance…)

Since the vast majority of venues are programmed, and many don’t give you a final answer until close to the deadline, so if you don’t get your first choice there’s a mad scrambling for whatever is remaining. This does increase the overall quality of the Fringe (although stinkers do, inevitably, get through) but it flies in the egalitarian face of the Fringe office’s idea that anyone can join in.

The two Free Fringes have gone some way to address this, although one of those is programmed. Other approaches have been tried, most notably by Lance Buckland. Perhaps more on that later.

The Edinburgh Magician

As may be apparent, there are a couple of new pages on the site, including this blog. A few months ago I bought a website from Jonathan Levitt at www.websites4magicians.com – the first time I’d done such a thing. For years I used to write all my web pages in Notepad, and damn, didn’t it show.

I wanted to have a news page, and somewhere to show videos. This meant looking at Jonathan’s code (with his blessing, natch) and trying to replicate what he had done. This was not easy, but I think I made a decent stab at it. The headache came with the Media page, where the flash player decided to make a mess of things. After much messing around and a very useful screen dump from Damian Jennings I found the error and things seem to be up and running again.

For the marginally interested, Safari and FireFox both put in a pesky line break in the path to the video file, which meant that the player applet hung. I have no idea why they would do that.

Ho hum. Now I have to work out how to get playlists up…

It’s six months since I installed this blog (as you can see from the dates) and I finally got round to linking to it and getting the relevant web pages uploaded. More interesting information should follow shortly.

And yes, that could mean more information that is interesting, or information that is more interesting than this. Either way I think it’s likely.