Archive for August, 2009
 Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing in Peru
Prologue: I had heard about Murph early on when I was getting started in the early 80s, but I think the first time I actually sa2 Murph perform was at a performance festival in Burlington, Vermont back in 1986. I had wanted to get to a juggling convention in San Jose, California, but when that fell through I made every attempt to make up for it by getting myself to other events that were a bit closer to home (I lived in Ottawa at the time). Flash forward to February 1989 and the Calgary Winter Festival and Murph and I got to work side by side Murph with an amazing cast of performer… Most recently I got to work with Murph at the 2009 Edmonton International Street Performer’s Festival and had the most wonderful surprise happen while we were on our ladders on stage together… For some reason we started what looked like a high-speed chase, but on ladders the speed that we were moving at was ridiculously slow and incredibly funny… It was one of those comedy gems that we hadn’t planned, but that’s I’d love to explore some more.
STATS
Name: Tom Murphy – Murph.
Birthday: February 27, 1952.
Place of Birth: Pottsville PA, USA.
Started Performing/Working in the Industry: 1976.
Discipline: Slapstick comedy, Physical comedy.
Websites: http://www.murphclown.com
Video Link: http://www.murphclown.com/video.html
Venues Worked: See List below
Performance venues:
Teaching venues:
Hot 10 Questions:
- What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream and why? • Crema di rizo – It is actually gelato which is actually ice cream in Italian. It is so very creamy and it will always remind me of the town of Como and a fantastic week of rock climbing nearby.
- Name one movie that would make it to your Top 10 all-time great films. • Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
- What was your favorite toy from childhood? • Would have to be a six shooter and holster!
- Who were your biggest inspirations when you got started? • Bounce from Locomotion Vaudeville, Fred Garbo, Fantasy Jugglers and Slap Happy ( all east coast variety acts in the 70’s) then later Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and The Three Stooges.
- From the world of animation what one character do you most identify with or see yourself in? • A cross between the Road Runner, Popeye and Bambi.
- Name something that scares you. • The greed in America and especially in politics and growing old without a partner.
- Apart from the entertainment industry, name one other job you’ve had. • Counting and cleaning diapers for a diaper delivery service.
- What’s something you haven’t done yet that you’d like to try? • Heli skiing in Alaska.
- What’s your least favourite thing about being a performer? • Anything to do with air travel!
- If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? • “You’ve tried your humanly best! Good on ya mate!“
The Nugget:
Pick one nugget of wisdom you’ve picked up from your career in Show Business to share with the World.
“To performer want-to-bes and some who already are; honesty is invaluable in your performance. Don’t ask the audience to believe anything you wouldn’t believe. . . and the audience is smarter than you think.“
–Tom Murphy
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 Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing in Peru
A few weeks back now I had a gig performing for the Small Ritual Coffee Society, a church based group who were opening a coffee shop in Whiterock. They had hoped to open in time for the annual Tour de Whiterock bicycle race because prior to the start of the race there’s a block party/sidewalk sale and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to launch the opening of the shop. Unfortunately they didn’t quite make the deadline, but having me come out to perform was still excellent public relations to drum up awareness of the soon-to-be-open Coffee Shop.
The person who contacted me to do the gig is someone I’ve worked with in the past and when the budget didn’t quite meet with my standard rates I made an exception and agreed to the performance under the condition that my older son Koji could perform as well.
Koji’s been demonstrating some interest in doing a bit of performing, so I’ve tried to find some opportunities for him to log some stage time and have been encouraging him to work on his skills. The picture comes from an appearance he made during the annual school talent show and I was proud as punch with the performance he put in.
Practice makes perfect as they say, so I figured any opportunity I could come up with to give Koji some stage time would help him develop confidence in front of an audience and encourage him to continue working on expanding his material…
So the big day comes and we drive out to Whiterock and the performance scenario is less than ideal, but I figure this too is a good part of Koji’s education, because sometimes flexibility in these situations is your greatest asset. We do the first show while the main stage is virtually blasting us out – challenging, but we survive. Nachos for lunch to celebrate! Show #2 goes much more smoothly and we don’t have to compete with sounds to actually do the show which is a huge improvement. The client is happy, we’re happy, we get paid all is good!
On the way home Koji turns to me and says –
Dad… I don’t want to say your a slacker or anything, but people pay you a lot of money for not a lot of work… I mean isn’t it like your actually playing???
I turn to him alarmed that he’s learned the truth, hold my finger up to my lips and…
“Shhhhhhhhh… DON’T TELL ANYBODY…”
him. Cheeky little monkey got the joke right away, but also realized that there’s some truth to it too. Find something you love doing and you never work a day in your life!
Posted in Performance, Thoughts | Comments Off on The Secret my Son Discovered
 Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing in Peru
Last week I talked about Pacific Contact… This week I offer a similar-ish resource for performers in British Columbia or who would like to tour in schools in British Columbia. What Pacific Contact is for Performing Arts Centers, Artstarts is for touring schools in the province. Artscan is the annual showcase for artists to present their work to buyers in the school market and artists who have successful showcases have built very lucrative tours out of their investment of time and resources into attending the event.
Much like Pacific Contact though, if you don’t happen to be one of the artists that apply and gets a showcase the appeal of attending the conference is severely diminished if you aren’t actually seen in performance by the buyers.
A few years back friends who have done very well from the tours that have been set up through ArtStarts suggested that I meet with the people in the office who help arrange the tours. I went in and had a meeting and learned more about what’s involved in preparing a study guide (a virtually mandatory aspect of touring schools) and what sort of schedule was involved with school tours, but also came up against a bit of a prejudice towards artists who had developed their material primarily for the street and festival milieu. The overwhelming feeling that I was given was that these tours were reserved for ‘higher art.’
I found this amusing and left the offices of Artstarts knowing that I could jump through the hoops required to provide them with a show that met their ‘higher art’ sensibility, but wondering if my time was really best spent doing so. You can glean the answer to this by the fact that I have yet to do a tour through Artstarts, but don’t let my experience stop you. Touring schools is the bread and butter for many performers and it’s certainly a lot of fun to perform for a gym full of enthusiastic ankle biters, so if that’s your bag, this might just be the perfect opportunity for you.
Posted in Job Opportunities, Performance | 1 Comment »
 Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing in Peru
I posted last week about the fun I’ve been having building props for “The Hot Dog Show” that I’ll be debuting at the PNE on August 22. One of the props I’m building for the show, the Hot Dog equivalent to the Human Cannonball, is being built from a modified compressed-air potato cannon that I received as a gift from John Ullyatt a few years ago and a wooden box to house the bits that make up the cannon.
Now I’ve got a workshop at home with some tools in it, but it’s nothing compared to the wood-working shop that my neighbour has and I just knew that if I could convince him to give me a hand with the cutting of the bits required for the wooden cannon case, that the end results would be far better than were I to attempt it with the tools that I have handy at home.
As it turns out our neighbour is an engineer, and when I told him about what I wanted to do, and demonstrated the cannon in action he almost jumped at the opportunity to give me a hand with it.
“Measure twice cut once”
Is a term I learned when doing some of the home renovations that we did when we first moved into our house. The idea is to be stupidly diligent about making sure you don’t make a mistake along the way, and this is very much the philosophy that our neighbour took in the cutting of the required pieces for the cannon housing. Little details like having the hand holes fit to four fingers were all part of the process and not only do I feel a greater ownership from having done the work on this myself (with help of course), but also a greater connection to my neighbour who willingly offered up his wood-working shop to accommodate the project.
I’m thrilled with the result and with the time I got to share with my neighbour and all of this because I took the time to ask if he’d give me a hand.
Posted in Technical Tuesdays, Thoughts | Comments Off on Asking for Help
 Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing in Peru
Monday’s are devoted to marketing, so what does Play-Doh have to do with with marketing? Well it’s like this… Back around the late 80’s I started to really pro-actively market my show to the festival circuit across the country. I’d send off these carefully boxed up packages that included all of the regular stuff, the video, the pictures, the bio and press release, perhaps some stickers and a jar of Play-Doh.
Why the Play-Doh? Well I felt that there was something about Play-Doh that suggested a sense of playful fun that was in keeping with my show and wanted to say thank you to who ever it was who was opening the box for taking the time to review my materials. It wasn’t until I started to attend some of the festivals and visit some of the offices of the producers I had sent packages to that I began to see what a great marketing gimmick the Play-Doh was. Well after the video had been shelved and the press kit filled, people seemed to keep the Play-Doh on their desks which was a constant reminder of me.
I thought it would be even better to take this concept one step further and send out eggs of Silly Putty, but before sending it out, take the time to embed my face on the putty inside the egg. One of the things that Silly Putty marketed when it came out was the ability to lift the ink off of newsprint. In the adds they showed kids ‘copying’ images from comic strips then stretching them out and having fun with the warped images (OK… I’m totally showing off my age by knowing about this stuff). I totally thought it would be a hoot to send the putty pre-embedded with my image, but never quite got to that idea.
I’ve also heard of people who’ve put their entire promo kit on a view•master viewer and sent it out. Or another guy who had his own lunchbox made.
The point is to make the receiving of your promotional material into an event, not just the opening of an envelope. Anything you can do to be remembered right from the get go will have a long term benefit and it well worth the additional investment it takes to make it happen.
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 Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing in Peru
“Laughter is an instant vacation.”
–Milton Berle, American comedian and actor (1908 – 2002)
Addendum…
“And don’t we all need a vacation from time to time?”
–David ‘checkerhead’ Aiken
I quite like the picture I found to go along with this quote by Milton Berle… His expression is fantastic. It reminds me of an experience I had with Glenn Singer and Derek Scott years ago. We were all performing at the Waterloo Buskers Carnival and Derek took Glenn and I out to go swimming at a quarry. At said quarry there were cliffs you could jump off and the idea of the jump seemed to scare the bejebus out of Glenn. Derek insightfully pointed out that in moments of fear our true selves, our clown selves, become most visible. And with that Glenn jumped off the cliff and screamed like a little girl! Fantastic!
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 Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing in Peru
Prologue: I met Clinton W. Gray many moons ago at the Cariboo Hotel in Quesnel, BC and was fascinated by the stories he told of being a rodeo clown before he got into comedy magic. We’ve since run into each other at a number of events and always seem to get into interesting conversations about how we both do business. Always nice to have someone to bounce ideas off and talk shop with.
STATS
Name: Clinton W. Gray
Birthday: October 1973
Place of Birth: Halifax, Nova Scotia
Started Performing/Working in the Industry: Summer of ’86
Discipline: Comedy magician
Websites: http://www.vancouvermagician.ca
Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tp4706-aths
Venues Worked: let’s do this in reverse… I’ve never worked a funeral.
Hot 10 Questions:
- What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream and why? • Rainbow Sherbert. With 1/5 of the fat of regular ice cream I can eat the whole bucket and not feel guilty.
- Name one movie that would make it to your Top 10 all-time great films. • Brain Donors.
- What was your favorite toy from childhood? • The Sandbox.
- Who were your biggest inspirations when you got started? • Shawn Farquhar, Paul Daniels, David Aiken.
- From the world of animation what one character do you most identify with or see yourself in? • Bugs Bunny.
- Name something that scares you. • The dark.
- Apart from the entertainment industry, name one other job you’ve had. • McDonalds manager.
- What’s something you haven’t done yet that you’d like to try? • Ventriloquism.
- What’s your least favourite thing about being a performer? • The Confirmation Call: that phone call a week before the event that you make just to “touch base.” Invariably the client says, “oh, sorry, but we’ve changed a few details. The start time is now midnight, there will be no stage, no sound system, and the band needed the dressing room to be private, so you’ll have to change your clothes on the loading dock. That’s okay isn’t it?
- If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? • “Are you finished?“
The Nugget:
Pick one nugget of wisdom you’ve picked up from your career in Show Business to share with the World.
“Travel with Tupperware and cutlery. When the client offer to “Make sure you get some dinner”, you can pack it up and take it back to your room and enjoy it after the show.”
–Clinton W. Gray
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 Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing in Peru
Years ago a friend of mine gave me a Charles Atlas t-shirt sort of like the one in the picture that accompanies the post. On my shirt there were two great contrasting lines.
“Me as a wimp”
and
“Me as a God”
Each of which was accompanied by a picture of Charles Atlas in two completely different states of muscular development. I always loved this shirt and was sad when it eventually died, but this is taking me a long way away from what I was intending to talk about…
I heard once that the secret of genius is knowing one’s strengths and limitations. By doing things with in certain parameters, your chances of creating amazing work increases dramatically over a more random shot-gun approach.
Knowing who you are on stage why and audience responds to you and what strengths you bring to a performance will increase your chances of successfully deciding what demographic you should target not to mention your chances of success when you hit the stage.
If, for example, you’ve got a show that absolutely kills in a street/festival environment, but doesn’t seem to translate all that well to indoor venues, then think seriously about whether pursuing theatre gigs is really in your best interests.
I was working in the Piazza of the STAR Princess and the GOLDEN Princess back in June and what I was asked to do was basically a mini street show for passengers in the informal setting of the ship’s atrium. Because of my year’s of experience working on the street and working in festival environments, this was second nature to me and I thoroughly enjoyed the shows and the reaction I got from the passengers. By contrast, I’ve heard from various performers who’ve also performed in the Piazza that this is their least favorite venue to work on ships. It’s not that they aren’t good performers, they just lack the performance vocabulary to really know how to make shows in this space work.
Ships are actually a fun venue for me to be playing in because I get the opportunity to perform in a variety of venues. Everything from the Piazza to the cabaret venue to the main theatre. Each venue offers a different set of challenges and opportunities and I love throwing myself at all of them as the opportunity to grow exists when ever I put myself in a new situation. Regardless of the actual venue though I always try to walk on stage with an awareness of my strengths as a performer and capitalize on what I can do for an audience in any given situation.
Taking the time to understand why the audience responds to your performance is critical. Maybe its your breath taking technique, perhaps it’s your impeccable comedic timing, perhaps it’s something as simple as your likability, the charisma you have when you walk out on stage. By all means try to stretch and expand what you’re capable of, but try not to loose sight of what your strengths really are.
Posted in Performance, Thoughts | Comments Off on Capitalizing on Your Strengths
 Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing in Peru
What is Pacific Contact? Well according to the website it’s all of this –
Now in its 34th year, Pacific Contact is the BC Touring Council’s annual west coast trade show and booking conference for the performing arts. It includes showcases, a contact room (trade show booths of artists and industry) workshops and networking opportunities for artists and performing arts presenters.
Basically a bunch of talent buyers from the across BC and parts beyond come to check out possible talent for their performance arts season. I’ve heard it referred (just recently in fact) as the PAC circuit – Performing Arts Centers. PAC buyers aren’t the only one’s who attend this conference, but they certainly make up a large component of the buyers who do attend.
I’ve known about Pacific Contact for year, almost since the time I arrived in Vancouver back in 1990, but have never done much more than attend the show as a guest to see what it’s all about. Why? Well it comes down to this. If you get a showcase, the chance to perform in front of the delegates who attend the shows, then you have an excellent chance of booking a very lucrative tour. If you don’t showcase, the chances of landing a tour are radically reduced.
The one year I applied back in the 90’s, my materials showed me in a Street and Festival environment which isn’t exactly the market that Pacific Contact caters to and I wasn’t awarded a spot in the showcase. With out the showcase I didn’t feel that it was worth the investment of time and money to try and land a tour, and had lots of other pots on various stoves at the time that were keeping me busy anyway.
These days, with all of the Cruise Ship work I’ve been doing crafting an application that made me look more in keeping with the venue would be a lot easier, but it’s one of those things in the pile of good intentions that is sitting on my desk that I simply haven’t gotten to yet.
Is Pacific Contact a great way to book a tour? Provided you get a showcase and wow the crowd, then yes you can do very well from it. If you don’t get the showcase however it’s a bit of a craps shoot. Don’t go into it if you don’t have that showcase slot expecting great things. You may still land a few gigs, and certainly the opportunity to network is there, but the bulk of the bookings seem to go to those who do perform in the showcase time slots and deliver a great performance.
Posted in Job Opportunities, Performance | 1 Comment »
 Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing in Peru
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and building of props for “The Hot Dog Show” in the last few months. Back in January or so when I got the green light from the Pacific National Exhibition to proceed with this new show I had a ton of ideas for the show and over the time I’ve had to research things, test things and consider the logistics many of the ideas have evolved into the place where I’ll take them out and debut them in front of an audience coming up on August 22.
There’s been a lot of satisfaction in seeing the ideas materialize, and although some of the original ideas had to be scrapped due to challenging logistics, the place where the three super stunts that Willie will perform in the show has evolved to is very exciting indeed. I know of course that over the course of the 17 days of the PNE that things will continue to evolve, but I’m feeling really good about where I’m at with everything as I move towards the WORLD DEBUT!
I’ve taken quite a hands on approach to building things and have, when ever possible built props myself. The chair featured in the image that accompanies this post is a bit of an exception. I don’t know how to weld and it was more time effective to walk into a machine shop with my idea and have them create the prop for me, but, the upholstery of the chair… That’s something I was able to tackle myself. I was giddy with excitement when it all came together because it looked EXACTLY as I had imagined it and is going to put a smile on my face every time I pull it out of my case to perform the routine.
I think there’s a certain pride in ownership when you build these sorts of things yourself that connects you a bit more to the prop and provides a resonance in your performance that simply buying something off the shelf or off the internet can’t provide. Certainly in those instances when time is a limiting factor or the require skill set doesn’t exist, it’s easier just to buy something pre-made, but I’m loving the feeling of ownership that’s grown as I’ve put together the props for each of the bits in the show and highly recommend ‘making the time’ to have this connection to the props you use in your show if you can manage it.
Posted in Technical Tuesdays | Comments Off on Prop Building
 Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing in Peru
Just before I left for Peru I celebrated my 41 Birthday and was blown away with the number of people who contacted me via Facebook to wish me a good day! I posted a while back about the power of remembering people’s Birthdays and how much of an impact making the extra effort to send a card through the mail, but in this Facebook world in which we live having that little reminder pop up telling you it’s so-in-so’s Birthday and then being able to just send off some quick well wishes is pretty spectacular.
When I got inundated with Facebook well wishes last birthday I asked one friend if they thought responding to the messages was important. They suggested that as it was my birthday the gift of receiving the well wishes was what was important, but I think the opportunity to connect with you’re network is something that you shouldn’t pass up. Sure it’s mostly friends that contact you, not business contacts, but those friendships can lead to performance opportunities and staying in people’s brains with a quick thank you for a birthday greeting doesn’t take too much effort not to be worth while.
So make the most of Birthdays! Oh, and don’t for get to ‘eat cake.’
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 Where in the world am I today?: Vacationing in Peru
“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.“
–E.E. Cummings, US poet (1894 – 1962)
Addendum…
“Thankfully when ever I’m short of external sources I’ve always got myself to laugh at and what a ripe source of material that it!”
–David ‘checkerhead’ Aiken
I remember Paddy Bramwells telling me a story years ago about how he had been stabbed while walking around London… It was a pretty scary event and Paddy could have died during the experience, but what struck me most was the fact that even when possibly facing death he found some comedy in the situation… I don’t remember the exact wording, but it went something like this…
“My God I’ve been Stabbed – Well… Ya’ gotta laugh now don’t you”
The image of this has stuck with me for well over twenty years… If he was able to laugh in that situation, I have little or no excuse to not laugh when chaos descends in my own life.
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