Where in the world am I today?: Ketchikan, AK, USA on my way back to North Vancouver, BC, Canada

Part of the fun of show building is seeing what sort of crazy props you can find to help tell what ever story your show is built around. Not admittedly I’ve lived most of my life as a comedy juggler and tools of that trade seem to be fairly ubiquitous… Clubs, Balls, Cigar Boxes, Juggling Machetes, Torches, Unicycles, blah blah blah… Magicians (unless they’ve created their own routines from scratch) also tend to carry similar props to one another – cards, coins, ropes, rings, etc. These things become the tools of the trade and it’s not the prop that’s important, it’s often the personality of the person manipulating the props that ends up drawing the focus of the performance.

With my latest adventure in show building, ‘The Hot Dog Show,’ I got to think a bit outside the box in terms of the tools I used to tell the story of a six inch tall stuffed Dog Toy shaped like a Hot Dog who happened to be an Unprecedented Stunt Performing Super Hero. Getting the audience to buy into the concept was the first challenge, but beyond the challenge of getting them to accept the premise of the show was the challenge of finding props that had what I refer to as ‘quirk appeal’ – that unique ability to capture the intrigue of an audience simply based on it’s appearance and perhaps people’s pre-conceived notion of what ‘should’ be done with that object.

Prior to the show’s debut I tried to get as many of the elements in place as I could, but it was inevitable that during the course of the run I came up with other ideas for things I’d like to add to the mix to increase the resonance of the performance and add funky little elements to the scene that would give me more to play with and provide an increased intrigue for the audience.

The show itself is set up around three super stunts, and prior to the show debuting I had a red flashing light that I pulled out at key moments of the show to help build tension before the execution of the stunt… Over the course of the run I wanted to find more stuff to help create this anticipation before each stunt and came up with the idea of tracking down a cymbal playing monkey that I could bring out to add not only to dramatic tension, but also a completely abstract element of ridiculousness to the scene – a stunt Hot-Dog accompanied by a demonic looking cymbal playing monkey… How great would that be…

So I turned to the worlds largest garage sale – eBay – and sure enough I came across a ton of cymbal playing monkeys… The one I’m after is referred to as the ‘Jolly Chimp’ and though I’ve put bids in on a few that have come up I haven’t won my very own ‘Jolly Chimp’ yet… I will though… Trust me… I will! I mean look at that scary looking monkey… Even if, in the end, I decide not to add him to the cast of The Hot Dog Show, he’ll find a nice place on my desk and keep me company for years to come… No if I could only get my hands on one of those dippy birds… All in good time my friends… All in good time!