Where in the world am I today?: North Vancouver, BC, Canada
For many years I worked in Japan and one of the venues that hired me again and again was the Hokkaido Marine Park in the small town of Noboribetsu on Japan’s North Island of Hokkaido. This park’s main focus was on the large aquarium, seal and dolphin shows and the daily penguin parade. Now beyond just being an attraction for marine life, the Park was also a tribute to Noboribetsu’s Sister City in Denmark and the main aquariums were housed in a replica of a Danish Castle. From the front doors of the Castle you walked over a draw bridge that went over the moat, then down into a Danish town square. It was the perfect setting to put a ‘Street Performer’ and although I don’t think I have any Danish in my background, my blond-ish hair and white skin were enough to make me an attractive choice for the park to use in this space.
The gig itself was a pretty standard three thirty-minute shows a day sort of arrangement and I worked six days a week during contracts that lasted anywhere from four to seven weeks. Doing that many shows really honed my show and allowed me to try out new ideas and work on my Japanese a lot. I also found that after about a week or so of doing shows I got into a rhythm, a groove that just clicked along and on some levels I lost track of time as I got into the daily schedule and really enjoyed getting out and playing for the crowds everyday.
While I was on the GRAND Princess last week I was working with Magician, Peter Gossamer, and his assistant/fiance Carol who are looking forward to going into their third season of doing shows at Silver Dollar City in Branson, Missouri. They got to play in a theatre that held eight hundred and fifty people and performed for six weeks straight to packed houses. They used this opportunity to debut new illusions, work with a larger cast which included a couple of additional dancers and also worked ‘the back of the room‘ by selling simple magic tricks and souvenirs. They made a killing!
Steve Martin talks nostalgically about his days working for Disney and Knotts Berry Farm in Los Angeles in his book “Born Standing Up.” He starts off by selling programs at the front gates of Disney, then working in the Magic shop before moving over to Knotts Berry Farm to work in the little Vaudeville House the Bird Cage Theatre where he worked from the age of 18 – 22. At the end of the book he returns to the Bird Cage and there’s a sense of longing as he describes the sense of wanting to return to the youthful excitement of his performances in the venue.
The grind of doing so many shows isn’t for everyone, but to me there’s a sense of satisfaction in having pumped it out and having had a positive impact on so many visitors to one of these attractions. I often had people come up to me after a day at the Park I worked at to tell me that I was their favourite memory from their day. In a weird sort of way this always left me feeling like I’d done an honest days work for an honest day’s pay and kept me grounded in a way that I always found incredibly pleasing.
