Something New
Little Things Matter when you are performing for an audience, whether it is 6 people or 6,000 people. The thing that separates each of us from other performers, aside from our basic Vent skills is whether we have taken just a few extra minutes before a performance to check over a few critical items on each of our puppets before bringing them out for the crowd to see.
Here are just some of the things that need to be checked. If your puppet wears glasses – are they on straight?
Is the puppets hair in place and looking tidy? Are your puppets hands posable? If so, are they in the position that best suits the current situation. (You can’t hold on to a cane if your puppets hands are wide open.)
Have you looked the puppet over thoroughly to make sure its outfit is in good shape? Have you looked for any lint balls or other problems that will unnecessarily draw the audiences attention away from the act and have them snickering at your expense?
We saw a well known young performer on national TV a few years ago. This young person is an excellent performer and each of you would know the person if I said the name. As we have said many times, it is never our objective to embarrass any performer, so we will not use the performers name or gender.
Suffice it to say that this young performer came out on stage with the puppets ear bent over in a real messed up way. We noticed it more quickly than most folks because the puppet was one of ours.
The young performer still put on a wonderful performance, but the problem could have been avoided if there had been a quick look over of the puppet before it was brought out on stage.
Little Things Do Matter. Take just a couple of minutes to look things over and fix the obvious.
We will talk again next week.
Steve and JET