Daily Archives: September 24, 2019

Flashback Post No 3

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May 2019

The first weekend of May was spent at Renaissance Festival of Nebraska at Bellevue Berry Farm outside Omaha, NE. Because of all the flooding along I-29 this year we had to take a longer route up US 75 from Topeka. It’s two lanes most of the way and I do not recommend it unless you have no other choice. This was the second year I was at this event and I had requested being somewhere other than the children’s area all day. I was not disappointed, four shows per day each at a different stage. Since last year I had figured out how to minimize my props so we didn’t need the wagon, instead relying on a foot locker and a fold-able two wheeler. The shows seemed to go over pretty well and management seemed pleased with the way everything went.

After that, we were back in Oklahoma for the next three weekends at the Oklahoma Renaissance Festival working for T’ger Toggs.
There was one weekend that a strong storm rolled through overnight. Hearing tornado sirens and looking outside to see it eerily quiet is not something you want waking you up at 3am. Turns out that storm had spawned tornadoes to the south of town. It missed largely populated areas but we heard later about several homes that had been damaged.

June 2019

We returned to Great Bend the first weekend of June. This little one day event is a great local festival and I am always grateful that they ask me back year after year. We rented a trailer this year so I could bring the Acupuncture illusion with me as well as all the other equipment this family of performers requires. I only performed the Acupuncture once due to technical difficulties. Trying to fix what was wrong in the blazing sun wasn’t working so I ended up cutting it from the rest of my shows for the day. My wife painted faces all day and was joined by our daughter in the afternoon. Also longtime friend Beth Byrd performed throughout the day handing out tickets to patrons for silly things like being “too darn cute” and did a show followed by a workshop on miming for all the kids. Always a good time.

July 2019

  • Spent some time in the mountains of Colorado relaxing with friends and family.
  • I fixed the problem with the Acupuncture so that shouldn’t be an issue anymore.
  • Walked on broken glass at Kansas City Magic Showcase with Rod Sipe, again.
  • Fringe Fest meant performing friends staying with us. Mike and Nancee Micham presented their performance piece “Red Clay Country and White Cloverine Salve” five times during the 14 day run. It’s a rustic story about Nancee’s grandmother and her trip across the dust bowl to a better life in California.

Below you’ll see Mike and Nancee putting their lives in my hands in some dangerous equipment. I can’t say enough about what good friends they’ve become over the years.

  • Mike is about to see the ground rising rapidly
  • Nancee feeling hole-y

Flashback Post No 2

General, Magic

October 2018-April 2019

I know I said I was going to break these up into quarters but not a lot happened in the months after the Kansas City Renaissance Festival.
2018 ended the way it should have, surrounded by friends and family and lots of wishes of grand adventures in 2019.

January 2019

We were notified that Norman Medieval Fair was not hiring Marvelous Matt this year. I was one of the newer acts and they had had several years of falling revenue so I was cut. It was a solid blow to my ego, but I said it over on Facebook and I’ll say it here again, “No hard feelings.” I understand budget cuts and tightening one’s belt, but for some reason it just felt personal.
Applications for the 2020 Fair are open now and my application has already been submitted.

February 2019

I performed again at the Kansas City Magic Showcase in February. This time snow was forecast for the evening so almost nobody showed up. Besides my own act, I also teamed up with longtime friend Rod Sipe to walk on a bed of broken glass. By the time the show was over there was almost 4″ of snow on the ground.

The red pom-pom is connected to the white pom-pom which is connected to…

March 2019

Guess what? I’m coming back to the Kansas City Renaissance Festival for 2019. (ha ha)
The festival had a shindig to announce all the returning acts as well as audition dates for street cast. It was good to see those people I only see at KCRF in street clothes. They also announced the return of The Lord Mayor’s Company, which my wife is a part of.
At this point things are coming together for the spring and summer 2019 events.

April 2019

I returned to the Great Plains Renaissance Festival in Wichita for the first time in many, many years. It ended up being a cold and windy weekend, but no rain, thank goodness. All shows seem to be well received and the festival was pretty well attended from my point of view. I made a few changes to pacing in the show and it really seemed to help keep moving things along.
They also do a fall festival and asked about my availability, but KCRF was already booked.

A few shots from the Great Plains Renaissance Festival in Wichita

Final weekend of April we went down to OKRF (Oklahoma Renaissance Festival) to work in a clothing shop, T’Ger Toggs. This is the same person my wife works for at the Kansas City festival. The original thought was that since my wife would be there anyway she could run the shop while I performed. He applied to vend and was accepted, I was not, so we ended up working the shop four of six weekends. Still had a good time meeting and renewing friendships with a bunch of people.

Flashback Post No 1

General, Magic, Show

July 2018

I was asked to perform at the Kansas City Magic Showcase for the second time. It was an amazing experience. If you haven’t been, I cannot recommend highly enough that you should go. It’s $5 at the door, Westport Coffeehouse is upstairs or the Green Room Bar is next door if you want food and/or drinks.

Teaching a trick during the show…

It’s always nice to have an appreciative audience and the effects I presented were well received. I have to laugh because after my segment the MC said that he was told to keep it family friendly and that I pushed every boundary of that…

Apology First

General, Magic, Show

I know I’m writing this almost a year late but I figured I’d give you, the reader, a selection of posts to chose from. I’m going to do a couple of posts, breaking up the last year into quarters, so it’s not one huge post. In the future I’m going to strive to post something at least once a month. With that said, lets get into it…

Now the 2018 KCRF wrap-up

The biggest thing I was looking forward to adding to the 2018 show was the new illusion. Because it arrived two days before the festival I had no rehearsal with it so I did what I do best, I made it up as I went.

This is the Audience Acupuncture, or as I like to call it during the show, The Spike Table, modeled by my daughter in our basement. I wasn’t able to get any photos of the illusion in action at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. Overall, I think it worked out pretty well. There were some technical issues during performance that caused me to abandon the effect mid-routine, but when it did work I think it was pretty well received. There are a few tweaks I need to make to the routine to make it stronger but I’m happy the way it worked out.

Watching the rain fall from the safety of the Wizard’s Tower

Generally, KCRF 2018 was okay and it wasn’t just me. I spoke to many vendors and performers, and everybody had a down year. The biggest thing I remember about last year was how much it rained; either late in the week so the site was still wet or during the festival day itself. It was the lowest attended festival in over 30 years by a third or more.

One exciting thing that happened in August 2018 was that I was approached about performing at another faire. This was an event I had been working toward getting into for several years and they wanted a video which I did not have. I worked up a little promo video using existing clips and photos. I thought it was okay for being something I put together myself, but they wanted a complete performance video. My wife hired a friend that does video editing and he brought out five cameras during the festival and put together a full video. It was rough to watch myself and it suffered from lack of an audience but I sent it off anyway. I did not get the gig; they said I was too similar to other acts they already had.

So there you have it. The WAAAAAY overdue 2018 wrap-up post. Like I said above I’m going to go back and fill in some gaps from the last year. I’ll probably start in July last year just to make sure everything is covered.