Archie and Lawrence attend a gym class at Sayler Park every week. Not together, but separately. Both are fantastic and very affordable, which works well for us. Before Christmas, Archie got wind of a talent show to be held at Sayler Park. The auditions took place before Christmas and the show was to take place in January. The folks who work at both the rec centers at which we are regulars are no strangers to Archie's penchant for magic. He brings in a card trick or a magic trick to try out on folks just about every time he goes to a class or event. His gym instructor seemed excited that he was putting together a show and encouraged him to do it.
He was to audition in front of all the staff at the center. When we arrived at the center for the audition, there were several kids in the after school program there who wanted to see his audition as well! He wasn't really prepared for a full audience but did his show anyway in front of the unplanned audience. He was fantastic! He was funny and had great patter. Even the trick that didn't work out the way he intended, he made a little joke out of it, so no one but me knew it didn't work out. So after a successful audition, he was in the semi-finals!
Fast forward to January. Archie received a few new tricks for Christmas and after a trip to the magic store for some help (Haines House of Cards is awesome!) he was ready. I was so nervous for him, I couldn't sleep most of the week before the show. I don't know why...Archie certainly wasn't very nervous! In fact, it wasn't until he arrived at the show itself that he finally showed any sign at all of nerves!
When we arrived, we walked into a very crowded center and didn't know anyone, except for the center staff that we see every week. We don't participate in Sayler Park's after school programs, only the preschool and homeschool gym programs. None of our classmates were in the show, so he was performing for a crowd full of people we didn't know...no friendly, familiar faces. The first sign of nerves finally reared it's ugly head!
I went backstage to check on him, and I saw him looking rather panicked and he exclaimed, "I forgot my first trick!!!" I thought he forgot the patter--all the chit-chat that sets everything up for the trick, so I started talking him through what I remembered, but he said, "NO! I forgot my first trick! At home!" He had forgotten the secret part of the trick that makes it work. Arrrrgg! I suggested he begin with the second one, which is what he did.
Archie was the final act of the evening, since his act would run a little long. Once he got out there, you'd never know that he had a momentary case of nerves! He was funny and you could tell the audience was really tracking with him! I could tell that there were people around me not expecting much from a kid magician who were quite surprised (and amazed--by some of the comments I heard them saying!) at his performance.
The final part of his act, he wanted to pass some candy out to the kids in the crowd. So he said something like, "I'm not trying to bribe anyone here to vote for me or anything, but I just happen to have some candy here, just in case!" Then he'd pull candy out of the ears of some of the kids there.
The funny thing was, he was having such a great time performing, that he wouldn't stop doing the candy thing! I kept tapping the watch area on my wrist as a signal that it was time to get done, but he didn't even look my direction! I could tell he was having such a great time that he wasn't even aware of how long he was running! Phillip finally called him over and said "You need to wrap it up!" And Archie said, "Wrap what up?" He was so into the performance and having so much fun he didn't have a clue as to what it was that Phillip was talking about!
After he took his bows and sat down with me, all of a sudden, the adrenaline left his body and he was absolutely depleted. He was soooo tired! I have never seen him that tired that suddenly.
As it turned out, he didn't make it into the finals. I think it was only a numbers thing...the audience was to vote via a slip of paper inside the program. Everyone voted for their own kid (and there was a dance team who had fifteen members in it) so he didn't make it. They tried to make it fair by having you pick a first, second and third choice so as to not have the person who brought the most family members win, but it works out that way when you have one act which consists of fifteen members, who all bring a voting mother, father, and numerous siblings. On the upside, he was only three votes shy of making it into the finals, which was pretty good, since the only people he knew there was the three staff members, Phillip, me, Morgan and Zack. The problem with living twelve hours away from family is that you can't saturate the talent show audience with your extended family members.
Several of the kids came up to him after the show and told him how neat it was and how much they really liked it. Incidentally, this was an all-ages talent show, so he was competing against adults as well as kids. One of the adults was a singing magician (he was a bit of a creeper, if you ask me). But Archie had him beat hands down.
Morgan recorded Archie's part of the show, and I am trying to figure out how to get the Hi-8 translated to digital so I can post it for interested persons. Here are a couple of stills:
Many thanks to Regular E who got him the super-cool magic hat which goes from flat to popped out with just a firm shake! It added just the right pizzazz to his performance!
I can't remember which trick this one was.
Here he had a volunteer from the audience selecting a card.
Below was his sponge-ball sleight of hand trick. It was really funny listening to the audience members try to keep track of which of the balls were in which hand and which were in his pocket. He totally blew them away when on the third time...he asked them how many were in his hand, and how many were in his pocket and the audience was yelling various numbers: "Three!" "One!"
When he 'blew' open his hand and there were none, no one expected that! There were audible gasps in the audience! He totally got them!
I could not have been more proud of Archie! He did say that he was a bit disappointed that he didn't get in the finals, but he really had a good time performing for an audience that was more than just me and Phillip. The staff at our 'regular' rec center (Westwood Town Hall) got wind of his performance and are now asking if he'd like to put on a performance for the kids there.
1 comment:
That is great! Looks like he has found his niche. :-)
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