Performing with no voice
And other thoughts from the second leg of tour
I’m back in New York, and done with this leg of tour. Over the last month, I performed my show, Strangers, 16 times across ten cities.
I limped to the finish line. A cold in the final week took my voice away, and during the final 20 minutes of the final show, I was hanging on for dear life.
Still, I made it. The show has evolved, and while it still has a lot to change, I’m proud of the progress.
If I imagine my year in quarters, the first part was this tour. The next part will be the San Diego, Denver, and Hollywood Fringe festivals in May and June. The third and most important quarter will be Edinburgh Fringe in August. And the final quarter will be the inevitable tour and New York shows I do in the fall.
Right now, I’m at a key moment of reflection. I’m traveling less. I have long, wide open days with time to evaluate and think. Here are my takeaways from the road:
You are someone’s night
I was reminded of this constantly. Friends drove an hour to attend. Groupchats were created and called “magic show” weeks in advance. People left work early or stayed up too late on a weeknight.
Our lives are loud and busy. The fact that anyone would give up their night — and their money — to watch you is a huge deal. You are the focal point of their entire night. Never take that attention for granted.
We must treat the show seriously, because our audience has anticipated this. Which means…
You’re being paid to check your checklist
I’ve written about this before (in this Edinburgh reflection), but it’s worth mentioning again. The audience pays for a show that works, just as you expect a restaurant to comply with the health code and quality standards. You are getting paid to check your checklist.
When you perform the same routines every night on tour, the setup gets quite easy. So much so that you can get complacent and misplace a prop (this happened to me in San Diego, and it was a near-disaster as I had to maneuver out of the situation live on stage).
My 70-minute show has 37 checklist items. I have a strong memory, but setting up a show is the LAST thing I should outsource to it.
A misplaced prop is an unforced error. And while mistakes happen, we must limit the ones that are under our control.
Check the list.
Mistakes add up
I hope that through years of writing, I’ve made clear that mistakes are normal, inevitable, and not worth beating yourself up over.
However, they do chip away at the perfection the audience expects. The audience can feel the difference between a flawless execution and a performer trying to stay afloat.
In the Taylor Swift documentary, the lack of genuine errors is striking. Likewise, the magicians I admire simply do not mess up that often.
Sub-par shows are the result of a few small, cascading mistakes that block the show’s flow.
Again, it’s Murphy’s Law: anything that can go wrong will go wrong. But once it’s happened, let’s do our best to limit those mistakes and give the audience what they paid to see.
Make it so good you can do it when you’re sick
I got a cold before my two shows in Denver. It carried into my final show in New York.
I was congested and losing my voice, but more than 200 people had paid to see the shows. I couldn’t just cancel.
The good news is, because those were the final three performances of the tour, I was locked in on the material.
An audience member asked me afterward what part of the show was the most stressful, and I had to be honest and say that none of it stressed me out because I knew it so well (that’s not at all how I felt on the first performance, let’s be clear).
True competence means being so prepared that being sick or tired won’t sideline you. The show really must go on. And being professional means delivering to your standard even in sub-par circumstances.
Don’t get complacent
The show is good enough where I could stop developing it. That is a dangerous trap.
The lighting design is untouched. The sound cues are functional but basic. The graphics can be more professional. This week, I’m going to run the audio of the show through an AI transcriber to cut the script down.
Long story short—there are times when you shouldn’t let the great be the enemy of the good. Put your work into the world, expose it to the air, see what happens.
But once it’s standing, you can’t let the good be the enemy of the great. You must watch footage, send it to friends, and fix it.
Going forward
I’m now in a period of reflection and refurbishment. I’m excited to see how the show develops. If you live in San Diego, Denver, LA, or of course, Edinburgh, I’ll be coming to your city soon.
See you there.