Entries by Thom
2014 by the Numbers
Accounting and reflecting are two important year-end activities that small business owners all across the world engage in. I’m no exception! As I tidied my house this year, sorting through old programs and ticket stubs and finding shards of broken plates all over the place, I thought about the year’s happenings and started gathering data. […]
Act Creation Method #3 – The Pixar Method
This week, I met with Philadelphia juggler, Andrew Scharff, to help him polish some acts. We retooled his cigar box and diabolo acts in anticipation for his upcoming contract on Celebrity Cruise’s ship Solstice, where he’s working for the first part of 2015. We worked mostly on pushing and pulling the acts – making them more dynamic in […]
Act Creation Method #2 – The Storybook Method
The “Storybook Method” is a way of devising a longer narrative arc for a routine or stage show. This is a method that I first used with Gabrielle Sinclair, when we wrote the play “Joan and the Gentleman Juggler: A Wonder-Tale, as told by the Ghost of L. Frank Baum.” Benjamin Domask and I used this method […]
Act Creation Method #1 – The Postcard Method
I first learned about this in a workshop with the show “Button Wagon” by juggler Matt “Poki” McCorkle and contortionist Ember Bria. A “postcard moment” is a static stage picture where something interesting is happening that is nicely composed in a 2-d picture plane. If you were to take a photo of this moment as […]
Writing “The ‘Dinner and a Show’ Show”
This past Summer, Benjamin Domask and I wrote a comedy / juggling / melodrama about two waiters and a rubber lobster. The shows went very well, we had some nice reviews, and even won a “Best of the Fringe” award! A turn of events meant that we had to write the show remotely. many people […]
Tom Swifties – A Collection
My friend and fellow juggler, Chris Taibbi, has been writing Tom Swifties and sharing them on Facebook for the past few weeks. He’s come up with some good ones, and the joke forumla has been in my head since he started. If you’re not familiar, a “Tom Swifty” is a kind of play on […]
Anatomy of a One Hour Gig
When you hire an act, the show is just one part of the process. Sometimes when I’m hired to perform my show for an event, I’m asked why I charge a flat day rate instead of billing for an hour of my time. If variety entertainers charged an hourly rate for their work, no-one would […]
Understanding your Entertainment Contract
Need help navigating an entertainment contract? Learn the essentials here. Contracts can be difficult to understand. Whether you’re booking an entertainer for the first time or if you’re a seasoned event planner, it’s important to understand the basics. These documents protect both the event planner and the artist by being both detailed and legally binding. […]