I wanted to take a minute to reflect on the amazingly awesome experience that was Anime Expo 2009! Wow! Can it really be that AX has already come and gone? It seems like I just got to the convention center just a day or so ago. Man, time does fly when you're having the time of your life!
This year at Anime Expo I had not one but two performance events to look forward to. Of course one of them was my standard obligitory performance with the rest of the ACO3 doing our "Whose Line is it Anime?" show. If you have never seen us do this, think of Drew Carey and Whose Line is it Anyways, but just skew it to have an Anime kind of theme. I'll go more into details on this show a bit later on.
My other performance bit was a first for both myself and the convention. I had arranged with the management of Anime Expo to allow me to perform an hour long magic show during the convention as a "fan panel". I was worried that I would even get to do it. I personally felt that a magic show would be just a bit out of genre for the convention based so heavenly on Japanese culture, and animation. However, thanks to some good friends and some solid connections I got the green light to put together this show!
I wanted to do a full two hour show with 15 minute intermission but they only gave me 50 minutes, with no intermission. I suspect they wanted to see how successful the event would be before they committed to a larger chunk of time. Even with only an hour to do a show I felt strongly about having other acts join me on stage for the gig. I asked a couple of friends to join me, and finally I was set.
Once on site at the convention I found out a day early that due to some huge complications that I couldn't control both of my friends in the show couldn't make it. I was going to have to do the entire hour on my own. What's worse is I only brought enough material for my standard 25 minute set. Thank god my strait jacket was still in my car, I grabbed it along with a deck of cards and I knew I would have enough filler along with dialog to fill my hour. So far, disaster has been averted.
My act isn't an easy one. It requires preset time, not a lot mind you, but from makeup to wardrobe, plus all the magical things that I have to get ready to do I can take upwards to thirty minutes to prepare a show, and about another 15 minutes to get into character. I arrive about an hour early to my panel room only to find out that I don't have a green room area. Furthermore the "theater" at the LACC (Los Angeles Convention Center) didn't have wings or a stage either. It was more of a meeting room with theater style seating. I had to do all of my prep work downstairs in the bathroom handycap stall. Good thing I'm already used to working on my feet in cramped conditions like this. Once my wardrobe, makeup, and preps were done, I left the bathroom and made my way past a long line of people that stretched down the escalators, and past me going back towards the registration hall.
I walked up the stairs towards my room and kept observing that more people were rushing to get into this longer than life line. What shocked me more is that the line came to an end- err rather a start at the door to my room. At a brief estimation there had to have been over 1,500 people in that line, and that's low balling the number!
The theater itself sat around 864 people. It packed full to SRO (standing room only), and the show control had to cut and turn away god only knows how many people. The line was still down the stairs from what I could see when they told people they couldn't get in. I personally was expecting 50 people, maybe 60 if I got lucky. About enough to really just fill in the first row of chairs and maybe a little of the second, but nothing could have prepared me for this! A cold chill of stage fright ran down my spine for just a second"These people came to see a magic show, do they have any idea what they are in for?" Were my only real thoughts as I paced the back aisle near the sound booth. One thing was for certain... The attendees of Anime Expo want good entertainment, that doesn't mean it always has to come in a cartoon box!
I knew that any future performance here at Anime Expo would strongly depend on how well I do with my show. No longer was it a question of getting the attendance numbers. The con attendees did their part well. Now the success of this adventure rests squarely on my shoulders. No pressure right? I pushed past my nerves and took the stage. I fell into the mechanical motions of my act from script to blocking, to hand gestures. Before I realized it they were enthusiastically applauding me and begging for more. I'm not really sure what all I did in that first five minutes, but at their applause at the conclusion of my first effect: The Popcorn Kernel from Eye Socket" I knew I had them. I kicked back, relaxed, and turned up the showman ship 100%. Trick after trick I walked through act, building on the performance, playing with the audiences anticipation, nailing the comedic timing, and genuinely giving it all that I had. Before I knew it, I was already in the final moments of my closing act, and I had the audience hanging on the edge of their seats the entire time. I had performed the Human Blockhead, stuck my hand in an animal trap, put out a lit cigarette on my tongue, performed "The Webb", found a selected playing card, swallowed a sword, and now I was pulling two and a half feet of sewing thread from my bare stomach. With my spectators hands shaking (The poor girl, I was scared she was going to faint), I sent her back to her seat with my thanks to a thunderous round of applause I was certain could be heard down stairs. To the audiences delight, I encored to a straitjacket escape in under 39 seconds! I got a chance to bask in the glow of my first 864+ person standing ovation to my delightfully devilish freak show style act. What's even better? Chances are great that I'll be sure to get my room back next year and with better seating capacity.
The following day was my next and last scheduled performance at the convention. I was slated to do my Whose Line is it Anime performance at 8pm that night in the conventions largest live programing room (not to be confused with the main events stage.) Now I knew from the past six years of experience that the Whose Line show would draw a large audience, however I will say it was awesome to perform for an audience of between 2,300 to 2,500 people! The 200 person variance is due to people getting up and leaving, while others filtered in during the show. We knew that we had a huge obstacle to overcome at the halfway point in our show, and that obstacle would be the Anime Music Video (AMV) contest. The AMV's have been a fan favorite of the convention for years, and we were scared that we'd lose a lot of our audience to it. I'm very pleased to say that I can count on two hands the number of people that left us for the other event. Mind you, they had to walk out to the entire room's boo's and hisses for leaving our show. I love my audience!
When we each took the stage the audience screamed and cheered for us like we were some kind of rock stars. There were five performers, plus host, plus audience runner (for suggestions). We each got a huge cheer when we walked onto stage! Bare in mind that none of us consider ourselves to be anything more than a bunch of dorks who got lucky enough to start a fan panel doing comedy at an anime convention and got noticed for doing it. Now to be on the conventions largest panel stage, performing to an audience of 2300+ fans, and knowing that for the first time ever our event was an official Anime Expo sponsored event, it was just cool. No words can express how that experience made any of us feel.
Two hours flew by faster than I had expected it too. Our event was done, and we were getting ready to leave the stage. To our surprise, many of the audience had rushed up to the stage to get pictures with us, and we even signed autographs! Talk about making someone feel like a rock star! I think we spent about another 30 minutes or so just taking pictures and being with the fans.
In the end, the experience was amazing! I can only hope that someone got some video footage of either show because I'd sure love to see it! I can't wait to do this all again next year!
This year at Anime Expo I had not one but two performance events to look forward to. Of course one of them was my standard obligitory performance with the rest of the ACO3 doing our "Whose Line is it Anime?" show. If you have never seen us do this, think of Drew Carey and Whose Line is it Anyways, but just skew it to have an Anime kind of theme. I'll go more into details on this show a bit later on.
My other performance bit was a first for both myself and the convention. I had arranged with the management of Anime Expo to allow me to perform an hour long magic show during the convention as a "fan panel". I was worried that I would even get to do it. I personally felt that a magic show would be just a bit out of genre for the convention based so heavenly on Japanese culture, and animation. However, thanks to some good friends and some solid connections I got the green light to put together this show!
I wanted to do a full two hour show with 15 minute intermission but they only gave me 50 minutes, with no intermission. I suspect they wanted to see how successful the event would be before they committed to a larger chunk of time. Even with only an hour to do a show I felt strongly about having other acts join me on stage for the gig. I asked a couple of friends to join me, and finally I was set.
Once on site at the convention I found out a day early that due to some huge complications that I couldn't control both of my friends in the show couldn't make it. I was going to have to do the entire hour on my own. What's worse is I only brought enough material for my standard 25 minute set. Thank god my strait jacket was still in my car, I grabbed it along with a deck of cards and I knew I would have enough filler along with dialog to fill my hour. So far, disaster has been averted.
My act isn't an easy one. It requires preset time, not a lot mind you, but from makeup to wardrobe, plus all the magical things that I have to get ready to do I can take upwards to thirty minutes to prepare a show, and about another 15 minutes to get into character. I arrive about an hour early to my panel room only to find out that I don't have a green room area. Furthermore the "theater" at the LACC (Los Angeles Convention Center) didn't have wings or a stage either. It was more of a meeting room with theater style seating. I had to do all of my prep work downstairs in the bathroom handycap stall. Good thing I'm already used to working on my feet in cramped conditions like this. Once my wardrobe, makeup, and preps were done, I left the bathroom and made my way past a long line of people that stretched down the escalators, and past me going back towards the registration hall.
I walked up the stairs towards my room and kept observing that more people were rushing to get into this longer than life line. What shocked me more is that the line came to an end- err rather a start at the door to my room. At a brief estimation there had to have been over 1,500 people in that line, and that's low balling the number!
The theater itself sat around 864 people. It packed full to SRO (standing room only), and the show control had to cut and turn away god only knows how many people. The line was still down the stairs from what I could see when they told people they couldn't get in. I personally was expecting 50 people, maybe 60 if I got lucky. About enough to really just fill in the first row of chairs and maybe a little of the second, but nothing could have prepared me for this! A cold chill of stage fright ran down my spine for just a second"These people came to see a magic show, do they have any idea what they are in for?" Were my only real thoughts as I paced the back aisle near the sound booth. One thing was for certain... The attendees of Anime Expo want good entertainment, that doesn't mean it always has to come in a cartoon box!
I knew that any future performance here at Anime Expo would strongly depend on how well I do with my show. No longer was it a question of getting the attendance numbers. The con attendees did their part well. Now the success of this adventure rests squarely on my shoulders. No pressure right? I pushed past my nerves and took the stage. I fell into the mechanical motions of my act from script to blocking, to hand gestures. Before I realized it they were enthusiastically applauding me and begging for more. I'm not really sure what all I did in that first five minutes, but at their applause at the conclusion of my first effect: The Popcorn Kernel from Eye Socket" I knew I had them. I kicked back, relaxed, and turned up the showman ship 100%. Trick after trick I walked through act, building on the performance, playing with the audiences anticipation, nailing the comedic timing, and genuinely giving it all that I had. Before I knew it, I was already in the final moments of my closing act, and I had the audience hanging on the edge of their seats the entire time. I had performed the Human Blockhead, stuck my hand in an animal trap, put out a lit cigarette on my tongue, performed "The Webb", found a selected playing card, swallowed a sword, and now I was pulling two and a half feet of sewing thread from my bare stomach. With my spectators hands shaking (The poor girl, I was scared she was going to faint), I sent her back to her seat with my thanks to a thunderous round of applause I was certain could be heard down stairs. To the audiences delight, I encored to a straitjacket escape in under 39 seconds! I got a chance to bask in the glow of my first 864+ person standing ovation to my delightfully devilish freak show style act. What's even better? Chances are great that I'll be sure to get my room back next year and with better seating capacity.
The following day was my next and last scheduled performance at the convention. I was slated to do my Whose Line is it Anime performance at 8pm that night in the conventions largest live programing room (not to be confused with the main events stage.) Now I knew from the past six years of experience that the Whose Line show would draw a large audience, however I will say it was awesome to perform for an audience of between 2,300 to 2,500 people! The 200 person variance is due to people getting up and leaving, while others filtered in during the show. We knew that we had a huge obstacle to overcome at the halfway point in our show, and that obstacle would be the Anime Music Video (AMV) contest. The AMV's have been a fan favorite of the convention for years, and we were scared that we'd lose a lot of our audience to it. I'm very pleased to say that I can count on two hands the number of people that left us for the other event. Mind you, they had to walk out to the entire room's boo's and hisses for leaving our show. I love my audience!
When we each took the stage the audience screamed and cheered for us like we were some kind of rock stars. There were five performers, plus host, plus audience runner (for suggestions). We each got a huge cheer when we walked onto stage! Bare in mind that none of us consider ourselves to be anything more than a bunch of dorks who got lucky enough to start a fan panel doing comedy at an anime convention and got noticed for doing it. Now to be on the conventions largest panel stage, performing to an audience of 2300+ fans, and knowing that for the first time ever our event was an official Anime Expo sponsored event, it was just cool. No words can express how that experience made any of us feel.
Two hours flew by faster than I had expected it too. Our event was done, and we were getting ready to leave the stage. To our surprise, many of the audience had rushed up to the stage to get pictures with us, and we even signed autographs! Talk about making someone feel like a rock star! I think we spent about another 30 minutes or so just taking pictures and being with the fans.
In the end, the experience was amazing! I can only hope that someone got some video footage of either show because I'd sure love to see it! I can't wait to do this all again next year!
Thanks for sharing.
