Archive for November, 2002

Morris Young — Collector and Lover of Magic — Dies at 92

Sad news from New York‘s Newsday this morning, Morris Young had one of the more extensive collections of magic books and Houdini items and shared them with not only the magic community but also the world through his donations to the Library of Congress and other institutions.

Dr. Young was an eye doctor and during World War II, he used his skills in Europe and North Africa to reconstruct the faces of wounded airmen. Later he served as the Director of Ophthalmology at New York University Downtown Hospital.

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Very Troubling

Very troubling article in the Exeter Express
today about the apparent disappearance of money from a show organized
with Michael Jackson, Uri Geller and David Blaine. The story is so
vague that it is not clear whether it is blaming or suggesting blame
but it is, as it notes, troubling.
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Dressing Rooms of the Stars

I shared my last dressing room with five other performers and two birds. It was pretty big and we were within 500 feet of water and 1000 feet of a bathroom. I don’t really get that nervous before a show but one of the other performers found the walk to the bathroom to be very annoying. But that’s the fun of it all. You get to meet people at their most tense moment. Everyone wanted to do well, we were all working through that one piece of our act that needed just a little bit more refinement or making sure that our props were loaded or that we hadn’t loaded our silks too soon. I bring this up because of the neat article I read in the Las Vegas Review Journal about the dressing rooms of the stars of magic in Vegas.

Penn and Teller seem to keep true to their on-stage personas as do Siegfried and Roy. Penn has a generic fashioned dressing room with a ballet-dancing monkey toy on the fridge. Teller’s room sounds more sparse than the dressing room at my last performance. He has a couch, a mirror, four pictures and some instruments. He apparently spends just a few minutes in the dressing room before the show. The two do most of their entertaining ? other than on stage at the Rio ? in the “monkey room” where they are supplied with M&Ms and Caffeine-Free Diet Coke.

At the other end of the spectrum is Siegfried and Roy’s palatial suite. The suite is 1800 square feet and has two bedrooms, a dining area and a place to entertain. They spend about eight hours a day in the suite ? who wouldn’t? Roy’s room is decorated with candles to allow meditation before the show and room to be with the animals before they are called on to perform.

I think the key is that no matter where or what the dressing room is, it is there for one reason and that is to get ready. You might do it by spending eight hours dealing with the business that naturally comes with being a superstar magician or you might spend thirty minutes folding and unfolding your silk waterfall and practicing your vanishing candle just one more time.

No matter what, at some time, you will have to be ready. It will be show time. That’s my favorite time of all. There is nothing more that can be added or taken away. You have to walk before the audience and give the best show you can. In that way, we’re all in the same boat ? Siegfried and Roy, Penn and Teller, Lance Burton, David Copperfield and me and the woman who is irritated that the bathroom is so far away.

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