One of the many reason I love what I do is that I never know what’s going to happen. Mike and I do shoot for consistency but this isn’t TV or the movies, this is live performance and the rules are different. You have to go with what comes no matter what it is. More than once I’ve wanted to wave my arms in the air and say, “Cut! I really messed that up, let’s go back and try it again.” There are no do-overs in a live show.

A few weeks ago we where at the Madison Library and like most of our library shows this year, we started with hat casting. That’s where I throw the hat across the room and Mike catches it on his head. For the big finish I went up in the balcony to throw the hat to Mike. We even practiced the trick before the show but that didn’t matter. The throw was long and heading to our props. Mike was so focused on the hat he didn’t see them and he tripped over them falling off the back of the stage. He’s fine but the bucket of bubbles that I had ready for later in the show spilled all over and soaked my ukulele which I was going to use next. It could have been worse, but I really don’t see how. We made some very fast changes to the show and the audience couldn’t really tell the difference so everything worked out okay. The silver lining is all the kids in the audience thought it was one of the funiest things they ever saw and nobody thought it was funnier than our sound guy. Live performance rules!

Miller