Performing for Your Parents

Family weekends at colleges are always interesting groups for a few reasons. My show has to change a bit, because I want everyone to be able to get the jokes – not just part of the audience. Also, students often “clam up” when they’re in front of their parents. A joke about sex or booze might get a crazy “woo” with just college students, but only gets applause when their parents are present. And during those family weekends where there are also children – those jokes are obviously out of the show altogether. Some of the lines change.

One example from the show is the following line while I’m rolling up a little piece of paper in demonstration of a gag that you can pull on your friends.

(As I’m rolling the paper)
“I learned this part in college.”

But I found that college students will pretend they don’t know what I’m talking about when Mom is sitting next to them. So I added the following line.

(As I’m rolling the paper)
“I learned this part in college….
And if you’re not laughing because Mom and Dad are sitting next to you – guess what? They learned it in college too!”

Two of my last three shows were Family Weekend shows and I had an awesome time at each one. I performed at the Family Weekend for

University of North Carolina Pembroke, where I performed after an Italian dinner. The show was okay, but the best part was hanging out with people afterward. I had a small child ask me if I could teach him how to do magic, so I showed him a quick trick that he could do at home. I taught him the first card trick I ever learned. Even gave him the deck of cards so he could practice on the way home.



Then at the same show, I found a table of folks sitting and laughing together long after the rest of the audience had gone. They had a lot of questions about my tour in Korea, as a couple of them were veterans. We shared some stories about Korea and had a good laugh. It was really nice. Here are some more photos from UNC Pembroke.

Then I headed up to Louisville, KY to perform at The University of Louisville. It was really nice to perform on a large campus like the one I went to. From the get-go, the people in charge of my show at U of L were cool. The vibe was fun and they all had smiles on their faces. Unlike the previous show, this one was for students only – a homecoming performance to kick off U of L’s 2-week long homecoming celebration. They told me they were expecting about 250 students for the show. We were all pleased when 470 students showed up waiting to get in. We had to delay the show by half an hour just to get everyone seated! Quite an awesome surprise. The crowd was nice the loud, too. I really can’t wait to make it back to the University of Louisville now. Here’s a slideshow from Louisville:

Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.



From there, I traveled home to Columbus, OH to perform at Columbus College of Art and Design’s Family Weekend. I have performed several times before at CCAD and it’s ALWAYS a good audience. They’re smart and they laugh a lot at things that not all audiences laugh at. I really wish every audience had this mentality. I don’t have any photos from CCAD, but hopefully will soon. Another thing that makes Family Weekends fun is the challenge of changing up the show for being appropriate for children. I really wanted to make sure that the show was kid-friendly for this one, so I went to plan B on the “Yellow Trick” in which I called a 9-year old a brat. She ended up being a good sport and ended up with the invisible cards at the end of the show, too!



Next up, I’ll be performing at Aurora University, then flying out west to Northern Arizona University!



peace, love and parents,
MK