The following article first appeared in the May/June 1998 issue of the Magic Menu. The Magic Menu is a bi-monthly magazine for restaurant entertainers. For subscription info, contact jsisti@ibm.net.
I'm writing this while on my way home from Singapore. It was a very worthwhile trip on a number of fronts. The purpose of the visit was to teach some advanced balloon twisting classes. The best part is that I learned as much as I taught. Among other things, I was taken on a quick trip into Malaysia to see a latex plantation. That won't exactly have any great impact on my twisting, but I can now say that I've seen just about every phase of the balloon making process, from tapping rubber trees to bagging balloons. Unfortunately due to US import restrictions (which I knew about before hand but let slip my mind while I was having fun) I couldn't keep the sample of latex we were given on the plantation in exchange for a balloon giraffe.
Of much greater significance as a performer and balloon twister, I learned quite a lot about the culture in Singapore. At least, I learned more than I knew before. There's only so much you can learn in a week. I've said in the past that I'll write about the things people ask me to write about. While over there, several of the balloon artists I met pointed out to me just how much my writing focussed on what works for American audiences and encouraged me to share some of my observations.
I'm not entirely surprised that my performance style needed changing. I do have to admit to quite a lot of frustration though as I tried to figure out what I needed to do to get a response from the crowds in front of me. When doing my regular show, the audience was silent. I still had quite a few people come up to me after my shows to tell me they enjoyed what I did, and several came back multiple times to see me, so I know I did my job right. But while I was on stage, all they did was stare attentively, never giving any indication of what they were thinking. Since I'm used to laughing and audience interaction, it was very difficult to stand up there and keep going.
So, what worked? Mime and physical comedy seemed to get a better response than story-telling. I often tell stories or jokes along with making balloon creations, whether as a stage show, or when making things to hand out. I've written in the past about creating a personality or a history for an animal so that it seems to comes to life. This sort of thing didn't get me very far at all with the Singaporean audiences. At least not outwardly. I thought that perhaps the problem was my accent. Surely many had trouble understanding me. After talking to a number of Singaporeans, I found out that this is actually quite normal, even for performers native to Singapore. They prefer exaggerated motions and visual humor to spoken humor.
An example of the sort of exaggerated physical movements that kept audiences engrossed is the style of my host in Singapore, Vivien Goh. She had this way of moving her body in motion with her twisting. When watching her, you didn't focus on any particular twist. You just saw her move. The balloon changed shape with her motions. What I found most amusing was her surprise when I described what I saw when watching her. She just saw it as playing with balloons and didn't think much of it. In a sense it makes the creation of figures more magical. After all, as magicians we've all learned that the larger motions hide the smaller ones that we don't want seen. I never thought about applying that principle to balloons, but clearly it works.
What doesn't work? Aside from subtle, spoken humor, I found a much greater negative reaction to balloons in mouths than I've seen at home. I've never been a big fan of restaurant performers blowing up balloons by mouth, let alone placing entire balloons in their mouths, but it's never been a real turn off to me either if the situation was right. I just like the notion of restaurants being clean and germ free. If you're doing bits where you pretend you can't figure out how to inflate the balloon and the balloon ends up in your mouth in unusual ways, that balloon just shouldn't end up in the hands of a kid that's eating dinner. In Singapore, I actually had several people comment to me that they didn't like watching me blow up balloons by mouth. I was looked at almost as a freak, not because I could do it, but because I wanted to. I've always been a supporter of pumps. I just don't always have one with me.
Now I'm looking forward to going back and visiting other parts of the world. Balloon twisting seems to be such a new thing in so many areas that I have no idea what I'll run into wherever I end up.