By Steve Rawlings
Let’s take a little time to tackle the thorny and little spoken about subject of dealing with drops.
We all do it but it’s how you deal with it that can often make or break your show. So here are a few of my thoughts and I hope it helps you when you’re having a rough day and the tricks aren’t working as well as you’d like.
First of all, nerves can be a big cause of drops so here’s a few tips for dealing with that. Remember The Booker booked you because he likes what you do and thinks it will work with his audience or he wouldn’t have booked you.
Start with simple tricks and build up the difficulty as your confidence grows.
Don’t over practice pre show-muscle tiredness causes drops.
If there’s no time or space to practice before the show, just physically going through the motions of some of your tricks to help you warm up.
Remember you are there because you want to be there and you love what you do.
A little nerves are good for you and will help you put on a good show.
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Now onto dropping in general:
Don’t practice not to drop, practice what you’ll do when it happens. Everyone drops no matter how good they are so make a plan to deal with it smoothly when it happens.
How you react to a drop is how your audience will react to it.
The first place they will look when you drop is at you.
If you show annoyance , anger or disappointment, the crowd will pick up on it instantly.
Be prepared to drop and keep the fun going.
If you look embarrassed they’ll be embarrassed for you. No one knows your act but you, if you deal well with a drop no one will ever know if it was part of your show or not.
Always have a plan, in rehearsals practice what you’ll do with each trick if it goes wrong. If a trick goes wrong ask yourself, “have I done enough?” If the answer is yes, just move on to the next trick. You don’t have to go back and keep trying to get it right. For instance, in my act I do 13 throws with a table , chair and vase of flowers, if I drop on 9 throws I’ll claim victory and move on, I’ve already impressed the crowd and stopping and restarting will kill the energy and flow I’ve built up.
If you’ve decided a trick is important, 3 tries and move on is a good rule to go by. You could also make it into a running gag throughout your show if you like. An example of this is I’ve just started to flip a wine glass on a mouthstick in my show. I’ll try it twice but if it doesn’t work on the third flip I’ll just catch it and place it on the stick. It gets a nice laugh and the show goes on with no one disappointed.
How you deal with drops must fit your act and character
If you perform to music, when you drop you have to make a choice of weather to just carry on to the next move, or if you try it again you’ll have to cut something else out of your act to keep you in time with the music.
If a prop is dropped, think “what else can I use instead?” What else do I have around me during my show, you could kick one of your shoes up into your pattern and juggle it as you walk over to get your prop.
If you’re in a group act look at how other members of the group can feed you props if you drop. You may not have to pick them up yourself
It’s a good idea if you have a longer show to put tricks like balancing, comedy or magic into it so that even on your worst day for drops there are long parts of your act where everything works. In my show there are two balance routines 7 and 10 minutes long that are very strong and fit the style of show but are also a great safety net on a bad day.
It’s worth remembering People like to watch you struggle, it shows you’re human and the difficulty of what you’re doing.
Drops and how you deal with them can add to your show. Some of my best shows have been when I’ve dropped a lot, and you’ll find that some of your ideas will become part of your regular show.
The technical level of your show doesn’t need to be as high as you think to entertain an audience. Stay within your comfort zone
Technical ability is nowhere near as important as you think it is. If you make it look easy people will think it’s easy no matter how difficult the trick
Dropping humanises you and let’s people realise how tough what you’re doing really is, if you deal with it well and keep people on your side
Mistakes are important, you’ll learn more from mistakes than from getting things right, they force you to think out of the box and may help you find new and interesting ideas and routines for your show. You can even make dropping a big part of your show. The Jim show takes this to the absolute extreme.
He deliberately drops on a 3 club pirouette around 15 times and his audience goes through a roller coaster of emotions from encouragement, to embarrassment, to annoyance, and back to encouragement again but when he finally does it they go nuts and feel they’ve watched something special. Jim can nail this trick anytime but he chooses not to and it works great for him.
(Personally I don’t have the balls for this and this approach is definitely not for the faint hearted but it does show you how far you can take it).
The way you respond to a drop can be anything from cool technical ways to get the prop back in the pattern, to audience participation, a gag or just distraction (club swinging with the two clubs you have left for a bit before carrying on or doing some ballet moves across the stage). Whatever works for you
Best of luck and may all your drops be positive ones
Steve Rawlings has been a successful professional entertainer for 42 years . With a career beginning with street performing and across many other venues, he is now mainly working on some of the biggest cruise ships in the world. He’s broken eight Guinness world records and has been lucky enough to meet and exchange ideas with amazing performers from all around the world.
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