Broadwayish Penn - 6/06/00

Well, we did our show tonight. It went really well. It was this nutty order. We had "Balloon of Blood" way up near the top, and I liked that. We had Juggling way at the bottom and I liked that too. We closed with "Flag" and I got it to work. I did a reference to the Second Amendment which was all I said about not doing "Magic Bullets." I was very happy with the show. I guess all the critics were there and we did the show we wanted to do. If they didn't like this show, they don't like this show. That's all I worry about with critics; it's all we have control over. I would hate to do the show badly, so they might like it if they saw it right. We did it right, so whatever they say is fine. I won't really know anyway. Krasher will just say "Good" or "Bad" and that's all I need to know. We're selling fine anyway.

The Beacon is a nice house and fun to play. There were lots of friends in the crowd and that was good. I also had lots of people who "taught Penn everything he knows." Hovey Burgess was there, who taught me all the Juggling I know, and Bobby Reynolds, the carny (best talker alive) who taught me EVERYTHING I know. Well, that's what they were claiming. Hovey did teach me lots of good juggling and I did take a lot of "Rubber Boy" from Bobby. Of course, also in the crowd were Doc Swann, who taught me fire-eating, C.M. Christ, who taught me so much about all kinds of showbiz, and Provenz who helped us a lot. They were claiming to have taught me everything though. We also had Renee French who designed the Inflatables and the T-shirts and lots of other friends that I'm forgetting right now.

I guess there's not much to say, except we did the show right. It went well. Closing with Flag was great and we got exactly one person (I got none, but Teller got one) who asked where the guns were. The crew was wonderful. It all went really great. We had 4 generations of "Directors of Covert Activies" under one roof. Nathan got a picture. How weird was it that Marc Garland, who worked so closely with us for all those years, hadn't seen hardly any of the material? We got new stuff, that's for sure.

I was very happy with the show. The opening is over, press is over, we're just doing the show and that's the part I love. Tomorrow night Ward Hall will be in the show. Having Doc, Bobby, Christ, and Ward see the show means a lot to me. It means the world.

It was a fun show to do. This is a very new show, a very nutty show. I'm glad we keep moving along through new things.

Penn

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