I was asked to do a 10 to 15 minutes magic show at the El Mango Halloween party, in costume. I gladly accepted, and went there as
Kuchisake Onna again. There were 6 performances in total, and some bonus performances from the MC. The party participants could then vote on the performance they thought was best, and on the costume they thought was best.
I did a short magic show on stage, where I did five of my normal tricks. Everyone seemed to enjoy the show, and many came up and said they were sure I would win the best performance prize (which I did not, it went to the stunt fighting performance team who deserved it).
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| A magic coloring book with the Disney "Frozen" characters |
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| Me, Chun-Li, and a clown doing a magic trick with small rabbits |
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| A card with a drawing made by some random audience member ended up inside an unopened PET-bottle. |
I did a trick where the "perfect match" for a girl will be determined using a set of cards with pictures of Brad Pit (indicating "cool people" are a good match for her), Einstein ("intelligent" people are her type), Mr Bean ("annoying people") etc. The girl that night kept getting a card with a photo of me. This was a bit difficult to recognize, though, since I was not wearing a dress and wig in the photo. But everyone thought this was funny too.
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| The MC, dressed like "a pro-wrestler" |
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| Stunt fighting performance |
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| Stunt fighting performers |
The performances were in order: a team doing Bachata dancing, a girl doing impressions (singing songs as if sung by famous people I have never heard of), me, then a short break and then a stunt fighting actions sequence (that won the best performance), a group of girls dancing like the Girls' Generation (Korean girl band), and a pair doing some advanced salsa dancing. Many people I spoke to at the party came too late and missed my show, so I partly blame these people for not voting for me in the "best performance" category, haha.
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| Girl I know who performed songs on stage |
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| Girls I don't know, dancing like Girls' Generation |
The guy presenting the performers and being funny during the times when people were not finished back stage was also a talented performer. He was very funny, and he also sang and played the guitar during some breaks.
I did meet some people I know at the party. The girl who sang on stage is a friend of mine, and lots of her friends came to see her (none of my friends came to see me...), and since I know some of them I had some friendly faces in the audience even before starting my show. I ran into the girl with the Chun-Li costume from the
Bottom Cafe party, for instance.
At the party, there was only one room backstage for performers to prepare whatever they may have to prepare. I was backstage moving things around between different bags to get ready for my performance when one of the bachata dancers came in. She looked at me for a while and asked me: "You are actually a man, right?" and asked me to leave so she could change. I was more or less finished with my preparations, so even thought I was the next to go on stage, I gave her the room. She also asked me where I am from, and when I said Sweden she started speaking to me in Swedish! Not only that, she also speaks Swedish with a very strong dialect from the sought of Sweden. This was the most surprising thing to happen to me at the party.
She came out a few minutes later dressed as Marilyn Monroe. I went back into the room to hide the last magic props on myself before the performance, but we talked a bit more later. She went to a Swedish high school in the south of Sweden for one year almost exactly 20 years ago. We also turned out to be born the same year (though she of course looks much younger than I do when neither of us are in costume). And she works at my university... So we met in the school cafeteria for lunch the week after the party.
At the end of the party, the prizes were announces. I won the best costume prize, and received a massage pillow. A drunk guy who had won lots of decks of cards with the Funashi character by playing crane games also gave me a deck of cards after I did a few magic tricks for him at the bar counter. There were not that many people that actually came to the party in costume. Most of the performers where in costume, but other than that there were very few. I took a photo with two girls dressed as a "sexy nurse" and as a "sexy cat French maid" that I used for some magic tricks during my show, though.
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| A girl who's drawing of a cat ended up in an unopened PET-bottle, and her nurse friend |
