by Kirby Lindsay, posted 24 March 2013
As Moisture Festival moves into its second week, of its four week run, audiences still have access to outrageous productions featuring astounding performers doing awesome acts – now at both Hale’s Palladium and Broadway Performance Hall.
“You miss the Moisture Festival at your own risk,” warned Joey Pipia, a veteran MF performer. Pipia, and Louie Foxx, recently spoke with me at a special Moisture party for its donors. Both have performed at MF alongside with aerialists, bubble blowers, clowns, jugglers, contortionists, strip teasers, musicians, rope acts, etc. And, with their acts, both confirm, once again, how difficult it can be to describe what varieté performers actually do.
When Cowboys Grow Up
Foxx and Pipia were referred to me by MF producer Ron Bailey as ‘magicians,’ but magic tricks are a very small part of Foxx’s repertoire. “I do stuff that makes me feel like a five-year-old,” he explained about his act. “I always wanted to be a cowboy,” he said, and now, “I’m whipping a banana into three-pieces.”
For his banana massacre, Foxx uses a special bullwhip – one he built himself. “My show is doing all the stupid stuff that I though was neat as a kid,” Foxx observed, because, it turns out, “it’s also neat as an adult.” These are games, tricks and talents he developed while playing with his 9 siblings. “I was poor as a kid,” he explained, “and little league cost money.” Instead, he and the other kids were sent outside to play, “so we didn’t break the house,” he joked.
As a kid he built a base of skills. As an adult, he continues to cultivate those skills as he creates new acts and tricks. “I’ve had so many awesome ideas that I’ve had to shelve because they didn’t translate,” onto the stage, he explained. In addition to performing, Foxx sells the whips he creates to other performers (including Conan O’Brien and for the ‘Machete Kills’ film,) along with a magic trick he invented. The magic trick, “came out of 15 different bad ideas,” Foxx explained, and on the 16th, he invented an absolute winner idea. As for his hand-shadow talents, he started those as a child, but he perfected that act while his wife was pregnant. “It was something I could quietly practice,” he observed.
In his act, Foxx can wield a whip, but he can do card tricks, the hand-shadow puppets, bubble figures, lasso, balance things (including a cup of water, upside down,) and play 20 questions with the audience (which he swears is more fun than it sounds!)
From Pre-Med To Delusions
Comparatively, Pipia’s act looks more like straight magic, but he explained, “I call myself a delusionist.” Never “one of those magic kit kids,” Pipia explained, he got into magic while working – at age 17 – at Tanner’s Magic Supply in New York. After having sold tricks to Johnny Carson and Orson Wells, and learning, in private lessons, from legendary magician Tony Slydini, Pipia finds himself preferring to use standard items instead of trick props; a handkerchief instead of magician scarves. “What I like to do,” he said, “is magic that is very simple.”
“I always had a fascination with illusion,” Pipia explained, “I think a delusion is the place where wonder and the absurd meet.” Yet, Pipia took a circuitous route to making magic. He learned the silk knot trick, and others, from Slydini, but he also went into pre-med. “Mom and Dad wanted a doctor, or a lawyer,” he admitted, but he found himself spending more time performing stand-up comedy.
Pipia went into acting, and teaching acting, after he married and had children. He owns a theater in Port Townsend, when he taught his children about the arts. After they graduated, Pipia came out of ‘retirement,’ after 20 years, and can now do magic full-time – giving audiences the delusions they enjoy.
Clunkers, And Adaptation
Pipia and Foxx both incorporate volunteers into some of their act. Both have had experienced the volunteer who turned out to be too quiet, or too loud, or too confused, or too drunk – what they call a ‘clunker.’ Yet, both performers explained how this can be an opportunity to improve the act. “It’s been a long time since I’ve had a bad volunteer,” Pipia said, “I don’t think there are any bad volunteers.”
For both men, they explained how it comes down to working with whomever they have on stage. As Pipia observed, “Frequently someone will say to me, ‘you got lucky with that person,’ and I’m thinking, ‘how could I get that clunker?’”
Foxx acknowledged that all of his acts require him to do a lot of practice. “I learn all the variables,” he said, so that if his props – or his volunteer – don’t do what he expects, he can, “turn a clunker into something good.” As Foxx explained, his act shares something of himself with the audience, and “in my show, stuff can happen,” he acknowledged, “and you see me.”
“Whether the bit makes it, or doesn’t,” Pipia explained, depends on the performer, “I no longer worry about it.”
Seeing The Best
Pipia won’t be in the Moisture Festival 2014 shows. He got a paying gig to perform on a cruise ship. This is only his second miss in 10 years performing at Moisture.
Foxx will perform this year, (after a brief show run in Boise, Idaho,) on March 30th and April 12th. While he’s excited about showing off his own talents, talking about the 7:30p show on March 30th, showed that the performers sometimes also get swept up in hero-worship. As he described it, he’ll be on the stage with his dream team that night, including John Carney, Duo Rose, Al Simmons, and the Nu Klezmer Army.
“I’m astounded by the line-up at Moisture Festival,” Pipia also acknowledged, “It is life-giving. It gets better each year,” he said, then mused, “How can something perfect get better?”
Purchase tickets, today, for the remaining three weeks of Moisture through Stranger Tickets. For a line-up of the performers, visit the Moisture Festival website, or simply pick a night and go! Moisture won’t last through the spring, and seats will sell out. The time is ripe, and as Pipia warned, ‘miss it at your own risk!’
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