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How to Handle Hecklers: The complete guide to dealing with every performers worst nightmare!
by Keith Fields
A5, 120 pages, soft back
Reviewed
by Duncan Trillo/MagicWeek
Since turning professional 20 years ago Keith
Fields has worked more comedy clubs than just about any other magician in the
country, with hundreds and hundreds of performances at the Comedy Store
in London's West End, Jongleurs night clubs across the UK, and perhaps the toughest club
of them all, the infamous Tunnel Palladium.
How to Handle Hecklers takes all that hard-won audience experience and packs it into 120 brilliant pages of solid advice, notes, and killer put-downs (over 200!).
You'll learn how to turn imminent disaster into instant success. As a quick example, here are a few lines taken from the book, under a section titled 'Talk to the audience, not the heckler':
One important thing I have learned is always try and take the sting out of a line, don't get personal, deliver the line to the audience and not the heckler. e.g. A line like this one "We could have a battle of wits but you're unarmed." Is too direct and can be softened and made less threatening by delivering it to the audience in general rather than to the heckler specifically, it is a small but important change: "We could have a battle of wits but he's unarmed." Remember that the heckler is a valid member of the audience and therefore deserves to be entertained and respected not insulted... until he goes too far! Then you can attack from the moral high ground safe in the knowledge that he started it.
How to Handle Hecklers is littered throughout with such advice, often going into great depth.
A quick list of headings will give you some idea of what's covered:
Who is Keith Fields anyway?
A bit of background
Introduction
What is a heckle?
So what do I do if I'm heckled?
The danger of dialogue
Expect the unexpected
Good heckles
Killer heckles
Learn from experience
An ethical question
Strategies
The first heckler
The funny heckler
The drunk heckler
The persistent heckler
The professional heckler
The female heckler
The personal heckler
The child heckler
The honest heckler
Popular heckles
Heckles for magicians only
The machine gun put down
How to use put down lines
Talk to the audience not the heckler
Once again with feeling!
Ad-libs
Different rules for different groups
A warning for close-up magicians
First contact
Mild put downs
Female hecklers
Lines to use with care
Audience members walking out
Audience members coming back or arriving late
Little or late laughter and applause
Uncontrollable laughter
No laughs or applause
Coping with a bad intro
Coughing and sneezing fits
When you fluff a line
People talking
Someone drops something
Final words
What's on offer here is invaluable. How to Handle Hecklers presents a perfect solution for just about every conceivable heckle that you are ever likely to face in your performing career.
This is one book that every working magician should own - it gets my very highest recommendation.
Order from: www.keithfields.co.uk
(Dealer enquiries welcome)
© Duncan Trillo, February 2006