I'm a big theory guy myself, and this seems to be the place for the theory of practicing, so please bear with me because the questions will come soon
. The theory is that we can practice till our hands are numb and our mouths are dry practicing those "gets-em-every-time" one-liners, but then it's time to perform. These are routines you've performed tons of times before, and seemingly endlessly rehearsed in your "Magic Room". However, today something goes wrong that is out of your control.
Example: You perform a coke bottle vanish and glass of water production in and from a brown bag respectively (Fielding West Style. We'll call this effect "Brown Bag" for example purposes) You put the bottle in the bag for the last time, lift up on your glass but it comes unglued from it's stem. (for travel purposes I use Party City style plastic wine glasses, glued down to avoid this very incident) Again, you've performed Brown Bag tons of times to great result using the exact type of glass and coke bottle, but unfortunately it falls flat as you just pull out a stem with water and the coke bottle barely stays in the bag due to the glass coming undone.
How do we practice for these things? How do we say we have a plan B when the mishaps are usually so specific to the environment? On this day, the humidity was probably the cause of this incident. The same could be said for audience participation specific to the environment. Once again, you can practice your audience control lines till your mouth is dry, and they work in the shows 99% of the time, but there is always that 1% that is the variable. How do we practice the unknown?
I know one of the main things of show business is that it never goes exactly as planned during a performance, and you must be prepared for anything, but how do we rehearse something we can't force to happen in a practice environment? I mean, we can certainly be prepared for mis-haps, but:
A) How do we force these things to happen in a rehearsal environment when they are spontanious? Like this glass coming off the stem, I could never rehearse that because it just doesn't happen in a controlled environment, and without humidity the glass stays together. I hope I am being clear enough with this specific question, and I don't mean to get redundant.
B) Be prepared for something BIGGER than what you anticipate to go wrong?
Thank you for staying with me through this post, and I hope it sparks some good discussion!
Matt B.