Care About Us - Documentary

A few weeks ago, I performed at a fundraiser for Care About Us, full length documentary about homelessness around the world. I did magic alongside several musical acts, and a pair of martial artists. The production, conceived by Dan Balcaban, is supported entirely through crowd funding. It has already completed filming in twelve cities around the world and is currently raising money to complete its post production. You can take a look at highlights from the fundraising party below or contribute on their Indiegogo Page.

www.CareAboutUs.net

Photos by Duy Nguyen

Uncertainty Project: CP24

James Alan Uncertainty Project Poster

I was on CP24 Breakfast this morning discussing my upcoming show, The Uncertainty Project at the Wychwood Theatre. While the show is about uncertainty, I am necessarily tight lipped about the tricks which are in the show, but you can get an idea of what's coming here:

The performance portion was not entirely what I was hoping for. Unfortunately the crew was dealing with a serious breaking news story about a deadly fire in Brampton. So while I was still able to go on amid the coverage we were, to a large extent, improvising when it came to the performance. We still got to have some fun though.

Tickets for The Uncertainty Project are available at www.uncertaintyproject.com/tickets

A Short Film about a Magician

An interesting short film about a magician with some really funny lyrics. Some of this hits rather close to home.

The video was produced by James Galea, directed by Adam Scott Franklin.

Uncertain Confessions (Part 1)

My new show, The Uncertainty Project is approaching very fast (June 18). While I am keeping very tight lipped about the contents of the show (what good is a show about uncertainty if you know in advance what's going to happen?) I wanted to share a bit about what's behind the show: where it came from and how it developed. Randomness and probability have always held a deep fascination for me. When I was younger, I was introduced to the Infinite Improbability Drive of Douglas Adams and also to Chaos Theory as described by the inimitable Jeff Goldblum in Jurrasic Park (Even when I'm supposed to be learning about velociraptors, I still somehow gravitate to non linear dynamics.)

My love of randomness — that sounds a bit perverse, maybe "interest" is better — is coupled with pathological indecisiveness. Under no circumstances should you try to present me with any kind of options like "What movie would you like to go see?" It's not pretty. So in order to escape from the black hole that is decision making, I invoke random chance wherever possible. This means that unless I'm performing in a show and the order of the tracks actually matter, every music-playing gizmo that I own is set to shuffle on a permanent basis.

Unfortunately, that means this exact scenario actually happened to me once:

Buy tickets to The Uncertainty Project here. Or, if you're the guy this happened to, contact me and I'll arrange a free ticket for you.

More uncertainty coming soon....

Contest for The Uncertainty Project

Over at the Canada's Magic Blog, there is a contest going on where you have the opportunity to win tickets to The Uncertainty Project, June 18-21 at the Wychwood Theatre in Toronto. The contest is based on a random draw, so anyone can sign up for a chance to win. There are four pairs of tickets up for grabs which will be distributed on May 30. So go try your luck. Enter now.

Regular tickets for the show are available at www.uncertaintyproject.com/tickets.

Some Extra Awesomeness

This is what an Award of Awesomeness looks like.

I was recently awarded this Award of Awesomeness from the SOULO Theatre Festival where I spent most of my weekend submerged in one-person theatre. I think I'll hang it next to my Larry Award.

It was a wonderful experience to be part of. I have no doubt that embarrassing and unusual photos will surface in no time. In the meantime, here are mine:

(For the juicier ones, head over to Instagram #soulo)