Discovery

Last night a man approached me before my performance with one of the stranger comments I’ve heard in a while.

“I just wanted to let you know,” he said, “that I’m going to be sitting in the front row so I can take notes during your show. Hopefully it won’t distract you too much.”

I’m not making this up.

He told me he had an interest in mentalism and was hoping to learn more about it from watching me. I kindly explained to him that it would, in fact, be extremely distracting and asked him to wait until intermission to write down anything he had learned. 

Then, the show began. I took the stage and there was this man, sitting in the front row with a notebook and pen ready to go, completely ignoring my pre-show request.

So I tried to involve this man as much as I could. I gave him tasks and made eye contact. Over time, he wrote less and watched more.

What was I supposed to do?

I couldn’t scold the man in front of the audience. I didn’t want to lose 99% of the audience by being slightly rude to one person. When you’re onstage you learn to pick your battles.

You learn everything onstage.

When I first started performing I had no clue how to do a full show. I knew I needed a solid hour but it seemed like an insurmountable challenge. So I went in search of answers.

I devoured everything on YouTube and TV. I drove long hours to watch other performers. After their shows, I’d sit in the car with my wife and discuss everything we’d just seen: pacing, scripting, choreography, music, promo, merchandise, audience management, showmanship, choice of material, etc.

Back then, those were big discoveries that helped shape my act. But you can only learn so much offstage. I needed to do as many shows as possible.

That's how I learned to put an act together and what it feels like to spend an hour onstage. I discovered how to present to different audiences and how to make something truly entertaining.

After a while, the discoveries get smaller. Once you have a show in place, you start working on the small, precise details. You figure out how to motivate your actions and eliminate the “uh’s” and “um’s”.  You insert a joke here and edit out the other one.  Ironically, the smaller the discovery is, the bigger a difference it starts to make.

A week ago I realized that I had been delivering a joke completely wrong. I was placing emphasis on this word instead of that word. Onstage, I made the choice to deliver it in a new way and, lo and behold, I discovered a better way of doing it.

Eureka!

It takes hundreds of shows to get to that point. You need time to trip over your words and misplace your props first. Then, over time, the show gets better and you start to work on the details. There’s no shortcut here - it just takes time.

I love knowing that something may go wrong tonight and I’ll need to learn how to fix it on the fly. Or maybe the audience doesn’t care about my opening story so it’s time to get rid of it.

There’s always something something left to discover. That’s part of the joy of live theater. That’s why I love doing this so much.

In the last week alone I restructured the first act of my show, fixed a joke, and changed my blocking during the finale. I even know what to do now if someone ever wants to take notes in the front row again.

I can’t wait to see what discoveries await me tonight.

Rave Reviews At Orlando Fringe

I'm halfway through my run at the Orlando Fringe Festival and my shows have been SELLING OUT. I'm thrilled with the reception the show has been getting.

Here are a few of the quotes I've gotten so far:

“It may be the oddest — and most mysterious — end to a Fringe show I’ve ever seen. Mark Toland’s show just might freak you out.”

— Orlando Sentinel

 (Read Review)

“Toland brilliantly combines comedy, magic, and even a splash of philosophy into this must-see performance.”

— Theme Park University

(Read Review)

“That totally freaked me out!”

— FOX 35 Orlando

(Watch Video)

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Plus, I've met some amazing people during the festival and they've all had really nice things to say about the show. Here are a few of my favorites:

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If you're in Orlando and want to see the show there are still tickets left for my remaining performances! Click below to reserve your seats now.

Good

I had a good show recently. Maybe even a great show.

I’m talking a 4.5 out of 5. Or a 9 out of 10.

The kind of show where everything connects. Where even the lines that aren’t funny get laughs and even the moments that aren’t amazing get gasps.

A good show is like a hard reset. Three rough days in a row can be instantly forgotten after a great performance.

A good show negates negativity and changes my entire outlook. A good show means I can keep going because I must be getting better. A good show means that, every one in a while, I’m good enough to share something special with a roomful of strangers. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to do it again.

Good shows are the goal but bad shows are how you get good. I rarely learn from a good performance because autopilot kicks in and carries me to the finale. The best performances I’ve ever had are a blur but I can tell you every detail of my worst shows. They’re too painful to forget.

A good show is like a carrot, dangling on a stick. It’s a mirage at the end of the highway - just out of reach, just around the corner.

A good show is an unexplainable, unattainable goal. The better you get, the better the show must be. The more you learn, the more you have to learn. 

Yet every now and then, I surpass what I know. I reach a level of transcendence that I never knew existed. My skills and words align in an unforeseeable symbiotic relationship.

That’s what happened the other night - under the lights, onstage, in front of a hundred people I’ve never met.

I had an in-the-moment-firing-on-all-cylinders-out-of-body-experience downstage center. And for an hour I forgot about that cup of coffee I spilled before the show and the conference call I’m doing tomorrow. 

For an instant, I was better than I knew I could be. I was better than I’ve ever been.

In that moment, I was good. Maybe even great.

Stuck

Last summer I made a goal to write more.

Since then, I’ve written something nearly every day. Sometimes it’s a list, sometimes it’s a poem, sometimes it’s an essay. Most of the time I don’t publish them. They just sit in a folder on my desktop waiting for further refinement.

I’ve always enjoyed writing but I’d never taken it as seriously as I have for the last nine months. It’s become a daily form of catharsis. I get an idea for something - usually on a run or backstage at a show - then race to my notebook and write it down.

It takes coffee and focused energy to turn that idea into a finished essay. It’s a good feeling to finish something every week. I have a self-imposed deadline and it keeps me on track.

Until this week. This week I got stuck.

I’m not sure if it’s the looming summer tour or the endless to-do list of condo repairs back in Chicago. Maybe it’s the warmer weather or because I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I know one thing, though, it’s not because I’m out of ideas.

I have a million of them. Ideas, I mean. I keep a list of each and every one, carefully indexed on my phone and MacBook. I’m never at a loss for what to write about because I view everything as an art project.  Everything that happens to me gets filed away in my ideas folder, waiting to “volunteer as tribute” for this week’s Thursday Thoughts. Eventually I pick an idea, sit down to write, and don’t stop until I’m finished.

I followed the same formula this week. I picked a topic and wrote an essay. It was okay, but not great. So I wrote another draft. And another. I had a couple people read them and give me honest feedback. It wasn’t good to hear - but they were just being honest.

So I picked a new idea and started from scratch but it didn’t amount to anything. I paced my hotel room and stared blankly out the window of my flight into New York. I practiced calligraphy in my notebook (a favorite hobby) but the letters weren’t forming any meaningful words - just doodles in the margins.

I was stuck.

It’s not that the ideas were stupid or that the essays were terrible. They just weren’t ready, you know? They were unfinished and incomplete. I didn’t want to share something if I didn’t think it was good enough.

When I started Thursday Thoughts back in August, I did it on two conditions:

1) I would publish an essay every Thursday, without fail.
2) The essay had to be positive. 

I found myself needing a place to rant. A place to complain or voice frustrations with the rigors of a creative life. A blog seemed like the perfect place. But the more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want my writing to be full of negativity. I wanted to see if I could take something that was bothering me and put an optimistic spin on it.

That’s why the essays weren’t ready. They weren’t fully formed and were too negative to publish here. They weren’t helpful or constructive. They were just me getting a few things off my chest.

Was it good to get them off my mind? Absolutely. But that’s all. I’ll keep revisiting those topics until I can find a way to share them in a positive light.

Recently, someone told me they wanted to start a blog but they didn’t know what to write about that.

My advice? “Write about that.”

That’s exactly what I’m doing now. I’m turning my lack of concrete ideas into a post because that’s the best I can do this week. But I have seven or eight unfinished essays that are soon to follow.

I don’t know when they’ll be ready but I’m going to keep working on them. And I’ll be back next week with another new essay because Thursday Thoughts is not going anywhere.

I want to be able to say that I stuck with it - even when I was stuck.

The Voice

You know that voice that tells you not to take a risk? The voice that stops you in your tracks when you’re trying to take the next step? It’s the kind of voice that says your creative ideas aren’t good enough or maybe you aren’t good enough either.

Do you know the voice I’m talking about?

Well, I don’t have that voice.

Maybe it comes from naively believing I could do anything I wanted when I was younger. Growing up in a small town allowed me to be involved in as many activities as I wanted. I was a top-ten state tennis finalist and a state champion improvisational actor. I was an Eagle Scout and Valedictorian. I starred in the school play and played saxophone in the jazz band. I did everything I wanted to the best of my ability.

Or maybe it’s because I know that the voice is just wasting my time. I see people succeeding in my field and know that they weren’t always that successful. They had to start somewhere, right? So instead of letting the voice tell me I don’t deserve to be there I just remind myself that I’m just not there yet.

The voice is in your head. It’s your thoughts and fears trying to convince you to give up on what you want to do. I refuse to let myself stand in the way of achieving my goals. I refuse to let the voice speak its mind.

I know what you’re thinking. (That’s my job.) You’re saying, “Come on. Everyone has to deal with the voice.”

Nope. Maybe everyone else. But not me. 

Don’t believe me? Ask my wife.

She’ll tell you that if I want to do something badly enough I pursue it relentlessly until I’ve succeeded. If something interests me then I chase it down and make it mine. I’m fully convinced that I can do anything I set my mind to because I don’t have the voice.

A few years ago we went skiing for our second anniversary. Being from Kansas, I’d never been skiing before but by the end of the trip I was convinced I could conquer any slope at the resort. I still am.

She had to talk me off the cliff: “Skiing gear is expensive. We live in the city - not near any ski resorts. You don’t have time to start driving each weekend just to take up a new hobby.”

She was right, of course. She always is. I don’t have the time for a new hobby and so I didn’t pursue skiing. But you might have noticed what my wife didn’t say. She didn’t tell me I couldn’t be a skier. She knows better than that.

Even if she had, I wouldn’t have believed her. No voice can convince me I can’t do what I want to do. Not even the voice. I shut it up a long time ago.