Tips for the Day of Your Perfomance

Hey everyone and welcome to today's post. If you’re new, welcome to our blog! Today we are going

to talk about our top tips for the day of your performance. In doing so we will be going through some

things that we have found helpful, and that we believe may help you out.

Our first tip is to get all of your costume and makeup ready and set out before you start getting into

them. We have found that if you don’t have everything set out and all together before you start to get

into makeup, then when you are half-done with your makeup you will likely have to run around

looking for things that you had forgotten, (or even worse, forget it altogether). We think that it is very

important to either be in full costume or none at all even in your own house, because this helps you

to differentiate between self, and clown-self.  

Along with having all of your stuff ready to go before you start, make sure that you give yourself

plenty of time to get ready. For us we find that on a quick day we can get into costume and makeup

in give or take 45 minutes, but if you can, make sure that you give yourself plenty of extra time. If

you are quite rushed you are more likely to mess up your makeup or forget something that you need.

We would recommend about an hour to an hour and a half, (more if you aren’t experienced in putting

on your makeup.).

When you are performing you are almost certainly going to have props. You may also have a snack

or craft or something else that you need to bring. If you have all of those things laid out or in a bag

before you leave, you are way less likely to forget something, but remember that double checking

never hurt anybody either!

If you have read our “Why we video our performances” blog, (and if you haven’t, why not go and

check it out after you finish reading this one!) you will know that we also need many different things

to record our performance. As part of laying out all of the things we need, we make sure to have the

tripod, video camera, camera cord, and extension cord. Once we forgot the tripod and had to have

someone go home and get it, so now we are extra careful about this.

Often when people (or clowns) are on stage they naturally speed up, talking faster, and moving

though things faster due to the adrenaline that comes with performing. This often happens to us so

we try to make sure that we have extra things to keep the kids busy after we are done performing

and before our Church gets out. These things can also help to cement the lessons by tying them

back to something that the kids physically work on or eat. These can include: snacks, activities,

crafts, or even additional explanations of some points we went over, or even more gags.

One thing that we have done for a very long time is double check our scripts and outline between

skits. It gives you a moment to refresh your memory on who starts the skit, and what skit is next. No

this is not cheating, it just helps to create smoother skits, and gives you a moment to catch your

breath.

While you are looking at your scripts we would suggest that you turn on some music for the kids to

listen to. It keeps them entertained, makes the transitions between skits cleaner, and then you have

more time to look at your scripts without fear of interruption.

This next point may seem silly but if you have any makeup on or around your lips you will need a

water cup with a straw. When you have clown makeup on, it will often it run if you drink without a

straw, (by getting your makeup wet.) so make sure on performance days that you have water (trust

us, you will be moving and getting quite warm, and DO NOT want to end up dehydrated!) and a

straw (and… probably something to put the water in as well).

Even though we believe that you should not eat in makeup, (as it makes a mess of any makeup

anywhere around your mouth) after the performance is over and the kids, or you have left a snack is

very nice indeed. We personally perform right before dinner time and a snack, like a snack bar, is a

great pick me up.

One thing that we have recently discovered that we need to have on head would be band aids. We

did not figure this out until our “Thankfulness for Thanksgiving” performance. I, Dizzy, broke my nail

and we had to find a first aid kit for a band aid. We also believe that if a clown gives a kid a fun

(patterned) band aid they will be quite tickled.

The next tip is to bring your lip stuff and a mirror with you. There will be times when you may have to

reapply your lips; if you smear them for instance, and that just-in-case scenario you don’t want to be

without the products that you put on your lips. For another example I, Cupcake immediately before

putting on my makeup for a performance one day I developed a bad split lip and couldn’t put on my

lip supplies until after I had arrived at the Church, (yes it is better to always be fully in costume, but

sometimes things come up.).

Our next tip is to practice. What we mean here is that is if you can, you should try to spend about an

hour the day of the performance practicing, refreshing your memory, and getting ready to actually

perform. We have done this for every one of our performances and it helps everything to go

smoother, and reduces the risk of forgetting important, or many lines.

Our second to last tip is to have a place to hide immediately before your performance. At our old

church we were in the sanctuary while the kids were in a different part of the Church. At our new

Church we often hide in the kitchen. There we are out of everyone's way, and also out of the kids

direct line of sight, this helps the teachers to keep the kids calm before we start, as well as giving us

every last moment to prepare ourselves.

Our final tip for the day of the performance is to dress for the weather, and to double check the

forecast. On the day of our Christmas performance back in 2016 the windchill was -30 degrees, (the

coldest day of the year that year) and we had leggings on under our dresses, and coats and scarves

and so on. We have also experienced the opposite. If you read our “Something Silly is one” post

(Again please read through it if you haven’t or else you will be left out of our cryptic ramblings!) you

will also know that the day of our summer photo-shoot was 96 degrees with a heat index of well over

100. So whatever the weather may be like, make sure that you are dressed properly so that you can

be as comfortable as possible.

Lastly here is our current personal checklist of things we that need to have (some of these items are

only for our specific space and needs).

Snacks
Craft
Tripod
Cameras
Charging cord foe camera
Extension cord
Cup with drinking straw

Curtain (we use it to separate our on-stage from off)

Extra Scripts

Props ( these change for each and every performance)

Both Dizzy’s and Cupcakes Bags

Lip stuff

Computer

Cord for computer

Speakers

Snacks

Band Aids

Something Silly Clowns

(Cupcake and Dizzy)

Two clowns trying to spread God's love to everyone.

Feel free to post any questions that you may below, and we will our best to get back to you

as soon as possible. Please follow us to keep up with our posts.