Genii Magazine Reviews Seriously Silly Live

Review By Joe Turner

Put this disc in your DVD player. Click "Play All". You will immediately begin smiling, laughing, and learning.

Mr. Kaye’s acclaimed book Seriously Silly is now arguably the authoritative text on entertaining children with magic. This new DVD from Silly Billy himself allows the student to see the author in action, explaining and demonstrating the principles of comedy, interaction, empowerment, and storytelling not just in a studio setting, but also through seeing a live performance for an audience of 300 school children.

The content is organized in principle-performance-review chunks. In a studio setting, Mr. Kaye introduces and explains a given principle. Next, a relevant excerpt from his performance is presented as a live, in-context example. Finally, Mr. Kaye debriefs the routine in light of the principle that was described. This pattern continues through the seven-point curriculum that Mr. Kaye delivers.

It is difficult to imagine a more through or effective way to provide real-world instruction on how to entertain children than this. It is one thing to present a theoretically sound framework that stands up to intellectual scrutiny. It is another thing indeed to back up the teaching with video of his own routines in a live setting. Mr. Kaye achieves both. In addition to the information relating the tricks to the theory, he also covers the kind of performance details which come with years of professional experience performing these routines all over the world.

The trick explanations, which comprise the main instructional content on most magic DVDs, are almost like bonus material on this disc. The explanations are recorded in front of a silver curtain in a performing space which seems a bit cramped for the task. Mr. Kaye is attentive to every detail in explaining which props are required or desirable for each routine and where he acquired them. In some cases he gives specific alternate sources or ideas for props which are no longer available. There is excellent material here and it is explained well, but theses segments are probably the weakest part of the disc.

If the trick explanations are like bonus material, then the actual bonus material is simply icing on this extremely large birthday cake. Mr. Kaye’s clever parodies of different routines from the David Blaine specials are inspired. His well-produced parody of the Masked Magician is perhaps even more so. You’ll enjoy seeing cameos from Steve Cohen, Simon Lovell, and even the foulmouthed but scholarly editor of the magazine you are currently holding. The last piece of bonus material is a PDF condensation of Mr. Kaye’s 33 Elements of Kid Show Routines.

What’s the overall verdict? The production values are generally quite good, especially for an independent production, but a bit inconsistent due to the trick explanation segments. The bonus material is extremely well done. The theoretical content is as good as the original book would indicate, and there is no substitute for seeing Silly Billy in performance. The value for dollar is exceptionally high. If you perform magic for kids, you cannot do without this resource.