Phillip T. Rabbit, a human, wanted to be a magician. However, people called his act a clown show for its tragic flaws. Rabbit hated clowns.
Rabbit always dreamed of being a magician. He was a magician’s apprentice from a young age, which was not glamorous. He would, without irony, clean out the cage of the rabbit in the hat. He would sharpen the saws to cut ladies in half and hide cards for various magical card tricks. He put flowers in sleeves and tied handkerchiefs together.
He was a very diligent apprentice.
The trouble began for Rabbit when he started performing. He wanted respect, so he took the magic too seriously. This intense focus made it hard for the audience to follow his misdirection—a key for any magic trick. Without misdirection, his illusions would fail.
The animal rabbit wouldn’t come out of the human Rabbit’s hat. So Rabbit fired the rabbit. When he asked someone to pick a card, he would reveal a business card. He stumbled over wires and broke mirrors. Each time, the frantic Rabbit became more embarrassed until his face turned bright red. He wondered if this was why clowns wore white makeup—to cover up humiliations.
So he started doing less and less. The tricks became so simple and obvious that everyone was bored. The wake-up call for Rabbit came when an audience member fell out of her chair asleep. She was five-years-old and bored by his magic.
His magician boss was in the audience. He told Rabbit to find a more exciting act or get out of magic.
“What do you do when a trick doesn’t work?” Rabbit asked him.
“I pretend that it was supposed to go that way. I feign confidence.”
“Isn’t that embarrassing? Don’t you feel like a clown?”
“Dear Rabbit,” the magician said in a severe tone, “a clown is just a magician whose tricks don’t work.”
So Rabbit decided to give it a try. What did he have to lose? Rabbit was afraid of the nose and the shoes, so he settled on a bowtie. He slowly worked through his routine, for free, down at local family hangouts.
At first, when the arrow wouldn’t go through Rabbit’s head, he was very discouraged, but soon he realized how entertaining it was for the arrow not to work. He made the struggle a part of the act. When the arrow finally went through his head, the whole audience applauded wildly. The stunned Rabbit, bleeding slightly, was just as stunned with success.
When the rehired animal rabbit ended up in a purse instead of the hat, Rabbit told the rabbit it wasn’t polite to go into a woman’s purse. When he did make an audience member disappear, he was just as shocked as anyone. The trick seemed better because it took ten minutes for Rabbit to find his volunteer.
As he became more entertaining, he found more work. Eventually, Rabbit started getting requests because he made the kids laugh.
Today, Rabbit is a professional magician in a bowtie. By professional magician, I mean that he has an act at a minor casino. But he still works the birthday party route. He always does a bunch of tricks that don’t work. Because eventually, they do work. That’s part of the game. No one is a magician until they are first a clown.