If you cannot be heard . . .

I was in Doha recently and was asked to do some magical entertainment for a society ball in the evening. It was in a top flight hotel - really posh. A huge banquet hall was used and over 300 guests in all their finery were sat around the room around 30+ tables.

My first problem was that the stage was in the middle of the room surrounded on all sides by the audience. It felt a little bit like being in a boxing ring . . .

I went dizzy turning around to make sure the audience on all sides could see what I was doing at any one time.

Worse though was that the organisers of the event having splashed out huge money on the entertainers stinted by not getting a decent sound system.

It was terrible. Nothing could be heard. The MC squawked helplessly, the guest ambassador's speech was completely ignored and it killed my act stone dead. The sound engineer was either incapable of fixing the system or simply did not care. So for twenty agonising minutes I was exposed to a room full of people who could not understand a word I said. Although the magic was visual and people who were interested could understand the effects, it simply was not enough. There was no connection with the audience on an emotional level.

If you cannot be heard . . . you might as well not say anything.

The light show dancer who followed my act had it even worse. The sound engineer refused to play her music (which she had rehearsed to for over a month) and played music which had no rhythm or beat. She was so upset afterwards she nearly cried. Our entertainment agent was furious.

Ahhhhh! . . . Life in the real world outside church eh! . Come back my beloved congregation . . . all is forgiven!

The only redeeming feature of the night for me was the requirement to do table hopping magic - and with thirty plus tables I had my work cut out for me. It did assuage my guilt that I was earning the fat fee I was getting paid. At least at the table I got to talk with the people, and there was a connection and the magic was appreciated.

The moral of the story - invest in a decent sound system. If you have something worth saying - make sure you are heard.

It especially seem to me that churches stint on the pa systems too and this is a tragedy. We have something worth sharing.