This guy is a master at it. From Australia comes the story of Raymond Crowe who for years has been playing with shadow puppetry, got a low-rez film on YouTube and is now searching for an American agent. From the Sydney Morning Herald:
Show me the bunny, but don't shoot
The irony has not been lost on Raymond Crowe. After years performing his homespun, low-tech shadow puppetry, he has suddenly become an international star via the internet.
"Twenty-six years in the business and all it takes is one week on YouTube," he said yesterday.
Crowe's fame has come after his show-stopping shadow play at last month's Helpmann Awards at the State Theatre made it onto YouTube and into email inboxes around the world. The Adelaide-based unusualist, as he calls himself, is now juggling his Australian bookings with overseas requests, is looking for a manager in the United States and is in the early stages of negotiating to appear on David Letterman's show.
It's all a bit bemusing for a man who has no business card, leaves all bookings to his agent and has happily spent the past six years performing his magic tricks, ventriloquism and shadow work at corporate gigs.
To call his lyrical, touching routine shadow puppetry doesn't do it justice. Set to Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World, it features Crowe's spotlit hands depicting a singing Louis Armstrong morphing into a horse, a preening swan, a hopping rabbit, a baby's hand clutching an adult's finger and an elderly man.
Crowe got serious about his shadow work about 1995, devising a routine set to the song Paper Moon. He had avoided What A Wonderful World because at the time it featured in everything from ads to film soundtracks, but a friend lent him the Armstrong CD and he developed his now-famous routine. His new-found fame has been a blessing and a curse. "I spent a few days trying to get it pulled because it was my work and plagiarism is rife," he said. "But I realised I needed to figure out how to best capitalise on the fame. I'm in that wacky moment of life where suddenly I'm famous. Next week it might be the guy blowing up balloons with his toes that's the big thing."
The YouTube video is here: What a wonderfull world shadow puppets amazing must see !! Looks like it was shot with a cell-phone (video has a lot of artifacts) but the performance is amazing.
