Gene Anderson The Book

Physical details: Smyth-sewn casebound, black cloth case with gold foil stamping on cover and spine, seventy-pound matte pages, and four-color gloss dust jacket.

Content: The Book's 256 pages are illustrated with 890 line drawings and photographs. Twenty-three chapters each describe one effect and routine to the tiniest detail. Each one is from my current working repertoire, and each has been routined and tightened over years of live performances for real people. If it isn't a current and honed performance piece, it's not in The Book. Routines that I no longer perform are not included, and no clever tricks were created just to be in this book. Four additional chapters contain supplemental information with no tricks. Twenty-seven personal snippets about me ("The Gene Pool") are sprinkled throughout the text, and 206 quotes provide additional insight with lots of humor. The back cover of the dust jacket provides a good overview and the chapter titles are listed on the content page.

Composition: Written words were a part of my "writing," but only a part. I needed to see those words, and their accompanying visuals, together in real time. I learned Adobe Illustrator and ultimately drew 487 illustrations.

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Page layout was another defining factor—the third leg of the creation stool. I used Adobe InDesign to define the delicate balance between words and illustrations, on an individual page-by-page basis. Photographs sometimes convey intent more clearly than line drawings, and I post-processed 403 photographs taken by my collaborators and myself using Adobe Photoshop. Many of these photographs I enhanced (photo-Illustrated) in Adobe Illustrator with supplemental text, outlines and arrows. The result of all this is now The Book.

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Scripts: Each of the 23 routines includes the script that I use in its presentation. The script is divided into action and patter.

"Suit the action to the word, word to action"
– William Shakespeare

Actions speak louder than words, and seeing the action in juxtaposition to the words communicates the performance script almost at a glance. I use these scripts to refresh my memory when preparing for a performance. It's fast and effective. My scripts may be a helpful starting point for you, but eventually you should write scripts of your own. I hope that mine will launch you into a new, creative direction.

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