Ep. 28 The Story & Lessons Behind Kevin Burke's 4,000 Performances as the Caveman

Hey, there. This is Darren Lacroix. Mark Brown is out of the country, so I'm going solo today, and I thought, who would I trust? Who is somebody that I think is not only an incredible presenter, but one unbelievable coach in terms of delivery. When presenters are on stage, it's how you deliver. I saw him last year at one of our live events. Totally transform one of our attendees when she started. It was a good story. It had some ideas, but, man, here's a guy who's done over 4,000 shows. One man. Broadway shows, 4,000 times. So if you're a presenter and you gotta do the same content over and over again, you think you've gotta do it over and over again. Try 4,000 times. His background is in clowning. What? And improv training.

What?

Oh, my gosh. You are gonna love this. As we go in deep with one and only Kevin Burke. Check this out.

Anyone can give a presentation. Few deliver unforgettable presentations. What's the difference? You're about to find out. Welcome to the Unforgettable Presentations podcasts with your hosts, world champion speakers and coaches, Mark Brown. Mark Brown.

Your life tells a story, and there's someone out there who needs to hear it.

And Darren Lacroix. And Darren Lacroix.

Stage time. Stage time. Stage time.

Ready for some powerful presentation. Ahas. Let's dive right in.

All right, Joined by Kevin Burke. Kevin, how are you?

I'm doing great, Darren. In the intro, when you said, mark isn't here, so I'm going solo, to me, what I heard is, mark isn't here, so I'm going so low that I'm bringing on Kevin Burke.

Nice. That was not the intention, but Kevin Burke. Kevin. Kevin. Kevin. Unforgettable presentation. So let's dive right in because some people might have known you, may not know you, but tell us about how you got started, because you get such a fascinating training background for what you do with, which is why you're an amazing performer and coach. So where did it start?

Well, I started at Indiana University, where I got a degree in acting and directing, so I wanted to be an actor. Then I came back to my home in Chicago and I got training at Second City, the famous improv school. And I went through their student track, and then I went through their teacher track because I really wanted to learn this information deeply. And I was working with various improv groups in the city, never with Second City itself, unfortunately. And the opportunity arose to go to Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Clown College, which it sounds like a Punchline. But there actually was a boot camp for clowns. It was 10 and a half weeks of training. We started our day at 8am and we ended our day at 10pm and we were at a distance dead run the entire time except when we broke for lunch and dinner. In order to be a circus performer, you have to be in peak physical condition. And I know that if anybody sees me now, they go, really? Peak physical conditioning. Really? Yes. I was. I'll shoot you some pictures. I was a fairly muscular circus acrobat, which is also what you need to be to be a clown. I was with the circus for a year, left the circus and I looked around and took stock of everything that I knew how to do. And I thought, okay, what could I do that would make me money right away? That I don't have to be famous? And I went, aha. Stand up comedy. So in 1987, I started doing stand up. I did stand up until 2003 when I got a chance to audition for the one man Broadway play Defending the Caveman by Rob Becker, which if folks don't know about it, it's a one man play. It's about men and women in relationships, how we communicate differently and how those differences cause us to misunderstand each other. For example, if a woman says, I'll call you, she means when she gets home. If a man says, I'll call you, he means before he dies. And we were the longest running one person play on Broadway. We beat Dolly Parton's previous record by more than double. And I did the Las Vegas residency for 12 years, which is where you and I met. And over the course of that time, I did over 4,000 performances of defending the Caveman.

That's crazy.

It's actually more than Hal Holbrook's run in Mark Twain tonight. He did a little over half of the number that I did. He holds the Guinness record. But I'm entitled to it. I just can't go back and document all of it, sadly. Wow.

How was that? So one of the things that I want to ask you so many questions, but one of the things is for presenters who want to be unforgettable and have to do the same story over and over again. How do you prepare? How do you get up? How do you deliver that? How do you prepare for a show? Like, what's one of your secrets to keeping it live and authentic?

By the time you do that many performances, you've got it memorized. And this is the advice that I always give presenters. And so few Listen. But you have to practice, even just a seven minute speech, you have to practice it a hundred times before you give it in public. And the reason for that is you want the words to automatically come to your lips without you even thinking about what the next line is. You want the words to arrive right at the instant when they're needed. And then, and only then, can you give the audience the attention that it deserves by listening to them and watching them and seeing how what you're saying affects them. Because even if you're giving a solo speech, it's a dialogue between you and the audience. They may not have lines, but they are constantly giving you feedback on how the speech is going in real time. And if you can plug into them. And as we used to say in theater, get over your cheap little self and give yourself over to them. That's the key. And that's also the key to keeping it fresh. Because every audience is different. So every time you do it, you have a different scene partner in the form of the audience.

And I know one of the things that you do so well is having to do that same play over and over again. Would you call it a play or show?

It's a play. It's a one man play. There's definitely all the things we look for at stage time. There's a story arc, the character goes through changes. You can map out the hero's journey every step of the way in defending the caveman. And that's really the genius of Rob Becker, is that he took all those Joseph Campbell myths and applied them to a modern day suburban guy who loves his wife but doesn't understand how to talk to her.

How do you go about tweaking? So when you come up with a new tweak on the show, or new sound effects or improv, how did that work? Because you were so good at that. And I know a lot of presenters, number one, they need to do their presentations more often so they can almost naturally enhance it to their style. What do you look for? How do you adjust the show as you go?

I was super lucky in that regard because I worked at the D Hotel and Casino with the most incredible tech guy in the world, Troy Gygas, who had over 8,000 different sound effects and sound drops that he could call up on his computer within two or three seconds and drop them into the show, depending on what would kind of, you know, bubble up from the audience, you know, because just for one night, a woman, you know, I said something designed to be humorously outrageous and a woman in the audience went, come on. And Troy instantly hit a sound effect that went, oh, my God, Becky. So 90% of that I have to give to Troy. The rest of it. For me, I had the luxury of doing this show nine times per week. So we were on a seven day a week schedule with two matinees until the final year when we cut the mayonnaise. But I had the luxury of doing it nine times per week. So if I had some crazy idea, I would just throw it in tonight, you know, at whatever the point it was the show was supposed to go. And Troy would take notes. Whenever I did something that made him go, oh, he would take a note on it, and if it works, then we, we do it again. Then Troy would take a note and give me a note. And then if it worked the third time, then we would leave it in and work on it and polish it as we go. If it didn't work the first time, Troy would make a note, we would do it again the second time, Troy would make a note. If it didn't work the third time, we would ruthlessly cut it and cast it aside because that's, you know, and that's one of the most difficult things to do, is what writers call killing your babies. But if something just didn't work as we had intended, or as I had hoped it would, then we just cut it out. And a lot of the stuff that happened, a lot of the stuff that I added to the show came up through the audience. I improvised a response to it that I later found a way to tweak it and massage it and put it in as though I were thinking it up in the moment in all the subsequent shows.

And it's almost like you're saying it had to audition its way into the show. It had three shots.

Yep.

One tweak it, one tweak it. And it's cool that you're giving that credit to Troy that you did it together. So having that have your own Troy is one of your secrets.

Have a Troy, Kyle. Kyle Parcik was our house manager and he also ran Spotlight for the show. And all three of us had veto power over a bit. If two of us loved it and the other one hated it, we might try it one more night. But if two of us loved it and one of us still hated it, then we would cut it, assuming that, you know, the third person was probably right.

And I, I love that you take that time. I think a lot of presenters give up too soon on an idea. They have a new idea. But they don't necessarily give it the right shot, if you will. They're giving it what they think is their best shot. But sometimes that tiny tweak can make all the difference. So I love hearing that you auditioned it almost three times before the vote went in.

Thanks. And there's. There's two reasons to do that. Number one, if it doesn't work the first time, you need to give it a couple more times to see if you can find it. The other reason is if you put it in and it destroys the first time, you still got to hold back on it and put it in the next night and see if it still destroys the next night, and then see if it still destroys the third night. Because the first night you're, you know, you got your adrenaline going, you're all excited about this new thing, and here it is. But it can often fall flat after that first time, as you well know from doing Stand up now, sometimes you drop that new joke in, it gets a killer laugh, and it never gets another laugh again.

And sometimes it is the audience that it just struck them. Right. Or struck them poorly that one first time. So that's why.

Absolutely.

That's why you need that test. Test, Test.

Yeah. And I had the. I had the luxury of having this wonderfully written Broadway play that, you know, I could surround this one little bit with. So it had a very cushy place to test.

Yeah. We never. And that's one of the things we, you and I learned in Stand up, that maybe the average presenter doesn't know that you never test something brand new right at the beginning or right at the end. And you want to put it almost like right in between two things, two stories that, you know, works to make sure you can recover quickly, especially if you're getting paid. Yeah, especially if it's that high keynote.

Put it in the cradle.

Yeah. And that's a tougher situation for people who are pastors because you got to write a new one every single week. That is a challenge. But that was not your situation.

I had a talk with Father O' Keeffe about this. Now, Father O' Keeffe is. We go to St. Alphonso's Church, and he's the man. And I had a talk with him about his homilies, and I said, your homilies are awesome. And they're different every week. You're writing 15 minutes of new material every single week. How do you do it? And he said, well, the material is new, but I have a formula. I know that when I introduce the topic of the homily, I'm going to stand right here and I'm going to deliver it this way. And I know that when I get into the next part of the homily, I know I'm going to move over there and deliver it this way and that when I come to the to wrap up the homily, I know I'm going to move to right here. Because you watch me. I go to the same places every time, just with different words and different thoughts, but they always follow a similar building progression. And I always go to the same spots and I went, how did I not see that? But that's, you know, that's him hiding the art in the craft.

The art is in hiding the art. I think Sir Laurence Olivier said, now doing the same show 4,000 times. So you've obviously done stand up as well. But I just, I love, you know, we've never had anyone on who's done anything 4,000 times, thousand times. So I'm fascinating, fascinated with the process and what you went through. So let's talk a little bit about just your preparation, your mindset. Before a show. Did you have any rituals or what do you recommend for presenters to get themselves ready for that show? That, yeah, they, you know, they're not really excited about it. When it's exciting, it's easy. But when you're like, oh, you had a bad day and now you got to do that same show, did you have a little preparation routine?

Everybody who comes to see me do the play or anybody who comes to see a speaker speak, they are investing that time. Forget the money, they're investing time. And time is a finite resource. You know, we can always get a side job, drive an Uber and get extra money, but we don't get any more time. And all those people who are there for you to see, you do what you do, they have invested their most precious commodity. So you have to go out there and deliver for them. You know, in many cases, they've structured their entire day around hearing you do your silly little thing. So you have to give it up for them. And the other reason that you go out and you just. You try as hard as you can every night and put your own personal crap aside. I was on a flight with an orchestral conductor and I was lucky enough that at this point in my life, I was flying enough that I automatically got upgraded to first class. So I was sitting next to a really good conductor and we were talking about show business and we were talking about musicians and actors and things and he said, you know, he goes, at the beginning of every season, I give this speech to my orchestra. I said, there are people who will come and see us who are seeing a live performance for the very first time. And there are also people who are coming to see us who sadly, are seeing a live performance for the very last time, but they might not know it. And he said, and it's for those people that we put aside our own petty crap and go out there and give them everything we have. So I would think about that in my head before I go out there. And my. My personal ritual, my dressing room was open. Anybody on the cast. Well, I was the only cast member of anybody in the crew or the house. Anybody could wander in and out. But 15 minutes before the show, I shut the door, and I was just alone with my thoughts and purging myself of all the. The nonsense and baggage that I didn't want to bring on stage with me. Now, there are times when, for whatever reason, I was angry about something that happened out in the world, and it's really hard for me to shake that sometimes. So I would take that on stage with me, and I would go out and it would be, you know, I would try to tweak it so that it looked like, you know, mist Kevin rather than Furious Kevin. And those were often some of the most interesting shows because for whatever reason, that added a dynamic and a layer to the show that made it really interesting for an audience, because they knew I wasn't coming out there to yell at them, obviously, but there was something going on in me that made them go, ooh, this is something we could pay attention to. Sadly, it caused me too much psychic damage to recreate that every night and go on stage angry every single night. I couldn't do it. It was impossible for me. So there are sometimes things that you just have to take on stage with you and you make it work, but you only make it work in service of your audience. And that's ultimately what we're there for, is to serve the audience. We're not there for our own glory. We're not there for the applause. Billy Crystal had a line. He said, as a comic, I crave the love I can only get from strangers. And certainly there's an element of that, but that's not why we're there. We're there to serve the audience. And this is true whether you're a speaker, an actor, a pastor, you know, you're there to serve.

So in preparation, Kevin, I love studying people who are the best of the best at everything. Especially like Vegas headliners. Because you had a one man show in Vegas that you did 4,000 times. I. Yes, I'm. Yeah, I'm asphyxiated. I'm fixated on. I'm fixated on that because I just. That blows me away. And I've been on stage a lot, but never the same thing that many times. One of the things I loved about your show, and I don't know how much this was you or this was the franchise, if you will, but you guys showed funny videos and then as you started, there was still a pre funny video with you and your wife portrayed by an actress that set the stage. Tell me about that. Like, who decided that you were gonna do these, you know, funny, like, fail videos that just are funny. Like, how did that come into play?

I was on the TV show America's Funniest People. Do you remember that show, America's Funniest People? That's the one where you tried to deliberately be funny. I won, actually. I won the $10,000 grand prize on America's Funniest People. Thank you.

The old days of sound effects. Sorry, go ahead.

And what they did was they get the audience in there and they would turn all the cameras on the audience and they would show videos from their stock of hilarious videos that they had collected over the years. And each video elicited a different kind of laugh. Sometimes it was just a wah, sometimes it was, ooh, wow, whatever it was. And so they showed all these videos, like half an hour's worth of videos to the audience before they even started taping the show. And that was how they got the audience reaction shots that they later inserted into the episode after they would show someone's video. Because you can't guarantee that the audience is going to laugh at a video at any given contestant. Video.

Oh, man. Did not know that. Wow.

I know. Genius. The genius and the magic of television. So I realized that showing super funny videos that even had nothing to do with what I was going to do were terrific. A terrific way to warm the audience up, get them laughing, get their attention focused. What we focused on was dad Saves. You know, there's a dad sleeping on the couch and there's a little toddler sitting on the couch, and the toddler goes to tumble off the couch and without even really waking up, the dad's hand just shoots out and catches the toddler. And those were hilarious. They were hilarious because these are real life situations where dad just nicks in there right at the last second and saves the Day. So they were funny and they were poignant, and they were wonderful. The idea to use dad Saves. That was Troy, that was our tech director. Because in a theater, all you would hear was the walk in music. Right. And then the lights would go down. And then the video that you talked about with domestic scenes between me and my wife would start. And that's the way the play has started since 1991 is with those domestic scenes. And the reason we have those domestic scenes is to set up the humorous conflict between the husband and the wife. Plus, it's a free opening act.

That's consistent.

Yep. Yeah, I could tell. I could tell by listening to the audience response to the video that was playing, what. What kind of audience I was dealing with. You know, there's one bit that if they really laugh at this, I know I'm dealing with an audience that kind of likes earthy humor. If they laughed at this bit, I know they kind of like intellectual humor. If they laughed at that bit, I knew all the domestic quarrels were going to kill.

So it allowed you to almost take their temperature before that you went on. So you adjusted accordingly, is that what you're saying?

Yes. Yes. And if they laughed at none of those, I knew that we were about to become Las Vegas's most beloved drama. Nice.

And I think most presenters don't get the importance of the warming up the audience that. How that affects the whole show. So I wanted to touch on that because you and your team did that so well. But it's so important, especially where it's not like they're getting together. Here's a group of entrepreneurs getting together for an association. They get that commonality. They get that bond you have in Vegas. You have all these people who came into Vegas, lost all their money half drunk. You just don't. But there's no commonality other than they are in Vegas that night.

Yeah. And that's one of the things. When we would go, when we took the show on tour and we were in the, you know, the big Broadway houses, the audience knew what the show was about coming in, you know, because they had made specific plans. That evening is theater night. We're gonna go see this comedy about this domestic comedy. And they knew what it was about in Vegas. They're, like, going, we could play slot machines, or, you know, we could go eat the buffet, or we go see that guy do whatever that is. It says it's funny. Let's go see that. And they have no idea what they're coming to see. And this is something I tell presenters, never, ever, ever trust your setup and introduction to a live human. Always, always, always shoot a short little video that sets you up, you know, shows little clips of you on stage, or John Johnson has presented before Whirlpool, IBM, icbm, the Taliban, whatever. And have all these shots of you on these stages. If nothing else, just to establish some credibility as that domestic video established some humor credibility for my show.

Yeah, so you can overcome even the worst introduction with a well played video, with good sound, good audio, music even to get give us that feeling as well as set up your credibility. So yeah, I'm a huge fan of that and I learned that from Vegas headliners. So I do that all the time.

David Copperfield has one. You know, among Vegas performers we call that the ego video. But it's. He has one. So if it's good enough for David Copperfield, it's good enough for you.

Yeah, I remember seeing Celine Dion when I flew my sister out to see Celine. That's the only way I could get my sister to visit me in Vegas. But when you're sitting there in the audience, we're waiting for her to come out and then all of a sudden you see a video plays and you see images of her and her kids and you think, wow, that's right, she's a mom too. And then you see her at the beginning of her career and you think, wow, she's been doing this a long time. She looks so young. Didn't even think of that. And then you saw images of her and her adoring husband, rest his soul, and you think, wow, that's right, she's a wife too. So before you even come out on stage, you feel more of a connection. I wish more presenters would do that.

Yeah, you have a chance to fall in love with Celine before she sings a note. Do you want to hear a quick Celine story?

Absolutely.

Through bizarre circumstance, I happened to be allowed to talk to Celine in her dressing room right before a show. And we were sitting there chatting and the clock is winding down to showtime. And I said, well, I should probably, probably go. You've got to warm up your voice and everything. And she says, oh, no, no, no, no. The first song is my warm up. And we're chit chatting some more now it's showtime. And she says, well, I suppose I should go out there now. And I said, yeah, yeah, you probably should. So I ran out and I went to my seat and she walks out on stage. This is not 60 seconds after we finished talking to each other and her Opening song was Open Arms by Journey. All those soaring high notes. And that's her warm up is singing Open Arms in front of 2,000 people. Amazing.

So, Kevin, let's go back to your background in improv and clowning for Ringling Brothers. What did you pick up from that that helped train you for the stage?

Well, of course, with Second City, I learned how to be spontaneous and in the moment in order to do improv, to do it well. And this is not to say that I ever learned to do it well, but I learned to do it well enough for me and my purposes. You have to clear your mind and let yourself honestly respond to whatever is happening in front of you. You can never pre plan those responses because you never know what is going to come up in your face. If you're doing an improv scene with your fellow actor and they're talking about making cupcakes, right? And you start thinking, okay, here's what I'm gonna say about making cupcakes. And at the very end of the. That little. Their little lines about cupcakes, they say, and that's how I killed King Kong. Well, no, now it's not about cupcakes. It's about King Kong. And if you don't. If you don't take it there to King Kong, it's gonna be a horrible improv. You know, you can't go, wait, go back. Tell me more about the cupcakes, because I have some really clever stuff to say about cupcakes. So there I learned to respond authentically and spontaneously, which, in caveman, helped me, because whenever something would bubble up from the audience, I could respond to it honestly and authentically and then weave it all back into the fabric of the play and pick up where I had left off. That took me like 3,000 performances to be able to do, if I'm being honest. From Ringling Brothers. See, all this training, I figured if I wasn't the most talented actor in the world, I'd at least be the best trained.

Love that.

Thank you. So from Ringling, I learned how to physicalize a performance. I made a deliberate decision to never talk as a clown with Ringling Brothers. So I would never talk to the audience if I was up working in the stands or if I'm down working on the track. I never spoke. And that was a challenge that I had set for myself, because I wanted to learn how to communicate with just my body. I'm not a mime. I can't get myself trapped in a box that isn't there. But I Can communicate emotions and thoughts physically to a degree without having to use any words. And that was the challenge that I set for myself, and that's what I got out of it.

I think that's one of the reasons, too, because of your intense study in that. That you are by far the best delivery coach I've ever seen I've ever got to work with. You know, you and I do the humor boot camp together in Vegas. Always have fun with that. But I remember last year when you work with Gina on the stage, one of our attendees. Oh, the whole room was blown away because of what you were able to pull out of her.

Yeah, yeah. And with Gina and with most people I coach, it's simply a matter of getting through their own personal blocks and barriers and convincing them to put the words and the emotion into their body as well as into their voice and their speech and their talking. You know, they say that 60% of communication is non verbal, so why wouldn't you want to use that extra 60%? Why would you only want to use 40%? So for most people, it's a matter of getting them to be very specific about the emotions and the things that they're doing in the moment and then getting them to put it into their body in a way that's natural and not. Not superficial or contrived.

And any tips or tricks on how to do that?

Yeah, every line you say has an emotion of some sort behind it. And it may be just, I'm giving you some information. And if I'm just giving you some information, then just physically stand there, stand up straight and give them the information. But if you've got a section in your speech where you're sad about something, then get sad and, you know, let your shoulders drop, let your speech slow down, lower your voice, lower your head. Show the defeat that's in you. And you can do that by conjuring up. And this is a dangerous thing for me to say without being able to really teach somebody how to do it. But you can do that by conjuring up emotions that are associated to events that happened in your past that are similar that create that emotion. You always want to be really careful about emotions that make you extremely sad or really upset, because there's a danger in exposing yourself to that kind of psychic damage over and over and over again. So there are techniques to keep, you know, to keep you from hurting you when you bring up those sad things. But everybody's had a moment where they saw something that was absolutely hilarious. And if that's not what's in their speech. Then you got to think about it, man. You got to put it in there. You got to try to bring it to the audience, like I'm trying to do right now. I was thinking of something funny in my head that I saw. So there are techniques for substituting real life emotions for the emotions that you're portraying in the speech, which is particularly valuable as a presenter if you're portraying another character in a dialogue scene where you don't know what that person was thinking or feeling, but you have to come up with something to hang that character on. So you call up emotions of your own. Am I making sense or am I babbling?

Yeah, no, you're. Well, it's beautiful. Babble.

No, no, thank you.

You're making great sense. And if you're listening to this podcast, you might even check out last week's episode where Mark and I talked about the story diagram and identifying what is the emotion of the character at the beginning of the story and what's the emotional motion of the character at the end of the story. And what Kevin's here is talking about is giving you some techniques to capture those moments, to be able to convey those moments without the words. So definitely check out last week's episode too.

Yes. And you must remember that every character you play, even if it's just you, in the course of a speech or a presentation, there is something that that character wants. And I'll take it one step further and say there's something that that character needs. And the speech is all about them either getting what they need or not getting what they need. So if everything you do serves that goal of what you need in the course of this speech, and I'm not talking about applause or laughs, I'm talking about the emotional content of the piece and what you're after. If everything you're doing serves that through line, that goal, that is a really important place to start.

I don't think most presenters go deep enough to be able to figure that out to understand that's like the underlying of their whole presentation. And we love story. We want to hear good stories, whether it's a 17 second story or a 10 minute story.

But most or a 90 minute story. Look at the movie Groundhog Day. Okay. In Groundhog Day, Bill Murray's character wanted one thing, just one thing. He wanted to make it to tomorrow. He wanted it to stop being today. And in order to get there, he had to go on this journey where he learned a lot about himself and became a more complete and compassionate person. And then it could be tomorrow. But his goal was to get to tomorrow, to end today and not have to go through today again. It's that simple.

And Kevin, let's switch gears a little bit for you in the audience. What was the most unforgettable presentation you ever witnessed?

Oh, I was in London in 1989 at Christmas time with my girlfriend. How's that for a setup?

Wow.

We walked up to the Apollo Theater because we had seen this ad for a play and we. It was sold out. The entire run was sold out of this player. So we went up to the window. We said, just out of curiosity, maybe somebody has returned season tickets that they're not going to use. What do you think? And the woman at the counter said, no, we don't. Wait a minute. And she turned as she talked to someone. She came back and she says, yes, we've just had a pair of box seats returned. Would you like them? And I said, yes. And I'm pulling out my wallet and I'm thinking, this is going to cost me £1,000, right? And she said, that'll be £125, please. And I said, okay. So I'm prepared for a 250 pound hit. No, it was 125 for both tickets. Phenomenal. So we go in, we sit down, and the play is a one man play starring Peter o'. Toole. And he was playing a writer, an actual person who lived in Soho, who was a raging alcoholic who got locked into his local pub overnight. And so throughout the course of the play, Peter o' Toole reveals things to us about this character's soul, about his hopes and dreams, about what went wrong in his life, what went right in his life, while he absolutely lays waste to the liquor stock in the pub. And it was the greatest thing I have ever seen on a stage. You know, we see Peter o' Toole in movies when you go, yeah, he's a movie star. But when you see him in person, live on stage, it was mesmerizing. I could not take my eyes away from this man. And there was a point our seats were on this. Were stage level box seats. So we were right there, right next to him. And there was one point where he must have seen me sitting there with my mouth open, going, oh my God, the best thing ever. Oh, my God. He. I think he noticed that because at one point he turned and his left eye was upstage where only I could see it. And he winked at me. Wow. In the middle of this magnificent solo performance, Peter o' Toole was so aware of what at least one member of the audience was thinking and how he was experiencing the play that he thought enough of that audience member to give him a little extra something that was just between the two of them.

Wow.

And that's what I mean when I say, listen to your audience, because they'll tell you how it's going. And it was. Oh, it was phenomenal. It's called Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. Wow. And there are DVDs available somewhere. You can get them on the Internet, and they're only the international DVDs, as opposed to the US DVDs, but it's. It's worth it. It's worth it.

What do you think made it unforgettable for you, Kevin?

This was a man who was completely in control of his body and his voice. And first of all, he had that wonderful voice, you know, that unmistakable voice. The minute he opened his mouth, you're going, it's Peter o'. Toole. And he had complete control of his body. His body was very loose. His character was drunk during the whole course of the evening, so he was extremely loose and very relaxed. And yet there would be times when, you know, you can't see it, but I'm kind of just kind of slouched over in my chair, just kind of leaning, and he's all relaxed, and all of a sudden, that voice would just roar about something that he had thought about, and then he would go back into this, very loose and relaxed, and it's the greatest single performance I've ever seen.

Wow.

But complete control of his body and his voice and his face and his emotions, that's what did it. I mean, it was the total package. I never even got close to that in Caveman. Never got close.

I thought you winked at me once.

But, oh, well, there was that saying.

Hey, in terms of you've got some great stories of some classic people. And I know you tell one story that when we're talking about humor and teaching humor, that is just one of your favorites, and I love to hear it. It never gets old to me about the gentleman, Mr. Brady. Oh, we're not talking about Tom Brady.

No, no. My son was 7, and he came up to me and he said, dad, why are you a comic? And I said, well, Griffin, it's because comedy makes people feel good. It takes burden off their shoulders, and they have fun for a little while. He goes, no, no, no, no, no. Why are you a comedian? And I was like, ow, Ow. I said, well, when I was a Clown. We were in Washington, D.C. and I was walking backstage behind the curtain. So on one side of the curtain is nothing, just me, an empty arena. On the other side of the curtain, there are 15,000 people taking their seats. So as I walk along. But I wasn't alone. There was a man sitting over there, right by the corner of the curtain in a wheelchair. And I realized it was James Brady. And for those of you who are listening, who that name doesn't trigger. James Brady was Ronald Reagan's press secretary. As I like to say, he was like Sarah Sanders Huckabee, only really smart. He was Reagan's press secretary, and he unfortunately got shot in the head during the assassination attempt. And he was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. But I wanted to meet him because he's a historic figure. I thought, well, if I go over there and he freaks out because I had seen him be inappropriately emotional on tv, and okay, if I go over there and he freaks out, I'll just run away because what's he gonna say, it was a clown? Well, there's 24 of them on the show, so we think of a clown lineup. So I went over to him and I said, excuse me, are you Mr. Brady? And he said, yes, I am. Young man, what's your name? I thought, oh, he's fine. So I held out my hand. I said, my name is Kevin Burke. I just wanted to welcome you to Ringling Brothers in Barnum and Bailey Circus. I just wanted to tell you I really admire the photographs you took of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. And he said, no, I think you're thinking of Matthew Brady. And I said, oh, wait, that's not you. And he goes, no, no, I'm Jim Brady. I said, ah, well, it's nice to meet you, whoever you are. And I tipped my hat. I walked away. That was a silly little joke, but he laughed so hard, he almost fell out of his wheelchair. 20. 20? Yeah, 20 years later. I was almost 20 years later. I was doing Defending the Caveman in Atlantic City, and Smokey Robinson was downstairs in the big theater. And I wanted to see Smokey, so I did. I performed Caveman in record time and ran downstairs to see Smokey, caught the end of his show, went back to get an autograph. Lo and behold, there's Jim Brady sitting there in his wheelchair. I said, Excuse me, Mr. Brady, you probably don't remember me. I was a clown with Ringling Brothers. And he went, kevin, right? And I went, wow. Yeah. How. How. Why would you remember me? Why? And he said, you know, ever since I got shot, people treat me like I'm a precious object. And they treat me so wonderfully and so nicely and so politely. But now even my best friends won't mess with me to get me to laugh. And you messed with me to get me to laugh. And I remember that. Mm. And as I told Griffin, that's why I do what I do.

Yeah. Talk about unforgettable. Like, to have this famous man remember you because of one moment, one time. But for him, it was that emotional connection. It was that emotional moment that he craved that most people trying to be polite forget. He just wants to be messed with like anybody else sometimes.

Yeah. And that's a clown's job. A comic's job is to mess with you and make you laugh.

Nice. Kevin, Kevin, Kevin, what other advice might you have as we start to wind this down for a presenter who wants to be unforgettable or has a message that's important to them? Kevin, what advice would you give them?

Well, I was backstage again at Ringling Brothers, and I was working on a prop. This was before we took the show out at the beginning of the season. And there were two ways I could go with this prop. One was funny and less labor intensive on the road. The other way was hilarious, but extremely labor intensive on the road. The owner of the circus, Ken Feld, came by and he said, what are you doing? I told him. He said, well, you know, I'm okay either way. Either way is good for me. But I want you to remember, we call it the Greatest show on Earth, not the adequate show on Earth. And that always stuck with me. That always stuck with me, because why not be the Greatest show on Earth? Why settle for anything less than the Greatest show on Earth?

And I love going back to what you said earlier, the advice from the orchestra instructor. You never know. Somebody is in front of us for the first time, and somebody's in front of us for the last time. And if we can go on with that mindset, and if you want to be a professional speaker, if you have a pastor with a message that's important to you, if you're a corporate presenter, why not be so good that it raises your worth in the audience's mind, in your company's mind, it's the best way to get rebooked. When you actually strive to be unforgettable with our stories and like, you taught us, Kevin, like, sometimes it's that nonverbal that's so important. That is the difference between connecting and Wowing an audience or just another presenter.

Yeah. There's a famous mentalist whom I know, and I'm not going to say his name because I'm going to give up one of his things. And one of his theories is to go to more trouble for that moment than the audience would ever believe you would go to. And he did what's called a blindfold drive. And in the world of mind reading and psychic entertainment, that's what you put a blindfold on and you drive through the city. He had an extra challenge in that he had to leave the studio and drive to a specific destination that was unknown to him. When he got into the car, he didn't know, but it was a live TV show. And so once he was in the car and once he was behind the wheel, then the TV show told the audience where his target was. He didn't know. He didn't have anybody in the car telling him. He didn't have any secret receivers and nothing electronic that would tell him how to go where he needed to go. And I will tell you how he did it. On every corner, there was somebody who worked for him, different people who were just standing on the corner, just apparently just standing around, and they would subtly point the way. He had to turn because he could see through the blindfold, obviously, but they would subtly point, turn left here, turn right here, go straight here. So at each corner, he had no idea which way he was going to go until the person standing on the corner would see, signal it to her. Nobody would ever believe that anybody would go to that much trouble to have, you know, 50 to 100 people stationed throughout the city to tell you which way to turn. But he did. And of course, it was a TV miracle. So that's another thing. Go to more trouble for the audience than they would ever believe.

You went, that's brilliant. Brilliant.

Yeah.

And, Kevin, did you have any mentors that gave you some other advice on being unforgettable?

Yes. And this is one of those stories where when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. I was originally, originally a musician. I got my card in the musicians union when I was 16, and I'm a drummer. And I played out in wedding bands, polka bands, every kind of band you could imagine. I was a substitute drummer for a lot of different bands on south side of Chicago, where I grew up. But I love jazz. Jazz is where I live. And of course, Gene Krupa, the drummer, was a hero. Buddy Rich, the drummer was a huge hero of mine. And by the way, if. If you're at all interested in drumming? Do yourself a favor and google Buddy Rich solo. Anything that comes up will make you go, I never knew such things were possible. So I had all the records, I knew all the people in his band, I knew everything. So one night I was doing stand up in Louisville, Kentucky at the Comedy Caravan and I came off stage and I was doing meet and greet after the show. Now this wasn't caveman, this was my show, meet and greet after the show. And a guy came up to me and he said, he said, yeah, you know, I've been in show, I'm in show business. I said, oh, what do you do? He goes, I'm a trumpet player. I was like, oh, cool. And he says, you know, you, you're funny, but you're not working up to the level of your own chops, which in musician terms means you're playing below your ability. So what he was telling me was that the jokes and the things I was talking about were below the level of what he saw my ability could be. And I said, oh, thanks, I appreciate that. And I said, what's your name? Kevin Burke. What's your name? He said, my name's John Labarbera and it's like a Warner Brothers cartoon. I went, yeah, yeah, yeah. I said, are you Pat LaBarbera's brother? He goes, yes, I am. I said, so you were in Buddy Rich's fan? Yes, I was. So you're the guy that wrote the arrangement for Buddy Rich's version of west side Story. That was me. And it blew my mind that a guy who was that accomplished and that much of a master at his craft, I didn't even know he's in the audience would take a moment and tell me this, fully expecting me not to even recognize the name John Labarbera first of all, but just as a well meaning kind of guy who's watching the show. And that really made me start thinking and re evaluate. That led to me doing a one man show about being a dad with my then two year old daughter McKenna, who came on at the end and did circus tricks with me, which led to me going to the Chicago Comedy Festival, which led to Rob Becker's people hearing about me and asking me if I wanted to audition for Defending the Caveman, which led to, you know, 16 years of red carpets and hanging out with Celine Dion. So that one moment when the mentor and the teacher that I needed in that moment, he showed up and I received the message and I put it to work. Oh, oh. And I have to tell you, I emailed them a year ago and I said, mister, you probably don't remember me, but as a comedian, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I just want to say that I owe so much to you for showing up at the right time and telling me what I needed to hear. And he's a music teacher now. He emailed me back and he said that's what every music teacher lives to hear. And that's true of all of us who coach anybody at anything. That's what we live to hear. Is that even if it's just one little thing that we said or did for you that made all the difference in the world, that's what we look for.

Wow. A true teacher at heart, Kevin Burke. Kevin, one of the things that Mark usually does is he takes notes on the keepers and I filled in since he's not here. So here's some of the keepers that I picked up from your episode here with us. So number one, listening to the audience, we've got to be so in the moment, perform it so many times that it just becomes natural, it becomes a part of us and so we can be in the moment to listen to the audience and adjust as we need to. Next one. I love this one. Get over your cheap self. Just get over your cheap self. Like let it go.

I owe that to the guy who taught stage fighting, stage combat at Indiana University, Michael Sokoloff, when I was a student there. He said, oh, get over your cheap, cheap little self.

Also, we've got have your own. Troy, I love you know if it's a one man show, but you are honest and open enough to let let us know that you had your, your two guys, Troy and Kyle, who helped you and became almost like your check in and what works and what didn't work. So it became a committee of what will actually improve the show.

I told the audience every night at the end of the show, I said, I'm the one up here doing the talking. But this show is really three people. Our tech director, Troy, who's been, you know, improvising sound effects, and our stage manager, Kyle. And I would say every night without those two guys, there is no Kevin.

You also said, I love this mindset. If you weren't the most talented, you were going to be the most well trained.

Yes. And I'm still not the most talented, but I have a shoot ton of training that I can call on when I need it. So when I need to give a purely technical performance, I can do that with a certain degree of ability. Because I have all this training that I can fall back on there. And there's nobody who is so good that they don't need any training or any coaching. Unless you're Peter o'. Toole.

Well, he also probably had some training early on, I would assume.

Oh, yeah, he did. He did a ton of plays and he went to drama school. He absolutely got trained.

And you also said you wanted to communicate, but not. But just with your body. You were trying to separate yourself from other people and you were honing your skill of communicating without talking. I wish presenters would do that. What a brilliant idea that you came up with. You were going to be the clown that didn't talk.

Yeah, that was it. And that's actually going to be the. And I'm kind of revealing it here because I haven't spoken about this to anybody but you, but I'll. I'll go ahead and drop it here if it's all right.

Yeah, go ahead.

That's going to be the topic of my presentation at. At our big shindig coming up, March 19th through the 21st. 19th through the 21st. Yeah.

Stage timeline.

Yep, Stage timeline. And that is going to be my topic for that. You know, those. Those two days that we're into it with everybody. My talk is going to be called Sh, and it's going to be all about expressing emotion and getting your message across and telling a story without using any words. And I'm going to do that by telling a story without any words.

I also love the tip, which is brilliant, to connect to similar emotions of events from your past, meaning identify what the emotion is of the character and in order to feel it and express it, go back to your past where there was a similar emotion that you're able to conjure up to bring it and make it more real and authentic emotion for that character, that day, that moment, while tapping into our past.

Yes. And if you give the speech a gazillion times, eventually your emotional hook for that particular line or bit is going to start wearing smooth and it will not have the effect on the audience it did in the past. Well, guess what? You can. You can. You can switch in a different emotional event that has the same effect on you. And now it's fresh because you're thinking of something completely different.

You also gave us the. You auditioned your material, your new ideas three times and it had to audition its way into the show and you gave your two partners there veto power.

Wow.

Not many headliners probably give away that veto power. Very cool.

I don't have an outside eye. Except for them, I can't see what I'm doing. You know, I know that I think it's brilliant, but I can't tell because I can't see it. And those two guys I trust.

And last recap, Last keeper. Aha. From this was the brilliant advice from the orchestra conductor as to our mindset going in, realizing that someone in our audience is going to be there for the very first time, their first show and someone unbeknownst to them is going to be there for the last time and we've got to perform for them. And Kevin Burke, thank you for being a part of Unforgettable Presentations helping me fill in for the big shoes of Mark Brown. Thrilled to have you here. And by the way, if you want to get coached by Kevin, I think one of the best delivery coaches. If you need to work on your character delivery, check out getaspeakingcoach.com and you can find Kevin Burke there. You can sign up and work with him one on one. So many of our students do in our live events. Just watching you work. When we do the humor boot camp, I'm like I got nothing.

But.

But Kevin always has something and it's brilliant. So Kevin Burke, join us@stagetimelive.com for our two day event called Game Changers. And Kevin Burke, thanks for being here. Thanks for caring so much about your audience and for people to connect to their audience, especially without words. Kevin, thanks for being here.

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