MARCH HARE, 2

MARCH HARE BY BEN ROBINSON, page 2.

The rabbit in the hat routine has served me well throughout my career. When I performed an Easter Sunday show in 1985 for children patients of New York Hospital, my rabbit stunt appeared on the front page of the Metro Section of the venerable New York Times.

One odd memory remains from that show.

Something happened in the hospital before the show that affected me indirectly. About three days prior to the show, a patient stole a scalpel and ran through the halls slashing orderlies before he was subdued. Consequently, security was very tight when I arrived. My bags were searched thoroughly. I was searched too. I was let in without a problem.

No rabbit was ever discovered among my bags or on my person. When my bunny appeared from my top hat, the security guard who searched me was so startled, he spilled his coffee all over his uniform. The head of the pediatric ward applauded my feat and then ran to me in a panic.

"You have got to get that rabbit out of here" she cried. "Some of these children are asthmatic!" However, the miracle of magic prevailed. Every child who wanted to pet Robin the Bunny, did, and there was not a respitory ailment in the ward.

Around this time my stationery heralded a cartoon that portrayed the icons of the rabbit and hat with a bit of a twist on the feat. The cartoon rabbit peered into a top hat on the envelope. On the letterhead, he fled off the page from whatever he had seen inside the hat. The effect was enough to spur Academy Award-winning actor Ben Kingsley to respond to my letter to him.

Master Chinese painter Charles Chu created these wonderful paintings.. The first painting was given to me as a present for a perfomance I gave in college. I told Charles that I wanted a rabbit and a top hat. When I explained later that the rabbit came out of the hat, Charles made the painting on the right, giving his own spin to the classic feat.

When the premier avant garde producer Lyn Austin approached me in February 1987 about producing my own one-man show in Lenox, MA (incidentally the only one man show she ever produced in her esteemed 50-year career) she loved the inclusion of the rabbit and hat that contrasted with my more surreal sorcery. But actually, a rabbit coming from within the folds of a collapsed top hat is pretty surreal...it is just that we take it for granted because of the fame of the feat.

We took the illusion one step further but (given the thievery a certain TV magician of my work), I won't go into that here.

After a recent injury some flowers arrived to cheer my recovery adorned with a small bunny perched and wiggling in a top hat. Do we realize what powerful iconography this is ?

While working on my show for Lyn's Music-Theatre Group, film director Joyce Chopra hired me to teach Diane Keaton to perform the illusion. I worked with Ms. Keaton for one week in New York and Atlantic City on her film The Lemon Sisters. Though the scene was shot with her, and a child actress also playing her character at a younger age, only the child's performance made it into the final movie.

After I produced my bunny in my 1988 one man show "Out of Order" (produced by Lyn Austin's award winning Music-Theatre Group) the bunny got a kiss for his hard work. Because of this show, I was hired by director Joyce Chopra to teach Diane Keaton how to make a rabbit appear from a hat.

Shortly thereafter, in 1989, after returning from a trip to Mount Everest, I was in my TV agent's office when the phone rang. It was the casting director of the famous soap opera, All My Children.

Mathew Modine and Kourtney Donohue make Junior the rabbit appear in the opening to the 1990 movie I consulted on, "The Lemon Sisters." Kourtney played the young version of the same character Diane Keaton played in the movie. Diane too made a rabbit appear. Junior got his own credit at the end of the movie!