I'm taking a gig for a surprise 50th Birthday Party mostly to entertain the children but does anyone have some ideas that could involve the adults as well? The problem with this party is that the family doesn't RSVP so I am unsure about the age group of the kids in attendance and number of people. Thanks.

Find out as much about the person who's birthday party it is for. Then you can customized if more for them. For example does he fish, hunt, play golf. Is she/he married have children, grandchildren. The more you know the more you can find jokes, puns, ideas for comedy to make it more special for that person. For adults my nurse character goes out and performs a physical, [all family oriented] but geared more for the adults, One guy I had, fished and raised cows, so..the last thing I did was pull off my rubber gloves and blew it up... udders, told a few cow jokes, then turned it into a fish for the "BIG" one, ended my show by doing balloons for the crowd. They've had me back twice.

We're here to celebrate Joe's Birthday. Joe is "Five". "OH!" Then maybe (through instructing them, if need be) get the audience to respond "OH!" anytime you say five and keep coming back to it as a running joke. "... because today Joe is five!"

OH!

I'm glad you posted this, Pinkie! I was just about to create a thread about a party where I'll be entertaining. It also is for a 50th birthday party! The family does not plan on there being any kids there. So it will be me face painting and making balloon hats and animals for a bunch of adults. I think it should be a lot of fun! I too could really use some ideas for how to entertain everyone. This will be my first party where I'm entertaining adults rather than kids, and I'm very excited but a little nervous.

I love the "turning 5...OH!" idea.

Pinky,

Does the family want this to be an "over-the-hill" type party? If the birthday "kid" is a good sport and won't mind this kind of ribbing, you have another way to approach your entertainment. I did a 50th birthday party awhile back. There were kids and adults in the crowd, and I treated the birthday kid much like I would treat a five-year-old birthday child, which everybody found highly amusing. One of my standard little-kid party routines involves baking a magic cake (with a dove pan and sponge cake). I dressed up the 50-year-old in my tiny baker's hat and apron, as I always do with birthday kids. However, we added some special ingredients to the cake, such as prune juice, and Geritol. And of course the birthday kid also had to wear "prescription glasses" so she could see what she was doing. You can present him/her with a bouquet of black balloon flowers, pull a "gray hare" from his/her head, etc. Of course you absolutely must make sure in advance that the birthday kid will go along with the over-the-hill approach. If he/she doesn't want to cooperate or is overly sensitive about her advanced geriatric birthday, it's not going to be funny.

Well, after this thread and some chatting with some clowns on the forum, it looks like the show is coming together. I hope it goes well tomorrow. It's my first time I tried to put together a show. Will let you know how it goes and what I did.....

I'd love to hear how it went and what you did! That'll help me prepare for my 50th birthday party. :) I hope you have fun tomorrow! I'm sure you'll do great.

Hi, thanks for all your great suggestions. I think the show went well. If you book a 50th Birthday party, find out if there will be kids there and if the answer is yes, expect to have a very wide variety of age ranges. I had more than 15 kids from ages 2-11.

The thing I did best for my first show was to keep all of the kids undivided attention for a half hour. A couple of things I did to keep their attention was go over the rules, start with a crowd breaker to warm up the audience and allow plenty of opportunities for participation from the audience (like count to three, ask them "are you ready?" get volunteers etc...)The "5" "oh" idea worked great.

I made up a crowd breaker for the audience to say "ooooh" when I raise my hands and "ahhh" when I lower them and clap when I put my hands together and laugh when I put my hands on my tummy....then you speed it up until you and the audience get confused. The "5" "Oh" suggestion on this thread worked great as well.

I had a slight mishap where I left my top ten signs of old age and a poem at home as well as my order of the clown show....if you decide to do the top ten signs of old age, make the number one sign "your friends and family love you so much to throw you a 50th birthday party". And since a clown friend suggested I practice my show out loud, I didn't have to do too much improvisation.

The best laugh was when I told the birthday girl that she needed a pre-sliced bannana because she was getting older. She opens the bannana and the top fell off. She couldn't stop laughing....then I told everyone I couldn't just give her a broken banana for her birthday. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU8hZWLvZNk (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU8hZWLvZNk) is the directions. So I gave her my real birthday present, a special ballon creation, a vase with two flowers.

The second best laugh was a stupid card my mom gave me in the mail today. You open the card and the dog barks. I showed it to the kids and they laughed but then I said, did you know this card plays dance music?....by opening and shutting the card, I made some simple dance rythyms from the dog barking and we danced and laughed....it was simple, fun and funny.

All in all I think it went well for for my first show routine....I have clowned before but this was my first time I tried to entertain an audience for a half hour.

And also there was a 7 yr old boy who was so scared of clowns he stayed in the house. Towards the end, he came out to get a balloon. As I started asking him questions and getting to know him while making the balloon, he warmed up to me and wasn't scared anymore. And a mom of a two yr old told me her daughter wouldn't come near me knowing that she was afraid of clowns. Her daughter came right up and asked for a balloon.

Sounds like you did great and had a great time.

Way to go, Pinky!