Category Archives: Artists For Hire

Snake Charmers & Snake Performers

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Everyone is fascinated by snakes, love them or hate them, snakes are wonderful intriguing creatures and when teamed up with a snake charmer can make the performance truly unforgettable. Snake performers are superb for mix and mingle corporate entertainment as people’s reactions are a powerful combination of fascination and intrepidation. Superb for themes with a hint of danger whether it is for Halloween, Gothic, Moulin Nights or Burlesque. 

Your guests will get the opportunity to touch the snake and also hold the snake (at the handler’s discretion) which is great for photo opportunities. Your licenced snake performer means that the welfare of the snake is also paramount on the snake performers mind. Our snake performers can be combined with a belly dancer carrying the snake to add a really exotic feel to your Arabian or Bollywood parties. This act is brilliant for that instant exotic feel; why not book a snake charmer conjuring the hypnotic mystique of the East.

To book a  Snake charmer/performer first you will see a list of the acts, all you need to choose your act and you are then able to fill out an online booking form which will go straight to your snake performer. The act will then be directly in contact with you to arrange everything. If you want us at Red Masque entertainment directory to answer any questions before you decide we are always very happy to help. Hiring snake charmers for an event couldn’t be easier. We have the best selection of performers for you to choose from and booking is simple.

Female Solo Acts

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Our female solo artists are suitable for pubs and clubs, corporate events, parties, holiday sites, charity events and much more. Our female solo artists for hire can sing anything from country and western, contemporary, ballades; opera, classics or even soul the choice is yours…

Here at Red Masque your event/themed evening can perform a wide range of music that can span several decades or genres. Red Masque entertainment finder can help you choose the right female solo artist/singer for your party. Book a female solo artist, she could be the perfect complement to a nice chilled evening or makings of an upbeat party.

We have the very best solo artists available to hire in the Uk and will ensure that your event will be exactly how you imagined it to be and more…  Booking a female solo artist is very simple, you can look on our website and choose the female of your choice and fill out an enquiry form safe in the knowledge that our entertainment directory will do the rest. You can also contact your selected performer directly or sent us a contact form and we can help you choose the best female solo artist for your particular event.

Entertainment at a corporate event

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There are numerous reasons why you might be looking to hire entertainment for a corporate event but if there is somebody at you company who isn’t quite sure whether it’s a worthy investment, we’ve outlined the reasons below. We hope it helps!

Generate Interest

If your event is a product launch, you’ll be looking to generate interest from the audience. Most product launches occur at large exhibition centres or conferences, where many a brand is competing to show off their wares to attendees and receive the most ‘buzz’ for their product. But how can you entice someone over to your booth? Entertainment such as stilt walkers or live music incorporating drums is sure to grab people’s attention from across the room. Once they’ve wandered over, keep things visual. Nobody will share your product on Instagram or other social media networks if there isn’t something for others away from the exhibition to enjoy. Make no mistake about it, entertainment is crucial at product launches.

Reinforce Brand Values

Perhaps you’re looking for a bespoke form of entertainment that reinforces the brand values of your company. Maybe you’re celebrating the 25th anniversary of the company’s inception. Whatever it may be, brand entertainment is brilliant at reinforcing the values of a corporation. If a company is wanting to appear very cool, then there are numerous bands who would fit the bill. Looking for a classy affair? Circus entertainers such as aerial silk dancers are perfect for just such an occasion. Entertainment doesn’t have to be showy or pushed to the foreground, but utilised correctly, it can be a superb way of maximising brand value in a subtle manner.

To Entertain

We could name a whole host of reasons why entertainment is important without stating the obvious but we thought we should really. The main purpose of entertainment in any setting is to entertain! You don’t want invited guests leaving after one free drink and a couple of canapés, bored out of their mind after speaking to Darren from Accounts for the last hour. If you break up the evening with a few headline entertainment choices (with a few strolling entertainers like magicians and caricaturists thrown in), then everybody will remember your event or party much more fondly than if you simply leave attendees in a room with nothing else planned.

Forging Links

This is a clever one! We just mentioned strolling entertainment but when it comes to networking, there really is nothing better to help break the ice between two parties who might be hoping to have a chat but have no idea how to get talking informally. With a magician, both people can be amazed and use the tricks as a springboard to ‘talking business’. Other forms of entertainment like a caricaturist or silhouette artist often get people talking as well, whilst also enticing a small crowd when reactions are positive. Hiring entertainment might just land you that next big deal!

Enhancing Morale

If you’ve had a long and difficult year, staff may be looking for a reason to stay at the company. A well-timed dinner or office party can do wonders to revitalise your staff and there is nothing better than allowing them to dance to a live band or providing a magician to blow their minds. Hiring entertainment is a sure fire way to increase morale and staff satisfaction.

Hiring Great Event Staff

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Hiring event staff at party and event venues is an investment in your company and it’s important to find the right mix of skills and abilities in the people you hire – whether they’re part of your day-to-day team or contracted for a specific event.

No business owner has single-handedly built a successful and sustainable business on their own and it takes a great team to thrive.

Create an ideal employee description – write out a description of the person you’re looking for that defines their work ethic, what skills they have and their job responsibilities.
Speak to your accountant so you know how to legally handle full- or part-time employees vs. contract employees.

To save time and help narrow your search, create an online application.This is a great way to see someone’s personality and their communication skills before you decide to meet them in person.
Reach out to your business contacts for referrals– often this results in the best candidates when you hire event staff.

Interview Questions To Ask During The Interview
Once you’ve identified who you’re looking for, it’s time to narrow your search and interview and screen the top candidates. Here are some questions to ask during the interview.

What area(s) of event planning do you need more improvement or training in?
How do you handle a situation when things don’t go as planned?
What makes you love coming to work everyday (or for each event)?
Describe a time when you were asked to do something you weren’t trained to do. How did you handle it?
What do you like to do in your free time?
Is there anything stopping you from working long hours, weekends, evenings or last minute?
Describe your event planning experience
What attracted you to this position?
How do you make decisions?
What are your strengths and how do you use them when planning an event or working for an event planner?

History of the Caricaturists

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When it comes to booking entertainment for events, one of our most popular strolling acts is undoubtedly a caricaturist. Blessed with the skill of being able to draw both accurately and quickly, with a nice comedic slant, caricaturists often manage to draw ten to twelve people in just one hour at an event! Not bad at all! But where does the art of caricature come from? Who invented it? Let’s find out…

It’s hard to know exactly when caricature started but we do know that there are examples of the form in graffiti that can be found at Pompeii. This would confirm that the style of drawing has been popular for almost 2,000 years but it’s highly likely that it has been popular for even longer than that.

In more recent times, the form was highly enjoyed by the aristocratic circles in France and Italy, with portraits passed about friends for mutual enjoyment. Leonardo Da Vinci’s caricatures are some of the oldest on record; he would seek people with deformities to use as models, hoping to offer an impression of the original that was more striking than a portrait.

The first book of caricature can be dated to 1762 when Mary Darlas published A Book of Caricaturas. The first North American caricatures can be traced to just three years before that when Brigadier-General George Townshend would draw caricatures of other high ranking officials like British General James Wolfe during the Battle of Quebec. These drawings were often highly exaggerated to elicit laughter and amusement from his fellow officers.

Thomas Rowlandson and James Gillray are perhaps the two most important British caricaturists in history; they were great friends and often visited pubs together in London. Rowlandson preferred to focus his efforts on artistry and drawing members of the public, whilst Gillray aimed his pen squarely at politics, satirising his subjects to great effect.

Rowlandson and Gillray’s differing approaches to caricature are still evident today with a drawing able to gently mock a subject for humorous effect or wound them with a serious social or political point. We would rather advise booking a caricaturist at an event to dish out the former rather than the latter for the good of the party atmosphere!

Remembering information

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The Method of Loci might be familiar to fans of Sherlock on BBC1 because Sherlock once used his ‘Mind Palace’, which was much ridiculed online. Even so, this method of remembering information is highly praised by memory experts and is used by those to whom memory is very useful indeed.

Derren Brown utilises a system for his incredible live shows whilst Simon Reinhard, European Memory Champion, showed such an effective deployment of the strategy that he was able to remember the position of all 52 cards in a deck in just under 21 seconds.

The easiest way to perfect the Method of Loci is to think of a journey that you make on a regular basis. For most that would be their commute to and from work. The trip should go past a number of distinctive ‘landmarks’ – a skate park, a memorable building, a colourful fence – which you tend to pay attention to every morning. The more memorable the place, the better the method will be.

Next you write down every bit of information that you’d like to remember. After assembling your list, you then attach a picture or symbol to each item. If you need to remember to buy a birthday card for example, you’d simply affix an image of a birthday card in your mind to the skate park we mentioned earlier. Every time you walk past, it will be instantly imprinted in your mind!

This technique may sound simple and that’s because it is, but it will still take some time to perfect.
And why is it called the ‘Method of Loci’? The reason being that ‘loci’ is the Latin for ‘places’ and the method itself has been around since around 80BC.

It is referred to in the oldest surviving Latin book on rhetoric, Rhetorica ad Herennium, and also features in Cicero’s De Oratore in 55BC and Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria in 95CE. Considering they have been around for well over 2,000 years, you can be certain of the fact that they work!

Event ideas for award ceremonies

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Awards ceremonies can be stuffy affairs, especially for those who aren’t lucky enough to win on the evening. One sure fire way to make them enjoyable for everyone is to hire entertainment, sit back and watch as everyone has a great time downing the free drinks! But what sort of entertainment should you be booking for the event?

Circus Acts
Hiring circus entertainment for your awards bash is a hell of a way to get the party started on the night! The lights go down, there is a palpable sense of expectation! Hoops, LEDs, aerial silk artists swinging from the rafters…Circus entertainment is an amazing way to impress everybody which will not only ensure impressed coos from the audience but also a lot of sharing on social media!

Awards Host
You can’t exactly have an awards ceremony without a host can you? For the smaller companies and their awards evenings, this is often somebody from the company, perhaps the CEO making a couple of awkward jokes before making way for Barry from Accounts, a man whose humour doesn’t match his enthusiasm blundering through the evening. Once you’re more established though, you can book a presenter from the telly or an established comedian who will keep the laughs coming throughout the event.

Meet and Greet Acts
Arriving at an awards ceremony can be a daunting affair. If you’re particularly unlucky then you might well be going alone to the event and although happy to attend, it is a tad alarming to think you might be eating dinner with people you don’t know and could feasibly in for a quiet night; nobody likes starting conversation with strangers. If you book meet and greet acts for an awards ceremony though, this fear dissipates instantly. Guests will arrive and are instantly able to relax as they marvel at costumed characters or stilt walkers.

Finale/After Party
Who doesn’t like a good dance at the end of an event? The answer is of course ‘nobody’. If
there’s one thing sitting in chairs at dining tables for three or four hours makes you want to do, it’s getting to your feet and dancing the night away as soon as possible. The band who provided the award stings can play some songs whilst other entertainment is also just as well suited to such an evening! LED Canapé Girls are sure to impress whilst photo booths provide a unique opportunity for someone to show off their award with a humorous prop in tow.

The Living Statue

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Put simply the history of the living statue – at least where it all began – is lost to time. Arguably the first living statue can be traced back to the ancient Greeks where members of the public would pose for famous sculptors looking to mould their marble. Realistically though, the living statue as we currently know it first appeared in the 19th century as a circus performance. PT Barnum displayed living statues as part of his circus tours, a peculiar curiosity to the minds of those in the 1840s.

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, living statues became ever more widely known thanks to the emergence of the art form known as tableaux vivants; a group of actors would pose and be lit in a particular way so as to appear like paintings. The resulting performance was often shot on camera (which meant the performers had to stand still in their chosen pose) or performed on stage to the amazement of spectators. Cleverly, by tagging these performances as art, nude actors and actresses were able to perform erotic entertainment on stage, flouting theatre censorship laws. As long as the girls didn’t move, it was deemed okay by the masses. The most notable instance of this was under the stewardship of the famous Mrs. Henderson at the Windmill Theatre in London in the 1930s and 40s.

Since that time, living statues have featured prominently in both art and film – The Phantom of the Opera and Hot Fuzz are two recent films that have shown living statues on screen, whilst revered duo Gilbert & George utilised human statues as part of their gallery installations in the 1960s. Moving from inside to out, street performances too have flourished in the intervening years as various living statues appeared near famous landmarks all over Europe. Though varying in quality from person to person, they are a magnet for tourists, only moving when money is placed in front of their plinth.
If no money is thrown in front of the living statue, either because they are unimpressive as a statue or their costume doesn’t resonate with those walking by, the street performer doesn’t get paid that day.

With numbers still proliferating throughout London and the UK, it’s clear that the living statues are still well loved and make the perfect addition to your corporate event or private party. Despite their presence on the local high street, nobody will be expecting them in your back garden!

Book a cartoonist for a conference

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When it comes to booking entertainment for a conference, there are a whole raft of options available to event organisers. Naturally the speakers and host for the day will have to be worked out far in advance but as far as everything else goes, there is quite a lot of leeway as far as the rest of the conference goes.

Many clients for conferences like to book party entertainment for when guests arrive or to break up the day. Sometimes they will book an interactive form of entertainment to enhance teamwork amongst the conference attendees or perhaps book a strolling act – a magician or caricaturist to keep things light and fun. Today though, we thought we would offer up a unique form of entertainment that has proven to be a hit at innumerable conferences and corporate days.

You can book Alex Hughes the cartoonist to bring a completely new form of entertainment to your event. Sitting in a corner for the day, Alex will pay close attention to the goings on at the conference and draw up to 25(!) cartoons that sum up the occasion. From topical moments where things might go wrong to key phrases that encompass a particular speaker, there is a lot to enjoy and the best bit is, you can put a camera on Alex throughout, ensuring that everybody sees his sketches as and when he comes up with them.

Once the conference is over and everybody has gone home, the conference organisers or company responsible for putting on the event get to keep the original drawings to frame in offices and Alex will digitally scan each and every one when he draws them, with his clients able to use their drawings for whatever reason they see fit from that moment on.

A truly excellent and different choice for conferences and corporate events, we highly recommend booking Alex Hughes for your next event.

Making the right choice

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Red Masque will help you filter available options. You can get several options when thinking of hiring party bands, singers, musicians, comedians and other artists. You may be confused especially when you don’t know any of the artists in person. You can save yourself the trouble by ensuring that Red Masque only advertises the very best and whatever choice you make will always be the right one.

We understand exactly what you want. You are able to contact various artists of your choosing and meet if you so wish to choose suitable music or songs for your event.

With a reliable entertainment directory, you can get suitable price for hiring a band. You can also get the right price for other artists you may want to hire.

You can save enough time and energy when you engage a good entertainment directory in most cases, we have taken care of the brain work you would have carried out, and have the best unique and highly acclaimed artists in the business.

To locate us, you have to come online; which is the first step. There are several agencies offering unique services on the internet, but you need to consider some factors when looking for the right agency. You have to compare several agencies before making your choice. You can look on the reviews. Or you can also arrange a private interview with each artist. This will help you make the right choice.