The National Basketball Association soon will commence its 51st season. Bulls fans will pack the United Center, cheering for another world championship along with a familiar cast:
Kirk. Jim. Frank. Nick. And the man in the middle, Craig Uthe!
They are the IncrediBulls–the guys who start performing when Michael, Scottie, Dennis, Ronnie and Luc stop.
They don’t run the triple-post offense or keep Patrick Ewing off the offensive glass.
Their job, for four hours during each Bulls home date, is to blow up and twist balloons into bulls’ horns. To jettison T-shirts into the stands. To choreograph the crowd favorite “backpack basketball.”
Michael and the gang win a laugher? Kirk and Co. try to prevent a yawnfest.
“That feeling you get when you show somebody a card trick and their face is kind of like, `Oh my goodness, how’d he do that?’ That’s kind of the feeling we want to give the people in the stands,” said Steve Rotz, vice president and sales director for Sports Magic Team Inc., an Orlando-based interactive entertainment firm in its fifth year of managing the IncrediBulls.
Founded in 1989 by magician Tim Glancey, Sports Magic (slogan: “The play between the plays”) last weekend held open auditions to choose six regulars and three alternates for the 1997-98 IncrediBulls. Included were members of last year’s squad, who had to audition to retain their spots.
The open call attracted 91 prospects, ranging in age from the minimum 21 to spry, 68-year-old Northbrook resident Gene DiBlasi. It unleashed what Joe Mulvihill, Sports Magic’s director of team operations, called “a creative disease.”
“The people that benefit the most are the open-minded, outgoing, good-personality people that want to take it to the next level, want to learn how to entertain, want to be part of a classy organization like the Chicago Bulls,” Mulvihill said.
Lack of personality was not a problem in the United Center’s third-floor banquet room Sunday, the site for the performance part of the audition. The 34 persons who were called back after Saturday’s interviews–a third of them women, not one of them mistaking the IncrediBulls for the LuvaBulls as in past tryouts–were lively Type A’s.
So festive was this group that at the conclusion of a six-minute opening video describing Sports Magic–15 pro sports cities have their own version of the IncrediBulls, and traveling squads annually visit 40 to 50 cities worldwide–they exploded into applause.
From there, the grueling four-hour audition segued into a “getting to know you” session among the participants before venturing into a series of improvisational skits, individual performances and team song-and-dance numbers.
A unique exercise was reminiscent of the old schoolyard game of duck-duck-goose. One candidate issued a verbal exclamation paired with an action. Both were then mimicked in succession by the rest around the circle.
The scene of 30 people sequentially yelling “Yowza!” accented by leg kicks and arm pumps recalled a self-defense class for vaudevillians.
“I wasn’t expecting this kind of group activity,” said actress Dana Taylor, a Lexington, Ky., native now living in Logan Square. “And I’m really excited that it’s so high-energy and that you’re able to be a part of something that’s so important to Chicago. I’ve never seen a city with so many fans, and it’s great to be a part of that.”
The audition contained opportunities for acting, though actors, like trampoline-jumping basketball dunkers, weren’t exactly what Rotz, Mulvihill and Bulls corporate partnerships assistant DeBorah Wells-Nunn were seeking.
“It’s not necessarily what the guys can do out there,” said Rotz, who noted that, though the IncrediBulls do get paid for their part-time work, he was looking for “somebody that would go out and do this for free.”
“There’s a lot of people out there that can tumble,” he said. “A lot of people can jump off a trampoline and dunk a basketball. After a while, that gets a little old. But when you get the season ticket-holder in the stands dancing with an IncrediBull or playing games with him, bringing a smile to his face and several people around him, that’s something you can repeat every night and get a different reaction from different people in the audience.”
Among the diverse hopefuls were students, teachers, an advertising salesperson, an insurance company employee and a health club manager. Mulvihill said the Boston troupe included a heart surgeon.
Were they all Bulls fans? Need we ask?
“I would say it’s pretty much a prerequisite,” said three-year IncrediBull veteran Jim Cuthbertson, 27, of Naperville. “Obviously, the Bulls are winning all the time, so you’re in a good mood. And it helps energize the crowd if they see you supporting the Bulls and really getting into it.
“I’m a huge sports fan, no matter what. Any Chicago sport, I’m a loyal Chicago fan. I had never seen a Bulls game. And now I’ve seen almost every home game all the way through the playoffs and then into the finals. It’s a dream come true for me. And pretty much everybody on our team is a big Bulls fan.”
Would they still be there if the Bulls were terrible?
“Oh, absolutely,” said IncrediBull Nick Klein, 24, of Wheaton. “It’s all about the people. It’s about people coming to the United Center and just having fun. It’s not just a basketball game anymore, it’s entertainment. It’s a spectacle, and that’s what we want to provide for the people.”
The bulk of Sunday’s tryout–after brief improv sketches including one involving an Amtrak conductor who delivers the baby of a woman injured when he swerved to avoid buffalo on the tracks, and before the final song-and-dance numbers that included an ode to the UPS strike–were the individual performances.
These five-minute spots were heavy on dancing and music (including several raps, a song from “Rent” and a stirring finale of “God Bless America”), play-acting, jokes, tumbling, juggling and balloon-blowing.
“I was mainly looking at the ability to improvise,” Wells-Nunn said. “Just some creativity, some originality, not just a dance or a skit. I wanted to see people’s ability to get the audience involved in something different.”
It was definitely something different.
A question-and-answer session with “Pig Man,” who hammed it up as he lay on his back, his inverted face decked out with sunglasses and snout markings, was a howl.
On the other hand, the “tribute to the Bulls” sung to the tune of “YMCA” while accompanied by a San Diego Chicken hand-puppet went from cute to gag-me.
Then there was the man who writhed on the floor and implored everyone to “swim like a trout.”
The six 1996-97 IncrediBulls enjoyed the advantage of familiarity. There also was a definite level of confidence and professionalism they shared.
“I know what they’re looking for, so I think that helped a lot,” said Frank Yuen, a 35-year-old Berwyn resident and magician.
In the end, first-timer Vic Chao was selected to join returning members Yuen, Klein, Cuthbertson, Kirk Cribb and the man in the middle, the 6-foot-3-inch Uthe, as the 1997-98 IncrediBulls.
A Schaumburg man who’s been modeling for two weeks after ditching medical sales, the 25-year-old Chao said, “I really didn’t know what to expect, but now that I’m here I just wanted to have a lot of fun and hopefully entertain the crowd.”
A woman also made it for the first time as one of the three alternates, who could see court time should one of the regulars suffer injury or move away.
Janene Bunkley, a former high school counselor from Dayton who coupled serious gymnastic ability with jokes about animals, joined Tim Conlin and Richard Florczak as new alternates.
“That makes me feel pretty good,” she said when notified of her groundbreaking status. “I’ll have to change some things. Pave the way for future women–if I get a chance to get in there.”
She’s a big fan of Michael, Dennis and Scottie.
“That’s the main reason I’m here today,” she said. “So that I can get to see a game maybe.”
