The Bisenbach ‘saal’ served as the cultural heartbeat of Worcester, a local architectural equivalent to the grand Alhambra Theatre in Cape Town, where the community gathered to witness the extraordinary. It was within these walls on November 7, 1967, that the avant-garde music teacher and eccentric composer Cromwell Everson staged the first Afrikaans opera, ‘Klutaimnestra’. Everson was a man of peculiar genius, a local legend who reputedly owned a German shepherd capable of "playing" the piano. His pedagogical methods were as colourful as his reputation; he once instructed David to visualize music by imagining each note possessing its own distinct hue. To a young, impressionable mind, Everson’s fascination with "sound collages"—recordings of mundane life such as barking dogs or the sharp ring of an alarm clock—was nothing short of exhilarating. David would later find himself experimenting with these concepts, using a borrowed reel-to-reel tape recorder from Western Furniture to capture the world around him.

However, the seed of David’s performance career was planted nearly seven years earlier, in 1960, through a far more traditional, yet equally captivating, spectacle. In a town where "nothing much ever happened," the arrival of a traveling show was a momentous occasion. Solly Kramer, David’s father, likely secured free tickets for the family by displaying a promotional poster in the shop window of the Western Furniture. The headliner was Charles Jacobie, known as "die singende beesboer" (the singing cowboy), a man now revered as the father of South African country music. Jacobie’s presence was a spectacle in itself; he was known to parade through Tulbagh Street on a magnificent white stallion to announce his arrivall. There remains a hazy, shimmering memory of whether that horse actually made it onto the stage of the Bisenbach ‘saal’, a detail lost to the passage of time but indicative of the larger-than-life nature of the evening.

While the singing cowboy was the draw, it was the opening act that forever altered the trajectory of nine-year-old David’s life. A "Chinese" magician from Bronkhorstspruit, performing under the name Ling Shoo, took the stage. He was the quintessential image of mystery, draped in a shimmering silk gown and crowned with a Mandarin hat, featuring a long, thin moustache that dangled dramatically from his face. David sat in the darkened hall, totally enthralled and mesmerized as Ling Shoo performed the impossible, including the levitation of a woman right before his eyes. This was not merely entertainment; for David, it was a revelation.

The inspiration was so profound that it demanded immediate action. David’s grandmother was enlisted to sew a silk gown modeled after the magician’s own attire. For the headpiece, a stroke of luck provided an exotic Austrian hat of blue and red, brought back from Europe by family friend, Joan Krige. The local library became his sanctuary as he pored over books on magic tricks, beginning a rigorous period of rehearsal. There was even the possibility of mentorship, as it was rumored that his brother's schoolmate, Chris Munro, might have shared a few secrets of the trade with the budding illusionist.

David had always possessed the spirit of a performer, a child who would spontaneously execute somersaults in the air, walk on his hands, or strum his ukulele for the amusement of family friends. He was, in every sense, a master of disguises. One evening, while his parents hosted guests for drinks, the moment arrived for his grand debut. David donned his grandmother's silk gown and the Austrian Mandarin hat. The final touch was a stroke of theatrical genius: a long, drooping moustache fashioned from real human hair. This was possible because his maternal grandfather had been a London-trained hairdresser and wigmaker, leaving behind a box of human hair that served as an endless resource for David’s creative transformations. After applying careful makeup to his eyes to complete the aesthetic, he emerged not as a nine-year-old boy, but as the mysterious WANG CHANG. The performance was a resounding success—a "scream" that solidified his place as a local entertainer.