First ever performance

[cunningstunts]

Hi guys,

dont know if this is totally pointless, but I've been practicing magic and cardistry for perhaps 4/5 months, and I was wondering how successfull people here were on there first performance, I dont mean with family. but friends, school work etc. I always struggle to stay dead cool when doing anything at school with people looking over etc, but i normally nail it with family after a few weeks practice. Anyway, how did it go for you guys first time around?

By the way if this thread has already been created somewhere else by someone asking the same question, kindly link me to it, much appreciated.

 

[Steve Dio]

1) Don't perform magic unless someone's interested or asks you to.
2) Don't perform unless you know your material INSIDE-OUT. Watch your vocal tone and pitch when performing any sleight. You'll see why.
3) Find a style that suits you and stick to it. (Drop "I'm going to read your mind" bull**** from the start.)

If you NEVER break these three rules you will feel "yourself" while performing for a nice, heckler-free audience.

By the way, I don't think I remember my first performance. I suppose it was some "out of this world" version, performed like ****, from my current point of view.

 

[RickEverhart]

If I were to share my first ever paid performance, half of you wouldn't believe me. We all have to start somewhere. It was a birthday party gig for a littler girl (3 years ago) and I pulled up to the house to not only see a crowd, but a "live" trained monkey show going on in the driveway and my magic act was to follow that. Talk about worried. When it was time to begin, my mouth was dry and speech was stuttery, my hands were dripping with sweat, and I felt like I was going to throw up. How does that sound for beginning? Ha ha. At one point in the act, the wind blew the cards off my close up pad and I had to chase them across the front yard in my suit. Sound like fun yet?

You will learn SO much by your failures and EVERY single time you perform, you need to reflect on what went well, what needs improvement, and what you need to completely revamp. The shakes and nervousness will eventually turn to adrenaline and excitement when you are ready to perform.

I am performing in a theater tonight, doing strolling during a cocktail hour, am I nervous? Yes, a little. It starts at 6:00 but I will go home today after work and run through each effect with patter out loud about 3-4 times. I'll make sure my pocket management is correct and arrive early to scope out the room, get some water in me and mentally prepare.

 

[cunningstunts]

ahh that sounds horrific, must of taken time to recover from that, i did a disastrous performance at college today, hoping i might be able to up my confidence again with the invisible deck, i feel conident using it, but its only after after the first performance you can identify problems with patter etc.

 

[Aaron.Williams]

Only perform tricks that you know that you can do perfectly without even looking down at your hands. This includes performance too, the only way you can really improve on performing is to perform.

I don't remember my first time ever performing for someone other than my family. I'm sure the first time was when I was in 6th grade, it was one of those "free days" where you didn't really have to do anything. And the teacher gave us some cards to play with and I asked my friend if he wanted to see a trick. I performed the trick for him and before I knew it, the whole class was gathered around me, waiting for what I was going to do next. Even the teacher. It was a pretty good performance. I don't remember the specifics, but I don't remember any kind of "know-it-all"s trying to ruin it. From then on, I started carrying a deck of cards around with me and my first year in a new place was made a lot better.

But even when I look back now in old videos and stuff, I realize how "bad" I was at certain moves. But I have always been a pretty good performer and I could interact with people nicely so people enjoyed it. I'm not saying that your moves don't need to be perfect, (or as close as you can get to it), but don't focus so much on what you're doing that you forget about how the audience is enjoying the performance. The best advice I could probably give is to be natural. Don't tense up when you're doing a sleight, don't put on some weird character that comes out only when you're performing magic, especially to people you know. Just be yourself. If you're a funny and talkative guy, do that while performing. If you're normally kind of quiet, don't be a chatterbox because you feel like you have to. Just have fun and the audience will join in.

Good luck!

 

[Chris W]

Dude, I'm the same way, as is pretty much anyone who starts out. I've been into magic for 4 years or so, but only perform for friends and family because I like it. I'm still not at the point where I could make money off of it just yet. But the more you perform, that better equip you will be to handle all situations, whether nerves, sweaty palms, strange audience, etc. The hard part (especially for me) is pushing myself to perform.

Piggybacking from what Aaron is saying, I highly suggest reading Strong Magic by Darwin Ortiz to help you out with the performance aspect of magic. I'm currently reading it for the 2nd time and finding so many good things in it to put into my magic.