Hey everyone!
Hope you have been having a good year as it's about to wrap in a few months and are excited for Halloween festivities. I haven't been as active on here as I normally am due to being super busy with both magic and non-magic related things and in my opinion it's better to be busy than doing nothing at all so I can't complain.
I wanted to share with you an experience I had Friday evening. I was booked to do a Halloween party for Friday the 13th at a private event. This booking came from an audience member that was at my stage show. This was my first negotiated gig as a performer that was not an event created by me. I performed for a family of about 40 people in a large farm house. The person who hired me told me she wanted it to be focused more for the kids so I had to dial back a lot of the material that I normally like to perform.
I performed a lot of the material that I use in my busking set, a D'Lite routine (which worked perfectly because a kid was holding a glow stick and so I could "steal" some light from his glow stick and throw it around and catch it), Past Present Future, Steam 2.0 (did a bit about pets for that effect with the fortune telling fish), a comedy rope escape routine, as well as several other effects.
Near the end though I wanted to change the direction of the show. I noticed a lot of the kids were getting into the magic and decided to teach them a trick they could use at school called the magnetic hand (basically the same party trick that Gary Darwin does). My hope was to teach them something super basic in hopes that they would get curious and try to learn more about magic. I know that sharing methods, especially with an audience of laymen, is frowned upon but I decided I don't care about that anymore. No, I'm not going to reveal other people's work on YouTube or anything like that but if I see kids that are really into my story (which is aspiring to follow our dreams) then I have no issue getting them started with party tricks or simple card tricks. I think we as magicians truly do guard an empty vault and instead of bickering over who is doing wrong in magic we should be focusing on trying to bring more people in. I know a lot of traditionalists will be upset at this but I don't think any of those traditionalists will be hiring me for an event anyways. My sole focus right now is to give my audience the best show that I can and entertain them the best way that I can. And sometimes giving them the gift of knowledge so they can perform something for their friends is a great way to fulfill that obligation to them.
I then closed on the same effect that I use to close all my shows with a final inspiring message and thanked them for having me. I could tell a lot of the kids were interested in magic and may even try to their own hand at it someday. The coordinator of the private event talked to me after the show and said she was very pleased with my performance and the children seemed to really enjoy the show.
Anyways, it feels really good to see the fruits of my labor of the stage show to start to blossom. I haven't even put out the promo reel yet and I already landed a paying gig so I'm excited to see what other opportunities open up once I officially put myself out there. It's also nice to finally be making a financial return on this massive investment I put into this overpriced hobby ( I know it's my own doing I should have just stuck with the books first!). I can now start building towards a much bigger goal and I'm very excited about that.
Hope you have been having a good year as it's about to wrap in a few months and are excited for Halloween festivities. I haven't been as active on here as I normally am due to being super busy with both magic and non-magic related things and in my opinion it's better to be busy than doing nothing at all so I can't complain.
I wanted to share with you an experience I had Friday evening. I was booked to do a Halloween party for Friday the 13th at a private event. This booking came from an audience member that was at my stage show. This was my first negotiated gig as a performer that was not an event created by me. I performed for a family of about 40 people in a large farm house. The person who hired me told me she wanted it to be focused more for the kids so I had to dial back a lot of the material that I normally like to perform.
I performed a lot of the material that I use in my busking set, a D'Lite routine (which worked perfectly because a kid was holding a glow stick and so I could "steal" some light from his glow stick and throw it around and catch it), Past Present Future, Steam 2.0 (did a bit about pets for that effect with the fortune telling fish), a comedy rope escape routine, as well as several other effects.
Near the end though I wanted to change the direction of the show. I noticed a lot of the kids were getting into the magic and decided to teach them a trick they could use at school called the magnetic hand (basically the same party trick that Gary Darwin does). My hope was to teach them something super basic in hopes that they would get curious and try to learn more about magic. I know that sharing methods, especially with an audience of laymen, is frowned upon but I decided I don't care about that anymore. No, I'm not going to reveal other people's work on YouTube or anything like that but if I see kids that are really into my story (which is aspiring to follow our dreams) then I have no issue getting them started with party tricks or simple card tricks. I think we as magicians truly do guard an empty vault and instead of bickering over who is doing wrong in magic we should be focusing on trying to bring more people in. I know a lot of traditionalists will be upset at this but I don't think any of those traditionalists will be hiring me for an event anyways. My sole focus right now is to give my audience the best show that I can and entertain them the best way that I can. And sometimes giving them the gift of knowledge so they can perform something for their friends is a great way to fulfill that obligation to them.
I then closed on the same effect that I use to close all my shows with a final inspiring message and thanked them for having me. I could tell a lot of the kids were interested in magic and may even try to their own hand at it someday. The coordinator of the private event talked to me after the show and said she was very pleased with my performance and the children seemed to really enjoy the show.
Anyways, it feels really good to see the fruits of my labor of the stage show to start to blossom. I haven't even put out the promo reel yet and I already landed a paying gig so I'm excited to see what other opportunities open up once I officially put myself out there. It's also nice to finally be making a financial return on this massive investment I put into this overpriced hobby ( I know it's my own doing I should have just stuck with the books first!). I can now start building towards a much bigger goal and I'm very excited about that.
