It's about building a momentum towards the show.
For actors, opening night of a play is always the most butterfly inducing show because the audience causes you to scrutinise yourself, and if you're not prepared, can get you to second guess your actions--which is bad because then it all rolls downhill from that kind of self-consciousness. So the first deal is nightly rehearsals. A play gets rehearsed ever night for three hours, four times a week, at least five weeks before the show. The last week, Hell week, is started off with technical rehearsals, where you factor in the lighting, the sound cues, and all the giggerpokery that's the fine tuning of a show. Good costume designers also require a costume rehearsal, for actors not only to try on their costumes, but do a whole run of the play in them. It lets the costume designer tweak and fix any minor details. Once you've got that done, the show's ready for viewing pleasure. To make it an even easier transition, however, some companies put on a preview show for free or cheap on a Thursday night. It lets the actors invite familiar faces and perform for them FIRST. That, getting your show in for the people that you know? Takes a lot of the edge off. Then you've got opening night, but by that time the butterflies are taken care of by the usual pre show preparation.
So... for a magician, how to translate that?
Most important bit is writing the show. What tricks are you going to use, and why? What are your themes, and what concept is it built around? What's going to make it not only entertaining, not only comedic, not only mysterious, but most importantly, what's going to give it that magical quality? You don't want to be scrounging around for patter in your head while it's going on. What you say has to be in your skin, if not in your bones. Not memorised to where you can remember it if you think about it, but memorised to the point that you can sing along to it like it's something from the radio stuck in your head. You need to be able to riff that off your tongue and let it flow naturally. Improv is good; don't be afraid of taking an oportunity to go somewhere you haven't gone before. Use the audience's reactions to your advantage and joke around or try something they ask for; BUT DON'T RELY ON THEM TO CARRY THE SHOW. You have to carry the show with your material, and you want your material to be tight.
Second is rehearse that. Be rigorous in this. Get some space (I don't care if it's at 3 AM in your room when everyone else is asleep) where you can feel free to go through every line and move in your show. Rehearse specific scenes/tricks. Get those to flow smoothly. When you can do your tricks well as stand alones, run them together in a practice run, as an act. Get that to flow smoothly. These rehearsals are NECESSARY. Rehearse your show, with all the tricks in succession, figuring in any intervals. Do full runs. Then pick out any specific tricks you're having problems with, and smooth out the kinks with a microscopic attention to detail. When you've rehearsed it to that point, take it to a trial audience.
You've got the streets. You're doing a close-up act, right? You've got the luxury of not needing boxed set-ups, so take your act to malls and downtown areas. Find people that are easy to approach; y'kno, the ones sitting on benches just relaxing. Find people that are difficult to approach; the srsface busy business man rushing along, and try to perform for them ONE trick. Make it good, and see if you can get them to stop. Don't be afraid of difficulty; go into it, it'll make you grow. Vaccinations strengthen your immune systems by infecting you with a small contagion of a germ, so that when your white blood cells are attacked by it, they'll be prepared against it. Do the same with your performances. HECKLERS ARE GOOD. They show you where you're weak. They teach you how to get stronger, how to make your show run tighter, how to make it funnier, how to hold your audiences attention better, so that they're not just accomodating you, but so that they're hungry for more and afriad to cough in the chance that they'll miss out. Try out your whole set. Do that up to the week of the gig. It'll push you, keep your momentum going, and let you perform the gig in stride.
Mkay? Hope that helps. This all relies on how much preparation you do, and how much momentum that preparation gives you. Barfing isn't bad. Use it, use that anxiety as fuel for your show. Fear is good, it keeps your alertness hightened. Same with happiness. Use your whole emotional range to colour your show.
And, worst comes to worst, visit H&H (it's not too far of a walk from the MC), and BLATANTLY PERFORM BADLY. Really, try it. Do all your tricks and screw them all up. Do it on purpose, and make it brilliantly bad. Crash and burn that set. Then walk into the Magic Castle and see how there's no possible way this show could be worse than that earlier set, and feel absolutely relaxed because of it. Cool? Cool.
avec ma couer,
--b