Hello everyone! Hope all has been well! Just wanted to do a quick post about a gig I had the other night as an example that even the best of us can have bad gigs. It happens. The trick is to stay positive about it and not show that it bothered you at all. Here is my night last week.
I was performing a company awards banquet. The planner was a 3rd party vendor so they did not work for the company directly. They booked me to do closeup magic for 45 minutes then stroll for their cocktail hour. I was told there would be about 150! People in attendance.
So I arrive and am shown around where cocktail hour will be. So far so good. Then I am shown where my “show” was to be held. It was in the banquet hall with about 30 huge round tables that seat 8 people or so each. Turns out I was supposed to perform for all of them at once. You could not tell me how many fingers I had from the back of the room let alone see any closeup magic. So I had to essential change my act at the last minute to accommodate for the huge room. Adjusting for a 20 minute performance is no big deal but my whole 45 minute act took some very clever crafting in like a 30 minute time frame that I had to prepare.
The room was dimly lit (imagine romantic dinner lit by candle light and basically 4 big chandeliers that were more for ambiance than actually providing light.) I was given a microphone that you could barely hear from and was told to just “project” as if the people in the back were supposed to be able to hear. Haha
I did my cocktail hour which was to go as planned. I busted out the hardest hitting closeup stuff I could find and just went all in on the strolling knowing that the performance was going to be a poop show.... lol People loved it! I went on to perform the show which as expected went terrible. People were drunk and heckling me (his the spongeballs from me for a good 2 minutes before giving them back.) They couldn’t hear so naturally they started talking and made it even harder to hear. Things just seemed to get worse and worse.
Someone finally after about 10
Minutes was like, “we can’t see or hear you. Can you just go table to table instead?” So what I ended up doing was 3 small shows instead for each section of the room. I ended up going on an extra 15 mi utes to be able to give everyone a chance to see something. At the end of the night I met with the person who hired me who basically said “hey you win some you lose some right? Sometimes people just don’t like magic...”
Essentially the person was trying to shift the blame to me. It wasn’t the poor lighting, or poor sound system quality, or poor planning, or misinformation given to me that made foe a bad show. Turns out my magic just wasn’t good enough to make people react. As this person was saying this, a few people walked by and raced to them about how awesome I was and that they wanted to have me back next year for their next banquet (perfect timing right?) I remained professional and thanked them for their feedback. We agreed that if I was to be back next year we would basically do 2 hours of strolling/tablehopping rather than try to have a magic show in that room. I suppose they could hire a mentalist, or hypnotist even for that room, but even if I did all of the big illusions (saw a lady in half and everything) they would just not been able to see anything... so iono what they were expecting lol
Moral of the story is we all have those rough gigs. Don’t let them discourage you. You can only do your best. Stay positive and stay professional. I’ll keep you updated if they ever hire me again haha. Sounds like from the people who approached me after that they empathized with my working conditions and the magic spoke louder than the negative aspects of the performance.
So keep it up and keep on keepin on. Don’t let any one terrible evening ruin magic for you. It will happen eventually haha
I was performing a company awards banquet. The planner was a 3rd party vendor so they did not work for the company directly. They booked me to do closeup magic for 45 minutes then stroll for their cocktail hour. I was told there would be about 150! People in attendance.
So I arrive and am shown around where cocktail hour will be. So far so good. Then I am shown where my “show” was to be held. It was in the banquet hall with about 30 huge round tables that seat 8 people or so each. Turns out I was supposed to perform for all of them at once. You could not tell me how many fingers I had from the back of the room let alone see any closeup magic. So I had to essential change my act at the last minute to accommodate for the huge room. Adjusting for a 20 minute performance is no big deal but my whole 45 minute act took some very clever crafting in like a 30 minute time frame that I had to prepare.
The room was dimly lit (imagine romantic dinner lit by candle light and basically 4 big chandeliers that were more for ambiance than actually providing light.) I was given a microphone that you could barely hear from and was told to just “project” as if the people in the back were supposed to be able to hear. Haha
I did my cocktail hour which was to go as planned. I busted out the hardest hitting closeup stuff I could find and just went all in on the strolling knowing that the performance was going to be a poop show.... lol People loved it! I went on to perform the show which as expected went terrible. People were drunk and heckling me (his the spongeballs from me for a good 2 minutes before giving them back.) They couldn’t hear so naturally they started talking and made it even harder to hear. Things just seemed to get worse and worse.
Someone finally after about 10
Minutes was like, “we can’t see or hear you. Can you just go table to table instead?” So what I ended up doing was 3 small shows instead for each section of the room. I ended up going on an extra 15 mi utes to be able to give everyone a chance to see something. At the end of the night I met with the person who hired me who basically said “hey you win some you lose some right? Sometimes people just don’t like magic...”
Essentially the person was trying to shift the blame to me. It wasn’t the poor lighting, or poor sound system quality, or poor planning, or misinformation given to me that made foe a bad show. Turns out my magic just wasn’t good enough to make people react. As this person was saying this, a few people walked by and raced to them about how awesome I was and that they wanted to have me back next year for their next banquet (perfect timing right?) I remained professional and thanked them for their feedback. We agreed that if I was to be back next year we would basically do 2 hours of strolling/tablehopping rather than try to have a magic show in that room. I suppose they could hire a mentalist, or hypnotist even for that room, but even if I did all of the big illusions (saw a lady in half and everything) they would just not been able to see anything... so iono what they were expecting lol
Moral of the story is we all have those rough gigs. Don’t let them discourage you. You can only do your best. Stay positive and stay professional. I’ll keep you updated if they ever hire me again haha. Sounds like from the people who approached me after that they empathized with my working conditions and the magic spoke louder than the negative aspects of the performance.
So keep it up and keep on keepin on. Don’t let any one terrible evening ruin magic for you. It will happen eventually haha
