I’m heading out for my first real road trip of the season, I’ll be out over two weeks performing magic shows up and down the west coast before I come home. One of the best things for me when I travel is a membership to a national chain gym. There’s no chain that will have a location in every city, so do a bit of research to see what has a presence in the territory you work.
For me the biggest advantage of them is having a place to shower. If you’re doing multiple shows a day at different locations, sometimes it’s nice to wash the sweat off between shows so you’re a bit fresher for the later shows.
Also working out for me is a great way to break up long drives, or to kill time during gaps in your schedule. Also gym has a consistent quality of bathroom, which is nice! A side bonus for me is that the gym chain that I use also has wifi and tables in the lobby, so I can pop in an use the wifi to send emails from my laptop.
For me the $20ish a month I pay for my membership is something that definitely pays off!
-Louie
Tag: magic show tip
A Step Backwards…
This week I’m performing on a stage inside a tent. It’s a nice tent and it solves a lot of outdoor performing problems, it gives the audience shade and cuts down on wind.
The first couple of days of the week I was performing at the front edge of the stage. The shows were doing alright, but I realized I was losing people on the side bleachers. It was a consistent loss of people from specific positions in the audience, so it was something that probably wasn’t my show. To try to fix this I watched another performer’s show from one of those positions and figured out why I was losing them.
You’ll notice there are two poles at the front of the stage and when I was playing too far forward, they people couldn’t see the show. Then there was a smaller problem that when playing too far forward it was hard for some people to see my face as they were almost behind me.
The solution was simple, I just moved my show two steps backwards. Once I did that the change in the show was dramatic! I kept the audience in the spots where I was losing them AND the side were more enthusiastic about the show!