comedy magic – MagicShow.Tips

How to be a Good Opening Act!

Recently, I was the headline act for a stand up comedy show at a casino. The show had three acts, and an MC who did 15 minutes, a feature act that did 30 minutes, and then the headliner (me) who did 60 minutes.

One of the things that many magicians don’t understand is how to be a good opening act when you’re in a show like this. Magicians think they need to go out there and DESTROY an audience almost with a “try to follow that” attitude, and there are places for that, but as an opener in a comedy show, that’s not your job.

The MC’s job is to warm up the crowd, not to crush. The Opener’s job is to keep the energy going so that the headliner has a hot crowd when they step onstage.

I’m not saying you should intentionally be bad, or not give it your all. The thing is that you’re working within a show and the whole show needs to be successful. If you’re constantly blowing the headliner out of the water, and you’re not moving up to that position, you should look at why you aren’t moving up.

Do you have enough A material to fill the 60 mins?

If not, you should be working on that, and not necessarily doing the stuff you know crushes every time.

Are your first 25 minutes any good?

I’ve worked with tons of acts that have an amazing 5-10 minutes, and they close with that. However, everything before that is pretty bad. They close strong, but don’t move up to headliner because the rest of the show sucks.

Is there some other reason?

Are you hard to work with offstage? Do you follow the rules of the venue? These are all things that can keep you from moving up the ladder to the headline position.

How I Learned The Opener’s Job

Many, many years ago, I had a closing bit that crushed. One day, I was on the phone with my stand up agent, and they told me that they didn’t want me doing that bit as the opening act. It really changed the energy in the room and made it hard for the headliner to follow. The agent then explained to me my role, and once I understood that, it made me work harder as a performer to figure out a more appropriate ending to my show for that venue. More importantly, it made me look at my show and really start working on the steps to move up to the headliner spot.

I should point out that you absolutely should do your best, but sometimes a choice of material that’s better for the show as a whole is the right choice.

-Louie

Have Fun Onstage!

One of the things that I see a lot in magic shows is a performer who doesn’t look like they’re having a good time. I get that there are some characters where this makes sense; however, I frequently see it in comedy magic. You absolutely should look like you’re having fun if you’re a standard comedy magician.

The other night I saw The Return of Jackie and Judy, which is a Ramones cover band that’s made up of Fred Armisen and most of the band Sleater-Kinney. One of the things about this show was everyone onstage looked like they were having a blast!

the Return of jackie and judy - fred armisen and sleater kinney

When you’re onstage, in most cases, you should look like you’re having fun! It shouldn’t look like a chore; even doing openly difficult things can look fun, or at least like you enjoy what you’re doing.

A few years ago I wrote a blog post about The Secret to Likability, which is worth a read.

-Louie

The Snake Box

One of the tricks that I made for this school assembly tour is a snake box. This is essentially a “snake basket“, however, I’m not using a basket as I think that’s an old trope, and one that kids don’t have a point of reference to. The routine in my show started out as a card trick, but it’s now something more, and something that plays bigger!

I was thinking about Terry Lunceford’s The Viper trick and it’s great. If you haven’t seen it, here’s what it looks like:

It’s a great routine for its time. Personally, I think that trying to use a phobia someone has for a laugh is an older style of performing and not modern. Doing a danger trick is one thing, a French Arm Chopper isn’t a common fear, but snakes are.

My snake basket does have the snake jump out, but with only me onstage, and guess what, it gets a great reaction!

As someone who has an irrational fear of something, I try to show some compassion to people in the audience and not put them in a position where they will laugh at them being scared.

That’s just my opinion. I still think it’s a great effect, just not the part where you jump scare someone in front of an audience.

-Louie

Meta Glasses Gag Idea

Here’s a gag idea: You call attention to your glasses and mention that everyone has cameras in their glasses now. You then pull/shake a camera out of the glasses.

That’s it, a quick sight gag.

To do it, the easiest way would be to palm a small camera and produce it. More complex methods would be a camera that collapses. A simple, but pain to make would be a latex or sponge camera.

There you go, if this idea interests you, go out and do it!

-Louie

More Snake Basket Work

I’m still working on my Snake Basket Magic Routine. The basket won’t be a basket; it will be a box. I’ve written on this blog before about why I’m not using a basket for the snake. I want the box to look like a shipping crate, but it also must be light and pack as small as possible. I started with a cardboard frame with gaff tape hinges.

I then covered the middles of the panels with wood patterned contact paper.

Finally I did the corners with a wood patterned duct tape to give it the crate look.

This gave me the look that I was going for without the weight of wood, and it packs flat!

-Louie

Snake Basket Magic Trick V2

This snake basket magic trick I’m working on feels like a “project car” that’s in someone’s garage that they are constantly working on. It’s something I keep finding ways to improve. The first version is barely finished, and I’m working on a second one!

The big change is that I’m going to move it away from a card trick. I’m going to merge it with Terry Seabrook’s Chattering Teeth Routine. The snake will chew holes in the paper, and the reveal will be when the paper is opened. A paper is physically larger than a playing card, even a jumbo playing card. Bigger is better for a reveal!

Moving to paper also allows me to customize the routine to a show. For example, if I were doing a safety-themed show for kids, the snake could chew a stop sign in the paper. It could still be a card a la the original Seabrook routine, or spots (like on a die) or even the image a piece of art!

I’m liking flexibility of this idea!

-Louie

The Louie Foxx Magic Lecture

In January, I have two magic lectures: one was last week, and the other is in just over a week. I usually don’t do many of these, as my performing schedule is busiest during the summer, when the magic conventions happen.

I had a blast at the one last week for the Portland Society of Magicians. Here’s a peek at what the 90 minute lecture looks like in 60 seconds:

If your local magic club would like a lecture, feel free to contact me and we can try to make it happen!

-Louie
PS: you can get the lecture notes here:
http://www.magicshow.tips/lecture-notes-2025/

The Moisture Festival Podcast – Trevor and Lorena

On today’s episode we welcome in comedy magic duo Trevor and Lorena. We talk with them about how they started in magic, the evolution of the act and learn about their alter ego’s Charlie and Delilah.

We discuss Trevor meeting Lorena’s Dad for the first time and we even try to place their accents. A super fun conversation with two phenomenal people.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Mastering Comedy Magic by Ian Batterbury

On the plane the other day I read Mastering Comedy Magic by Ian Batterbury. This book goes through different techniques and objectives with using comedy in a magic show. The book says it’s intended for beginners at comedy magic. I would say it’s for beginning at adding unique comedy to their magic.

The difference is that there are a lot of comedy magicians out there who have never had an original thought in their life. They are doing Banana Bandana, or whatever using the jokes the trick came with, or worse using the jokes they’ve seen other people do without permission.

This book is a general “theory” of performing comedy magic, without much in the way of tools, like how a joke is structured. If you’ve never created your own original script for a routine, this book will give you some good guidelines to help you out. With it only being about $10 on Amazon, it’s worth looking into.

-Louie
PS Another good book to look into is Ryan Kane’s Out of Stock

Magic Show Script Writing…

Every year in my library show I try to have at least one trick that has a life larger than that show. Something that I’ll try to put into my main show. One of the new routines that I have been doing in my library shows uses a Cootie Catcher/Paper Fortune Teller.

This routine has been doing well, and it’s a great little solo routine that’s compact a trick that packs flat, but because it’s a three dimensional trick that moves, it has a bit more visual texture than a flat prop.

There’s not a ton to the routine that I’m working on. It’ll hopefully have 6 laughs in two minutes. I’m always looking for solo tricks that I can do without someone from the audience onstage.

-Louie