halloween magic show – MagicShow.Tips

Doing Shows in the Rain and Wind

I don’t really perform Halloween shows, normally I turn them down. However I got a call for a unique one that I thought was just weird enough that it’d be fun. It was a glow in the dark Easter egg hunt at a Christmas tree farm for Halloween! It’s all the holidays crammed into one, and so I said sure!

The show was outdoors and my show was after dark and that particular night it was windy and raining, so the show had a lot of challenges. The big challenge was that the wind was blowing from behind and it kept wanting to knock my case over. Luckily I was doing my nest of boxes that night. I use the David Charvet No Assistant Nest of Boxes, and they’re HEAVY, so I put it in front of my case and that solved the problem.

The other problem is the weather turned from summer to late fall temperatures this week. It as tshirt and shorts weather a few days ago, and for the gig, it definitely wasn’t! Luckily in the trunk of my car, I have travel emergency supplies. One of the things I travel with is a bulk pack of hand warmers and they really saved me that night!

The final challenge was selecting material. I looked at what I had and saw what definitely wouldn’t work because it was really windy. I’ve worked in the wind before, and can do my normal show in average wind. I’ve also done my show with 40-50 mile per hour gusts, I just wasn’t expecting that at this particular show. I was only doing 30 mins and packed the 45 min show, so having that buffer of being able to select the 2/3’s of the show that would work best with the conditions was a nice luxury to have.

Despite all of the challenges the show was a lot of fun! I love it when interesting gigs pop up!

-Louie

Halloween Gigs…

Today is National Magic Day, Halloween and also probably my least favorite day to perform. When performing for groups kid, family or adults, they all act strange when they are in costume. Some they try to play their character, and the rest just don’t act quite like normal people I don’t like it, and I haven’t really done Halloween gigs in about a decade. Sure, there are reasons ($$$$) that I would take one, so I won’t say that I don’t do them.

The other thing is what people wear isn’t always conducive to participating or enjoying a show. Costumes aren’t necessarily made for comfort, and they are full of visual distractions. Then you have mask which limit visibility and face make up which makes it hard for people to tell what someone’s doing with their face.

I know there are some people that are really into doing Halloween gigs and that’s great, with me not really doing them, there’s more work for everyone else.

-Louie

Back At Virtual Again…

I thought I was done with the virtual shows, but last night I was back at it! Doing this show as a nice change of pace from the three shows a day I’m doing at a state fair all month.

This was a corporate gig that was for the employees and their families. This was a fun group! One thing I’ve noticed with virtual shows is the time really flies by, compared to a live show. I think that with an in person show, time travels soo much slower. I think it’s because I’ve done it in person soo much that I have to think less. With the virtual I’m constantly on my toes.

In my virtual show my daughter usually runs the production end of the show and in it I normally do a prediction that she helps me out with, but unfortunately she wasn’t available last night. So I had to had to do it all solo. Running the production part is easy, but doing the prediction was going to be a bit of a challenge. Normally the prediction we do is my “Wheel of dinner”. I was going to modify it to a “wheel of costumes” as the client wanted some Halloween themed tricks. The problem was how I was going to accomplish the trick. With the wheel there are 20 options and it doesn’t force. There are ways to force from the wheel, but I really like just spinning it. It feels random.

It hit me, a while ago I had bought Manifest by Danny Weiser, which is a prediction on a luggage tag and never used it. I hung the luggage tag in the background, and during the course of a trick, I asked someone what they were going to be for Halloween. Then at the end of the trick, I did the reveal of the prediction. It played really well. I like a prediction, where the prediction is not the routine, but a bonus…especially because I takes a lot of the heat off of the method!

-Louie

Halloween Shows…

I’m not a fan of doing shows for Halloween (you can read a post from last year here). I do have a no contact, socially distant magic show today, and I’m not really looking forward to it for the reasons listed in last year’s post. I am looking forward to seeing how my 30 min no contact magic show plays. Up until now I’ve only done 20 mins, so it’s a lot longer of a show.

Here’s a Halloween magic trick I created for another performer called Up The Candy Ladder, and published in Vanish Magazine (edition 75):

The nice thing about right now is that a trick like Up the Candy Ladder that uses no one from the audience and heavily gimmicked props is super practical right now!

It’s Over!

The final two Halloween shows that I did yesterday went fine, with the usual challenges that I’ve written about the last couple of days. I just don’t get people who insist on sitting and watching a show through a mask. It doesn’t make sense and really I find it disrespectful to the performer, unless it’s a mask that’s really difficult to take off.

Oh, I forgot to mention that of the four of the shows, apparently none of the read the document I send that tells them how to set up my show. The main thing is having people seated in rows, at all of my shows but one they were seated at tables. Another thing is that food isn’t served during the show. At one show they put me in front of where the food was and kept going behind me during the show to get food to serve!!!

As much as I dislike the performing situation at Halloween gigs, I think it is good to take them. It makes you have to work a little bit harder as a performer and not let the conditions get to you.

Halfway Done…

Two Halloween shows are down and two more to go. Yesterday I did a show for kids and one for adults. They both ran into the challenges that I was anticipating and wrote about yesterday (you can read it here). Both shows went well, but I had to work hard at them.

The one thing that I notice this year, and hopefully it’s a trend, was that there were less masks worn, in fact I don’t think I saw a single person wearing a mask. I’ll never use (if I can help it) someone with a mask. This is good as it gives me a bigger pool of people from the audience to use.

The downside was that I notice more full face make up on people as part of their costumes. For the same reasons as someone wearing a mask, I avoid using someone with full face make up.

This year I’m only doing a total of four Halloween shows, so it’s not as big of a pain as when I was younger and would do two weeks of these shows!

Halloween Shows…

The next couple of days I’m performing shows that are at Halloween events. If you read my post from yesterday you know that I don’t do a “Halloween” show, but my normal show. As a performer I’ve notice that Halloween shows reliably have the worst audiences.

Why are the audiences bad?

The answer is simple, they are wearing costumes.

When the audience is in costumes, they act strange. Some play their character, which if that’s the person you bring on stage that makes it hard for the audience to relate to them. Or in the case of kids (or drunk adults) if they are dressed as a wolf, they’ll just howl instead of talking.

Add that to costumes not being as comfortable as normal clothes and masks can limit vision and it makes the show hard to watch for the audience. Then you factor in that costumes can also make you hotter, or colder than normal. An uncomfortable audience isn’t a good audience.

I’ve got four of these shows over the next two days…yippee!