magic show tips – Page 36

The Secret to Likability…

The easiest step to being likable onstage is smiling. That’s it. If you can do that you’re soo much closer to the audience liking you.

Smiling makes you look like you want to be there and you are having fun. Yes, there are times you don’t want to smile, and those times should be well thought out. Your default should be a smile.

Many years ago I heard an interview with comedian Neal Brennan on Tom Papa’s podcast Come to Papa. He mentioned that he thought he was smiling onstage, but realized he wasn’t. Onstage you need to smile bigger than you think you need to for it to play to the audience. Hearing that interview really helped my show!
-Louie

Closing night…

The final show of the 2022 Moisture Festival had an amazing line up!

I always look at the lineup of every show and think to myself that I don’t belong in the line up.

The amount of people that it takes to make these show happen is much larger than you’d think. Here’s a some of the cast and crew:

Normally I work as a solo act, however it’s always fun to be a part of something bigger. Being a bad ass cog in a big machine that creates amazing art is something that fills my soul!

Doing things that you love for the love of creating, not money is something that I think everyone should do!
-Louie

The Moisture Festival – week 3

In Seattle we just wrapped up the third week of the Moisture Festival. This is a four week variety arts festival and has tons of amazing acts!

One of the great things about performing in festivals like this is that you get to work with some of the top acts in the world! Plus the audiences at the festival are also some of the best audiences in the world!

On this blog on the 1st and 15th of the month I publish The Moisture Festival Podcast where Matt Baker and I interview all of the performers and people the make the festival happen. There are tons of great insights in the interviews on the podcast.

I started this weekend at the festival and will be performing in it next weekend as well. If you’re ever in Seattle during the festival, this is something you need to check out!
-Louie

April Fools Gigs…

Yesterday I had a full day of driving around town performing at senior living facilities doing my show. They love booking in magic shows for April Fools Day, and you can do shows pretty much from 10 am to about 7 pm if you want to. The main limit is your set up, take down and travel time.

If you want more info on performing in the senior market, check out my book:
How to Perform For Seniors

Doing a lot of shows in a short amount of time is a great chance to work on things. I’m working on my Briefcase Magic Show, so not a single piece, but how to get the stuff to gel together as a show.

Everything pictured above (included the applause sign) fits into the case and sets up and packs away in less than 10 mins.

I was able to get 45 minutes out of those props at every show today! I’m working on adding a joke between each trick, that’s adding a time to the show without adding props. The goal is to have 2 minutes of jokes between each trick, that ends up being 12 minutes of the show.

Hopefully I can achieve that!

-Louie

Save Your Back…

For about 4 years I’ve used a Pelican 1615 Air as the main case for my show. I like 97% of the things about this case. The 3% I don’t like is that I think it could be a little bit bigger and still not be oversize for checked luggage.

My case has travelled all across North America, from Panama to Alaska and from Seattle to Florida. I noticed last week that the wheels were getting sluggish. I think the bearings were going bad. I got a set of replacement wheels and in 5 mins I was up and running again!

Moving your gear around is one of the things that will wear you out, and having good wheels that reduce effort is important! Keep up on the maintenance of your gear, your back will thank you!
-Louie

Watching Acts…

One of the great things about performing at fairs is you get to work with all sorts of acts. Not just various styles of acts, but act all from different points or their careers. Sometimes you’ll get a newer local act, and huge, international headliners and sometimes you’ll get an amazing act that’s retired, but lives in town and that’s the one gig a year they do…and everything in between.

When I’m at the fair, I try to watch everyone’s show. There’s so much to learn from the any act you watch.

I’ve written about this before, but I got reminded of why having a “high” show is important and why you need to keep all the action in your show (in most venues) above your belly button.
The importance of having some sort of music in the background (in most routines).
Why to keep backups of props that could break…because they will!
And finally to play every gig like it’s a sold out show…even if it’s raining and the bleachers are uncovered and virtually empty.

All four of these things are things that I already know, but it’s a good reminder to see them and having them moved to the front of my brain!
-Louie

Using Light to add Punctuation

While in Arizona last week I visited Organ Stop Pizza and I wrote a little bit about it yesterday. Today I’m writing about something else that I noticed with performance. In many of the songs the organist played, there was lighting changes:

The room was normally dark, and when he got towards ends of song and it had a big ending, he would lighten up the room for the finale, then darken it at the end. While these songs were songs that had more exciting endings, the lighting change end really signaled the crowd to clap and cheer louder.

This is a technique used in many theater shows, sometimes ending the trick with a blackout. I’m sure there’s a name for it in theater terms, I just don’t know it. However it’s a way to signal the end of a trick or routine that may have less off a definite and hard punctuation at the end.

The organist used the lighting very deliberately and very effectively. Personally I’m a pretty basic lighting guy, and that’s probably because I came out of stand up comedy rooms, and not theaters. However it’s something I would like to explore more.

-Louie

Suspension of Disbelief…

When I was in Arizona last week I went to Organ Stop Pizza in Mesa, AZ. This is pizza place that has a guy play a giant Wurlitzer organ.

One the the things that I found interesting was the people around me commented about all of the songs he knows. He takes requests and they are pretty varied in genre. What the people didn’t notice was that he had device to his left just out of view that he was using for the songs he didn’t already know.

This is an interesting suspension of disbelief, which is different from when you see Peter Pan and ignore the wires that make him fly. This a suspension of disbelief closer to doing magic. The audience wanted him to have a huge catalog of music in his head, so that’s what they believed, despite all of his typing.

In magic you want the audience to believe you can do the trick…not necessarily by “magic” but you can do the trick successfully. Once you convivence them that you can you can take a lot of risks and they will unconsciously suspend disbelief and be onboard with things.

Juan Tamariz talks about this in The Magic Rainbow. Basically he says that once they audience is onboard with him, he can do things that would be easily explained. He does them after he’s proven himself, and the audience suspends disbelief that he’s simply using a trick prop.

I was watching the organist arrange his set list of requests. He has a couple of songs he knows, then plays a one he doesn’t know, then a medley of 3-5 songs and I think one or two of these he doesn’t know well, but can bookend with known songs and finally he plays a couple songs he knows well. It’s a great plan, it’s also the Juan Tamariz formula.

-Louie

RIP – Retire It Please

One thing that struck me was the amount of love for the Amazing Jonathan I’m seeing in FB posts.

It’s not the love for him that’s surprising, it’s the people who are doing it. There are a lot of people who I know have swiped gags from the Amazing Jonathan’s show and use them in their show, but are posting RIP’s on their social media. Are they really mourning his passing, or are they mourning the passing of their source free material.

These posts are like being sad when circuit city whet out of business, but not being sad because you were a customer, but because you used to shoplift laptops and it was easy to steal from. If you’re really sad he’s passed, you’d put the rest all of the gags stole from his show.

-Louie

Run Away With the Sideshow…

I just saw that World of Wonders is starting to take applications from performers to work with them this summer:

I had a blast performing with them last summer for 10 days. The people are cool and the show format is a lot of fun! You do a 3ish minute act twice in the show and you do the show three times a day.

For the 10 days I performed with World of Wonders I took a something I hadn’t done in a few years to relearn to do it and something from my current show. When doing just two acts instead of a whole show, I was really able to focus on making those two tricks better. I ended having a lot of callbacks from the first act in the second act.

If this sort of thing interests you, you should definitely email them!
-Louie