magic show – Page 13 – MagicShow.Tips

Coolest and Smartest Merch Display!

One day at the Ohio State Fair last week I performed with a bluegrass group and their fiddle player had the best merch display! When closed it’s like a small ATA case, then it quickly and easily pops open and it ready go to.

Here it is open:

The record slides into the case and that flips down and locks in at the merch in the lid. Everything in the base lays flat and he’s set up and packed up in about 90 seconds and it looks great!

Here’s some other views of it:

Did you notice the two arms on the back that slide out to the sides to display more stuff if needed?

It’s a really cool set up!

-Louie

Dealing With Echo

Right now I’m mid-run of performing twelve days at a state fair. The stage that I’m on is MASSIVE and I’m working my butt off to not get visually lost on the stage. When I arrived I immediately knew that I would have to cut the middle out of my object in ball in yarn routine as no one would be able to see the mismade bill. That’s not a big deal, but it’s very helpful to be aware of things like that.

The other thing I learned after my first show is that because the venue is very large, my voice echos and it’s hard to understand me unless I talk very slowly. I feel like I’m talking 50% slower than normal. Being aware of the echo by watching the act after me, it made me aware of the necessary adjustments.

This is why it’s important if you’re working with other acts, to watch at least part of their show to notice things like echo, or any sightline issues that you can correct that will make your show play better!

-Louie

Bag of Stuff I Can’t Do

I came up with a fun way to add in tricks that I’m playing with to my roving set at fairs. I have a ziploc bag full of stuff and I call it the “bag of stuff I can’t do“. I let someone pick something out of the bag and I do that magic trick. It’s a fun way to introduce props that don’t exactly fit my style.

Here’s a highlight video from the fair I performed at last week and you can see some of this stuff.

In that video you can see the first phase of the O-Korto Coin Box routine and Circulation or Round-the-square Cards by Pavel. This is a fun way to keep performing fun and fresh for me.

-Louie

Low to the Ground

During one of my street style sets at the fair yesterday I had a group of younger kids show up and I knocked my table down so that they could see the table top.

I was surprised that this instantly built a larger crowd. I’m not sure why more people wanted to watch. It does make the table top more visible to the front edge of the crowd and maybe it makes people huddle in and look like they’re watching something interesting. I’m not sure why it worked, and maybe that was a one off sorta thing, but I’m going to try it again today and see what happens.

-Louie

Magic Jam!

The Magic Jam that I put together in Seattle on Tuesday was a blast! We had a good turn out of people I knew and magicians I didn’t know!

For me one of the takeaways is that it reminded me that there are soo many different styles of magic out there and there’s not really one right or wrong way to do it! Peoples styles are heavily influenced by where they perform, whether that’s just for their family and friends, busking, corporate shows or whatever. The venue dictates a lot of the material you do.

Thanks to everyone that came out to hang out!

-Louie

Balls in Hat Routine!

The last couple of weeks I started working on a Balls In Hat routine that I learned from Jimmy Talksalot. It starts with two in the hand and one in the pocket and ends with a nine balls coming out of your hat! It’s a really solid routine!

You can see parts of it in this reel from the fair I was performing at:

@louiefoxx Magic at the @sanmateocountyfair! #magic #sanmateocountyfair #sanmateo #closeupmagic #magician #bayarea #countyfair #louiefoxx #magictricks #cardtrick ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

There’s a ton of great info and routines on Jimmy’s Substack. There’s free info as well as stuff for subscribers. It’s $8 a month to subscribe and totally worth it to read and watch all the content he has up there. The magic and essays are focused on street magic, but there’s a lot to be learned there if you don’t do street magic.

-Louie

My 2024 Summer Library Show

Each year I do a unique library show. Sometimes material gets cycled back into the show, but it must wait till the third year (two years off) to come back into the show.

Here’s this years set list:

If you look at the set list, there’s one spot where there’s three tricks. I could do: Dad jokes, mind reading or shell game. The variable there is if I can use a TV in the room, I do shell game. I there isn’t a TV that I can use, then I do either my Dad Jokes trick or Wayne Dobson’s Spectrumlist with the librarian doing the trick.

Here’s what this year’s case set up looks like:

This is a pretty quick set up for the show about 30 minutes right now, but it will be 15-20 minutes after a couple of shows. I have about 4 extra tricks that I’ve packed with this show to make sure I have enough material. After this week of library shows, the set list will be locked in and I’ll ditch the extra material…well, I’ll keep one extra bit.

-Louie

Moving to a National Act

Years ago when I wanted to become a more “national” act, one of the things that I did was try to do something nationally newsworthy to send to agents twice a year. Twice a year turned into doing it quarterly and then monthly.

What exactly the definition of “nationally newsworthy” is, I’m not sure. Roughly it’s things that I can tell agents about and it raises my status from local Seattle magician to something bigger.

That’s where doing things like writing an article for a mainstream magazine comes in. It’s makes me an “expert” on magic, not just a local magician. Do things like this make the quality of my show better?

Nope.

Things like this raise the perception of the quality of my show. For getting work from a new agent or work at another level that’s something important!

-Louie

Mainstream Article on Suspension of Disbelief

About 6 months ago I was approached by Sorbet Magazine to write a little essay about the suspension of disbelief and how it applies to magicians. The article was based on a blog post that I had made here a long time ago that one of the editors had found. I rewrote and expanded it to fit what they wanted and it just got published in their magazine!

To be 100% honest, when I was contacted by the magazine, it felt like a scam…who would pay me to write a mainstream magazine article?! I did it anyway as if it was a scam, at least I would have practiced writing for someone else and hitting a word count with a non-magician target audience.

When I was finishing up the article, I was sharing an AirBnB with Dennis Forel and he helped me tweak my 5th grade, public school writing style into something a bit more grown up.

Here’s the original 3 paragraph blog post that the article was built on:
https://www.magicshow.tips/magic-show-tips/suspension-of-disbelief/

This is a fun thing to have out there in the world!

Now onto the next thing…

-Louie