This morning I’m reflecting on the two senior shows I did over the last two days. Normally I wouldn’t put too much thought into them, however it’s been a while since I’ve done a full, in person show. I’ve been doing a lot of shorter bits lately, and that’s a different skill than 45-50 mins.
I think the areas I could improve would be to have a few more “non contact” tricks in this show. What I mean is have non contact options. There are a few spots where I needed to go into the audience, as I wasn’t allowed to bring people on stage. For procedural things, it’s not a huge deal. I’ve already added non contact options for things like “pick a card” an instead I have them name a card. It makes for some more interesting methods and makes me not be lazy.
There are some magic tricks that the person has do for the effect to really work. A good example is a I a Key R Rect / Seven Keys to Baldplate sort of trick and the impact is very much lessened when I turn the keys, versus having someone from the audience do that. The bigger problem is that the action happens in the audience, so it’s harder for people to see. The nice thing is that when it opens there’s a CLICK noise.
One solution I have though of for the Key R Rect trick is to have 3 people pick numbers from 1-4 and whoever picks the number I wrote down wins. I think it works, but in my head I feel it’s lacking something. It could just be that guessing a number doesn’t feel like a game to me. I do need to just go out and try it and see how it plays…
-Louie
Tag: magic show
Lip Reading…
Yesterday I did my second day of senior shows and it was a lot of fun. I think I may finally be figuring out how to make my coat hanger thru silk routine work. I just need to let the effect marinade and sit with the audience even longer. The trick is a very strong and visual trick, and I think brains just take a long time to process it.
Another thing I’m learning is how much people use their eyes to listen. When we listen we also do a lot of lip reading. When someone is masked, it’s harder to understand them because we can’t lip read. This makes a ton of sense looking into the past. For example my wife uses the captions when she watches movies on a smaller screen like her phone. It makes it easier for her to “hear”. Because of this I’m talking a lot more slowly and deliberately in my shows.
-Louie
Senior Gigs…
It’s been a while since I’ve done a show at a retirement center. The main reason has been due to COVID restrictions from many of the corporation that own these facilities impose. I’m not saying I’m against the restrictions, I’m all for protecting seniors and I wouldn’t want anyone to get severely sick or die because I was asymptomatic and brought COVID into the facility.
OK, with all of that said, I did a senior show yesterday and it was a blast! Everyone was out to have a good time, and they were into the show! One thing that I added to my show that I never really did in my senior show was the vanishing birdcage. I closed my show with it and they couldn’t stop talking about it. One resident wouldn’t shut up about the trick (I’m not complaining!), he went to everyone after the show in the halls and would say, “That was a great show, but that bird trick was amazing!” I think I’m going to keep the birdcage in the senior show!
If you want more info on performing at senior facilities, I wrote a book about it called How To Perform For Seniors. This book takes you through booking, material selection, and full of tips and advice for actually doing the gig! If the senior market is something that interests you, you should check out the book!
– Louie
Amazing Magicians in Seattle…
In Seattle we’re a few weeks away from the Moisture Festival. This is the largest variety arts festival in the USA (possibly the world). I’ve been involved in this festival as a performer for 8ish years and then for the last year as one of the hosts of The Moisture Festival Podcast.
I was just looking a the schedule of performers and for magic fans, there’s a lot of amazing magicians coming to the festival. In 2022 the Moisture Festival has:
Avner The Eccentric
Mike Caveney
Tina Lenert
Skilldini
Steve Owens
Jamy Ian Swiss
Just Felice
Joey Pipia
Magical Mystical Michael
Master Payne
Louie Foxx
If you’re in the Northwest, it’s worth a trip to come out to a show, or weekend of shows. Tickets are on sale now and available at:
https://moisturefestival.org
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
Giant Venues!
For the last few years I’ve been thinking about how to make my show play bigger. It’s a good thing to have in the back of your head when you’re working on your show. A good example was last week I saw my friend Matt Baker perform at a gig for about 80 people. Normally that’s not a huge show…however the gig was in a 15,000 seat venue!
It’s easy for a solo act to get lost on a stage like that. Matt did a great job at that show, and managed to make it work in the venue.
It comes down to how can you make what you do play bigger. This particular stage wasn’t any bigger than many stages I’ve performed on, but visually it made the performer look small. There were a couple reasons for that, the big one was that they wouldn’t turn off the venue’s lights and use the lights on the stage for the show. That meant he had the 5,000 empty chairs behind him which broadens what people are looking at, making him look tiny.
Honestly, I think most illusions shows would have looked small on that stage with the conditions he was working in. With that in mind, something like a normal card trick would be virtually invisible on the state. Little things like trying to make your card tricks work with a jumbo deck won’t hurt for smaller venues, but will really help when you find yourself in situations like this!
-Louie
Economy of Motion…
Yesterday was a building day over here. Just me with my headphones in listening to music and working on building props for other performers. I’m very thankful for days when I can spend the day just building props without any distractions.
It’s also nice to be able to get ahead and build some extra things so I have some things in stock. Today I managed to be able to get a couple of extra Take Up Reels finished, so now I have some in stock and can ship them out immediately.
Before 2020, I really didn’t keep anything in stock, and everything was made to order. At that point you could really only get my magic tricks from Hocus-Pocus.com. After the venues closed in 2020 I started offering my magic trick for sale here and have a lot more in stock, that’s ready to ship out than I did two years ago.
It’s been great to learn that making items in batches, even when I only need to ship out one of them is a HUGE timesaver. It’s like in sleight of hand, it comes down to the economy of motion. With magic manufacturing, making four of them is usually the same effort as making one.
Now look at what you do in performing. Do you do several different shows, that may share a prop? Would it be easier and ultimately save you a lot of time if you had two of that prop, so you didn’t need to move it case to case? Could you have more than one of your show costume to save time taking it to the cleaners? All of these things could potentially save you a lot of time when you add up all the wasted time over the months and years.
-Louie
Don’t Tell Me…
Lately I’ve been popping into virtual open mics and there’s something that drives me crazy. It’s when performers say, “If you were here I’d have you ____” and usually fill in the blank with something like, “shuffle the cards” or whatever. It’s been almost two years since we’ve moved to virtual, you don’t need to say that. If you haven’t figured out how to do the trick without someone in the room yet, virtual performing may not be for you.
HOWEVER, I do think there is a place to mention that “if it was an in person show, I’d have you _____” and that’s to cover a method. More specifically to rule out a method. A good example of this in an in person show is when Kreskin does the linking finger rings and he exposes the gimmick and says he doesn’t use that.
In a virtual show context, you could say, “If you were here I’d have you shuffle the cards, but you’re not, so I’ll shuffle them…” then you do a false shuffle. The key would be to put a little bit of distance between the false shuffle and a crazy revelation that would only be possible with a deck that was in a special order. Doing a false shuffle and then doing something like Any Card At Any Number would probably be fine without putting in any time misdirection.
To sum it up, don’t tell the audience how you would do things if conditions were different…they aren’t attending an in person show and they know that.
-Louie
Virtual Magic Conventions…
I had a blast at the KAX conference that just ended yesterday. Lot’s of great info was shared and it was great to be a presenter and be able to share with other performers!
This event was a virtual event and I know a lot of people prefer in person conventions, there are some advantages to them being online. The first is you can get other things done while you are attending the convention. This week I’m packing up and getting ready to move, so while I was watching lectures I was also boxing things up. It’s also a lot cheaper to attend, as you don’t have hotel and I could eat my breakfast during the conference!
I was also able to do some shows during the convention, so I was able to earn money during it, where if I had to travel to it, I’d just be spending money the whole week. Virtual conventions will never replace (I hope) in person conventions, they do have their advantages!
-Louie
Sneaking into a Show with Shimada!
We’re getting ready to move and I found this picture of me with Shimada! It made remember the fun adventure that let to me hanging out with him.
Way back in the mid 1990’s I went to Vegas for the first time. I was a teenager and went to the Desert Magic Seminar by myself. One of the shows that I wanted to see was Lance Burton‘s show at the Hacienda. I walked over there from the Tropicana and was turned away at the box office because the show was sold out.
As I was walking away, legendary magician Shimada was walking in with a big group of people, who were all Asian. Just as they all went into the showroom, and Peter Reveen (who I think was Lance’s manager) stopped me and asked why I was leaving. I was totally confused, and he told me I should go in with Shimada’s group to get seated. He then brought me into the showroom and seated me with Shimada and his group!
Lance Burton’s show was amazing and it was a lot of fun to watch a legendary show with a legendary magician!