Tag: magic show

Coffee Messiah

When I was in my late 18-20 years old and living in Seattle there weren’t a lot of places to figure out how to perform outside of family shows. At the time the Washington State had very restrictive liquor laws which prohibited me from performing at a lot of venues that had open mics until I was 21 years old. One day I noticed an ad in Seattle’s alternative newspaper for open mic that was at 2:30am!

It was at a place called Coffee Messiah

I started going out to the open mic and had a blast. It was a drag show, strange performance art show and an anything goes show. I wasn’t a “regular” there, but did perform there a lot! This was probably the most supportive community of performers that I’ve ever encountered. This may have led to why I’m soo open, encouraging and helpful to other performers.

Coffee Messiah was a place for me to try to find my voice or style as a performer. It would be years before I started to figure out what my style was, but having a place to play around and do it was great.

One of my favorite memories was that at the time I had a Zig Zag illusion and one of the drag queens wanted to be cut up. They came over to my apartment and we practiced a bit. Then when it came to show time the next week, I put them into the box, and when I put the upper blade it, it wouldn’t got all the way through. Well, we had neglected to practice in costume and their fake boob got stuck in the way of the blade and we couldn’t get it out of the way! Eventually after a lot of wiggling we got the blade through and completed the illusion!

Sadly Coffee Messiah has been closed for years, but I stumbled upon a video the owner talking about the venue:

Having a place like this to create art was a blessing to me, and helped form who I am as an artist.

-Louie

Relatable Props…

Last week I was in New York City for Christmas. We went to check out some shows, one of them was Stomp NYC.

stomp nyc

If you don’t know what Stomp is, it’s a show that’s percussion based and they use “everyday objects” for their instruments and there is no talking or singing.

There’s a lot to learn about performing from this show. For me the huge thing was relatability. The characters were relatable, but the bigger thing was all of the props were relatable. They were things we all see and touch almost every day in our lives. From things like a recycle bin, to a plastic chip bag, everyone has a point of reference for all of the props. This makes the show soo much more relatable than if it used some strange percussion instrument that was invented for and only exists in this show.

When you look at the props in your show, looking at relatability for your props is important. Keep in mind you don’t need to use things that exist in real life, that’s an artistic choice you are making. However when you do, I think they should be things that actually are when they look like, versus things that pretend to be something in real life. Once again this is an artistic choice An example of something pretending to be something real would be an illusion that’s painted to resemble a cardboard box. Everyone knows it’s not a cardboard box, they know it’s a stage prop.

If you look at my two appearances on Masters of Illusion last season, both use “everyday objects” that people have seen or interacted with before.

The first used a paper bag and some toy animals:

And the second used a inflatable dinosaur costume

The props in those two routines were much more relatable than had I used props that were created just for magic tricks. It gives them a simpler feeling than fancy props and that’s the vibe I’m going for. I’m an everyday guy, not someone solves problems with money. In the end it all boils down to your artistic choice for your show. I’ve made some very intentional choices, and while I don’t expect you to make the same choices, I do hope in my heart that whatever you choose to do, it’s intentional.

-Louie

Event Promo Videos…

Frequently I’m asked to make little promo videos for events that I’m performing. Here’s one a made for a gig a few days ago:

They wanted me to thank the sponsors and to do a quick trick. One of my “go to tricks” for situations like that are flap cards for a quick color change. I do the first change in the glass (which as far as I know I’m the first to do) which I think adds to the impossibility of it changing. Then the second is just the toss change.

Having a quick and visual trick you can do for things like this helpful. Also essentially having a formula for doing videos for events, so you’re not reinventing the wheel every time. I just grab my glass and card and I’m good to go!

-Louie

New Years Eve

Well, 2021 is coming to an end tonight and it’s been an interesting year. Due to the COVID pandemic still doing it’s thing for most of the year I got to do some unusual shows, from no contact shows, to filming a TV show with no audience to performing for the Amish!

I’ve tried my best to really go with the flow, rather than try to fight the current. Instead of complaining about restrictions on how I could do my show, I looked at it as a challenge as to how to make my show and ultimately my personality work under the conditions I was given.

I’m very curious how 2022 is going to be…so far my summer schedule it looking pretty full and I’ve got some ideas and exciting projects in the works!

-Louie

East Coast Gig…

Check me out tomorrow in Winchester, VA at First Night Winchester. I really love performing at these First Night arts festivals. The audience and shows are good. If you have a First Night near you, I highly recommend performing at them, they are soo much better than 99% of the normal NYE gigs!

This is a rare east coast appearance, I’m more of a west coast guy. If you’re in the area, send me a note and we’ll hang out!

-Louie

Take Out Ideas…

With the Chinese Take Out Production Box, I probably should explore some ideas beyond my initial idea for a routine. While the original idea is good, maybe there’s a better idea.

  • Vanish: Item goes into the box and you open the box flat for the vanish.
  • Mentalism Reveal: Someone thinks of a object and then you make it appear from the box.
  • Multiple Mentalism Reveal: Produce first thought of item from the box, then show the box empty and then produce the second item.
  • Item and Price Reveal: Something thinks of a menu item and price. You open the box to reveal the price inside (also showing the box empty). You close the box and then produce the item.
  • Time Travel: You remove something from the box, and open the box flat to show it empty. It vanishes and reappears in the box.
  • Transformation: Something goes into the box (like hard dry noodles) and they come out as cooked noodles

There’s some ideas, I kinda like the idea of a transformation, maybe ingredients go in and out comes a finished food? Anyway, I’m glad I dug a little bit deeper than just my initial idea.

-Louie

Triumph Clean Up…

I’ve been fascinated by the idea of using the old card production where you drop the deck of cards on the table and the top card flips over as a “clean up” for card trick triumph. By clean up, I mean the last thing you have to do in my sequences where you need to reverse one card…or half of the deck.

In the past I’ve published a fairly complex version of Triumph that used a stripped deck and had a kicker ending, but used the flip over production to clean up the deck for the reveal. About a month ago, I think I finally hit on a sequence that makes sense, and it’s pretty simple, I’m surprised I didn’t think of it earlier. Here it is:

  1. Card is selected and returned to the deck, but secretly controlled to the top.
  2. The bottom half is flipped face up and you are going to do a modified zarrow shuffle. You will shuffle all but the top card (selected card) of the face down half into the bottom half of the face up cards. Then run about a quarter of the face up cards, drop the final face down card, and run the remaining face up cards.
  3. You will now strip out the face up cards, but add the face down selection to the face up cards, so they to on top.
  4. Find the natural break between the face up and face down halves. Side jog the face up half and drop it on the table. They should flip over, giving you deck that’s all face down except for the face up selection!

That’s it. While the shuffle procedure reads fairly complex, it’s not. If you can do a Zarrow Shuffle, you can do this.
-Louie



Double Cupped…

One thing that drives me nuts is when I go to coffee shops and they give me a to go cup that’s double cupped. To me it feels wasteful to give me two cups, when one will do the job. That inspired me to mess around with a way to make the second cup disappear.

The method that I came up with was pretty simple. It’s the top inch of a cup and only half of the “circle”, and this makes a sort of a shell for the top of the front of the outer cup. If I held the cup so that my hand covers the bottom of the shell, it looks like a coffee cup that’s double cupped. I can also lift the top cup up and it creates the illusion that the two cups are separate. For the vanish I simple need to steal this little shell for the vanish.

The hard thing is to figure out how to ditch the shell. My idea was to palm the shell as I take the lid off of the cup. That still leaves the actual ditch of the shell, I think if I put the lid into my table, then it’s out of sight out of mind.

So now the second cup has been stolen, and the audience doesn’t know that yet. How do I reveal it? Maybe I could produce a cup and then call attention to the original double cup is now a single cup?

Honestly, I don’t know how to end the trick. I will say that this is probably a trick I’ll never do, so I don’t know how much energy I’m going to put into figuring it out.

-Louie

Hiding The Second Card…

A couple of weeks ago I was on an airplane and messing around with some cards. I was thinking that there wasn’t (that I was aware of) a false count like an Elmsley Count or Jordan Count that hid the second from the top card of a face down pile. After playing around a little bit I came up with a count to do hide the second from the top:

Count 1: Push off a double

Count 2: push off a single with the left hand. The right hand buckles the bottom card and when the card from the left hand covers the right hands cards, the the left hand steals the top card of the right hand’s pile.

Count 3: deal one card

Count 4: deal one card

That’s it, pretty simple. There’s not much to it. I think the reason not many people have explored a count that hides the second from the top card is that you have pretty much have to start with a double push off. This isn’t the easiest thing to do…it’s not crazy hard, but hard enough to scare away people.

I will say there are probably better ways to hide the card second from the top of the deck. I will also say it was a fun way to spend some time on a plane!

-Louie