outdoor magic – MagicShow.Tips

Outdoor Magic Show Challenges

Last week, at the fair where I was performing, it rained one morning. The sun came out right before my show, so my show was going to happen. The only problem was that all of my seating was wet. No one will sit on a seat that’s wet and has a pool of water. So I tracked down a rag and wiped down the chairs!

magician wiping water off of folding chair

Wiping down chairs isn’t my job, but it’s something that needed to happen for my show to happen. Sometimes doing something like wiping down chairs makes the difference between no audience and getting a big audience (which is what I had that show!).

There are times to not be helpful, sometimes there are union rules or the task could get your costume or hands stained. Wiping water off a chair wasn’t a big deal, so I did it.

-Louie

Figuring it out…

This week I’m performing at a fair and it’s a fairly challenging experience. The crowd is fairly far from the stage and the seating is socially distant. It’s challenging to get them to unite as a crowd. Hopefully I’ll have it figured out by the end of the run.

The other challenge is that I can’t use people on stage. It’s a no contact show. This is fine, but has some problems. The big one being the audience is masked, so talking to them is difficult. It’s hard to tell who says something, and it’s hard to understand what they are saying. Indoors in a theater where there is less ambient noise, it’s much easier. This is something I didn’t anticipate (I should have).

I’m working out how make my show more successful this week, hopefully I’ll only need it this week. It looks like most COVID restrictions on the west coast are going to be lifted in about a week. Too late for this fair…

Dealing With The Wind…

This week I’m an a conference for the fair industry. A good friend of mine, who is a great magician was also there and we were chatting magic and the subject of the Torn And Restored Newspaper came up. We were chatting about doing the trick outdoors, and the challenges of doing it in the wind.

He doesn’t do it outdoors, where I do. There’s one difference that allows me to do it outdoors (usually) and that’s the style of newspaper tear we do. He does the Gene Anderson Newspaper Tear and I use Nick Lewin’s Slow Motion Newspaper Tear. The Newspaper Tear that I do has less pages to it, so that means less changes for the wind mess it up.

The routine that most people use with the Gene Anderson Tear, is the one that I think was popularized by Doug Henning:

In this routine the newspaper is held open and flat a lot. Also all of the tears happen from the newspaper in an position where it’s flat. In Nick Lewin’s version, the newspaper is tear is started from a folded position and that helps a lot with wind.