A couple of weeks ago I performed in a show at the All American Magic Theater in Portland OR. It’s a fun little theater in a magic shop inside of a mall.
It’s always fun to perform in a variety show! One of the challenges for me since I’m used to doing 45-70 mins is doing a shorter 15 min set. A 15 min set is structured very differently than a longer full show. As an act, your opener is less of a “warm up” and you kinda need to get right into the act.
It’s fun to flex that different show length muscle! -Louie
Last week I visited the Society of American Magicians Assembly #59 in Portland, OR. I love magic clubs, and it’s time for me to formally join this one. I’m currently not a member of the national Society of American Magicians, so I need to do that before I can be a member of the local assembly.
I think that of the barriers to entry with magic clubs is having to join the national and the local magic club. It looks like national SAM dues are $65 and the local club is $35, so it’s $100 to get involved. That’s a lot of money for someone who is just starting out in magic. However I do understand why the money is needed, and there is value to the $100. If someone starting in magic actually read the magazines and went to the meetings there’s more than $100 in value.
After the magic club meeting, a few of us went down the street for a beer to keep magic jamming!
I’m a HUGE supporter of magic clubs as they helped me a lot growing up and I want to help them succeed. You should support your local magic club!
When I was at the a booking conference last week, I took a coupe of pictures of a music duo that was playing. The guy in the center was playing way too far forward, and was in the dark.
In the picture it looks better than it did in person, in person he was totally in the dark! You can see the difference in the next picture when he took a few steps backwards.
Being in the “hot” area makes a huge difference. Many years ago comedian Jim Wiggins (RIP) gave me a talk about making sure that I was in the light and how much of a difference it makes. I do my best to try to stay in the light, and it always helps if there’s an act before you that you can watch were they’re lit and where they’re in the dark!
One of the classic magic tricks is making a person float. Aside from doing it as a stage illusion, there’s no practical way to do it for smaller shows that’s as good. Like anything you have to make tradeoffs when you change the method. In this case the method includes the stage.
One of the popular ones looks like this:
I’ve written about this before, but the picture above recently passed through my Instagram feed. I think one of the things that I don’t like about it wrapping up the person in the cloth. It just doesn’t look right. Look at the area circled in red below:
Is there a solution to keeping the cloth uniform below the floating person?
Maybe if the cloth with just draped over the person, and left dangling?
Nathan Burton has a decent solution and leaves the board in view:
I like this a little bit better, it’s like he’s making the board float with someone on it. That could lead to a presentation idea with the line, “your seat bottom wil act as a floatation device“. That could be a fun comedy angle for a levitation.
I don’t know the solution to a practical levitation that’s done with the audience closer. And like I mentioned earlier, there are always trade offs when you make a stage illusion smaller and add an untrained assistant from the audience.
Last night I got home from another booking conference and saw some amazing acts!
One of the helpful things about going to these conferences and seeing all the other acts showcase is that you kinda know where you are in the pack. You can gauge whether you’re a top tier act, or whatever.
It’s also inspiring to see people do their best 15 minutes of material! I totally recommend checking one of these out if you get a chance, even if it’s just to watch acts!
Last week I performed at a comedy club in Wisconsin. I reached out to my opener and offered to trade him something from where I live for something local to the him. He said yes, and here’s what we swapped:
I brought him a couple of bags of Tim’s Cascade chips which are a pacific northwest thing and they make strange flavors and he brought me a couple types of cheese curds from Wisconsin!
If you’re travelling and have a local opener, reach out to them and offer and exchange, it’s a fun ice breaker, but it also get’s you the good version of the local thing!
There’s a couple of interesting things about this vanishing bird cage. The big thing is that the corners are upside down, the wires are on the inside of the cage and not on the outside.
The corners also feel longer than they need to be, and it turns out that’s a characteristics of YIMKA vanishing birdcages. All of the pictures of them that I’ve now seen have longer corners than most cages.
After a chat with Doug Edwards who is the Vanishing Birdcage guy, it appears that YIMKA made cages with the corners upside down and the standard way. YIMKA also stamped his cages, but not all of them. The cage I have is unstamped, but based on what I’ve learned, I’d say my new cage is probably a YIMKA!
One of the fun things for me is the detective work and figuring out what I’ve just bought!
When the travelling Oddities and Curiosities Expo was in town I popped by to check it out. I’ve performed at the expo in the past, and swung by to say hi to some friends.
Magicians can learn a lot by watching sideshow acts. It’s a very similar build through routines. A magician has to show the box is empty before you can make something appear, and a sword swallower has to show the sword is real before they swallow it.
You really should check out the Oddities and Curiosities Expo when it’s passing through your town, you can learn a lot!
For five or six years I’ve been working on a Silk Thru Coat Hanger routine. I’ve figured out the sequence, however one of the weak links to the routine is the reel. I like it and it allows for some very visual things to happen, however I think that sometimes the string is too easy to see.
Here’s an old video to give you a idea of some of the stuff I was doing:
The cool part of the routine was the silk going from the triangle to the hook of the coat hanger.
I put this routine on the back burner for a bit, but recently started playing with it again. I’m looking more into ring off rope techniques and found this one:
The routine above has a similar flow to what I was doing with the reel, so that makes for an easier transition to a rope and hanger routine. I did figure out a way to make the rope go from the triangle to the hook of the coat hanger using the method in the above trick.
One of the challenges is the ergonomics of holding a ring work better than an coat hanger for this routine. It could simply be a practice thing to learn to do the move on a flat surface. We’ll see…
Last week I went to a booking conference to work on filling up my summer schedule. One of the things that that happens besides a trade show where different acts have booths are showcases. The showcase is one of the best ways to schedule work as you can actually show potential bookers what you actually do!
This one had some awesome acts!
Depending on the rules where you’re showcasing, your showcase set can be between 10-20 minutes, with most being about 15 minutes.
My showcase at this conference was with my crank organ.
Honestly, I was super nervous. The organ is newer to me and I don’t know it inside and out like I do my show. With my magic show almost everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong. That means I know how to deal with problems if they occur in my magic show. With the organ I’m positive that there’s a lot that can go wrong that I haven’t encountered. And of course problems tend to appear when there’s a lot riding on that show. Luckily nothing went wrong and I had a good showcase set!
I personally think that going to showcases is one of the best ways to book work. You can book a lot of work in a short amount of time. Most industries have some sort of showcase.
