stage magic – Page 9 – MagicShow.Tips

Performing in a Comedy Club

One of the challenges of performing in comedy clubs is space on stage. Since most stand up comics don’t require a lot of space, you’ll get some really tiny stages (and sometimes giant ones). The last few years I’ve been working to make my show physically larger, so that it plays better in larger venues. That doesn’t necessarily mean using a larger prop, but sometimes it does.

Here’s my show set up on the stage before the show at the Tacoma Comedy Club a couple of days ago:

There’s not a lot of free real estate on that stage. Right after the pic was taken, I pushed my case back to that it was against the wall to leave more room for the opener to perform. That stage being probably 8 x 8 feet with my gear set didn’t leave a lot of room to perform. Luckily when I started out, I performed on a lot of stages like this so I know how to tighten up my show physically to make it play.

Another thing to consider with set ups like this is that the first row is literally at the edge of the stage, so the audience is on top of you. With the stage being low, anything that happens below my belly button can’t really be seen from about the 3rd row or further back. That mean everything need to be handheld and held at shoulder height.

If you’re interested, here’s my set list for the show:

On the right side, I wrote down the names of the servers at the club so that I could thank them by name. If you don’t already know, always be super nice to the servers and staff at the venue!

-Louie

How Hard to Promote a Show?

One of the local comedy clubs in my area is trying out doing all ages, family friendly afternoon shows and they had me do their test show! I’ve known the owner for probably a decade, so I wanted this to succeed! If they do it monthly, quarterly or whatever it’s good for local variety performers as it’s more local work!

I do try to promote every show I do, however sometimes it’s just a calendar listing and sometimes it’s more. This one I worked a bit harder to help sell tickets. For this show I worked my email list, and social media a bit harder and much to my surprise I managed to sell out the show!

When it comes to promoting a show, there’s a lot that goes into deciding how hard to promote it. Some of the factors are:

-How high profile the show is: A comedy club, theater or TV appearance sounds more prestigious to the general public than a rural library. That doesn’t mean that the rural library is any less important, in fact I’d say that the rural library is a more important show for the community. That may be the only chance that community has to see a live show. However me promoting that rural library really hard, probably won’t change the attendance.

-Do I have a financial stake in the show? If it’s a show where I’m four walling it, or get a percentage of tickets sales instead of a flat fee, then I need to hustle the show a bit more.

-Do I have a personal stake in the show? Some shows you have a personal reason that you want them to succeed. Like it’s a fundraiser for a cause that’s close to your heart, it’s a gig run by a friend, or whatever.

Also anytime you promote a show, you are marketing to a general audience. It’s the old advice that the more people see your name the more likely they’ll book you.

-Louie

Do a Back Flip!

A while ago I wrote about a thing that kids do, which is asking performer to “do a back flip”. I happened to me while I was performing in Nebraska and I came up with a trick to do when if someone asks me that. After I came up with the trick, no one asked me to do a back flip…until last week!

It happened, and I got to finally do the trick and it hit hard!!

So then I decided to try to manufacture a kid asking me to do a back flip. What I’m doing is simply saying, “Is there anything you want to see me do?” It gets them to say “do a back flip” about 1 out of 6 times, which is good and feels organic.

Here’s the odd surprise, people have been asking me for some pretty specific magic tricks…and magic tricks that aren’t stereotype magic tricks. I had a kid ask me to “do a trick where the a ring comes off of a rope”. I think that people are exposed to a lot more magic than magicians think they are. Magic is really good for social media and especially things like TikTok, and combine that with things like America’s Got Talent and you have a very sophisticated audience you’re performing for.

I think the notion that you’re the first magician people are seeing is kinda false. They see tons of magic, maybe not in person, but audiences are definitely exposed to magic! That’s why you need to do good magic and not lame, tired ol’ tricks.

-Louie

Sponge Balloon Dog!

I was digging through a bin of junk magic and found a couple of sets of sponge sausages. The moment I saw them, I didn’t see sausages, I saw a balloon dog! I took the sponge sausages to the green room and got to work on making a balloon dog.

A bit so thread and I had a sponge balloon dog!

Luckily I was sharing a the green room with Dennis Forel, who is the one balloon figure guy and he approved of it!

After I made it, I did a quick search for “sponge balloon dog” and it looks like Alexander May put one out…and it’s pretty much the same concept. It’s made of sponge sausages!

I’ve been playing with making a blowing up a round balloon, popping it and it becomes the balloon dog. It’s fun, but probably will never has a spot in my show.

-Louie

Magic on the News in Fresno

Here’s an OK news appearance I did last week while performing at The Big Fresno Fair:

It’s an alright appearance, nothing crazy amazing. It’s a decent spot, but could have been much better. I was told I’d have about 3 minutes, but then that changed to two minutes and then at the last minute it changed to 90 seconds.

The change of the length totally threw my plan out the window. That’s why I typically will show up to news spots with material to fill 30 seconds, 90 seconds and three minutes. I try to plan something special and fun for the set length I’m told I’m doing, but that doesn’t always happen! That’s why it’s important to have a lot of material on you when you show up. There are some exceptions, like when you do in studio stuff you’ll normally know exactly how much time you have…but they’ll forget to tell you about a quick little “bump” you’ll be in and need a visual 5 second trick you can do.

Being prepared is the key to these news spots!

-Louie

Working on the Rising Card

The rising card routine, that I’m working on right now is missing something. What is missing is time. The routine is really bare bones and is very short, I think without any bits it’s maybe two minutes. Since the routine involves bringing someone onto the stage, I need to get at least three minutes out of it. Ideally if someone is coming out of the audience, it needs to be closer to about five minutes.

One of the ideas that I had was to have a kid do the most “epic” card trick. I have the kid show me their epic, hero face and walk. That didn’t hit the time I tried it, but the kid was younger.

The next time I used an older kid which played better and framed it a little bit different. I had said that they are in show biz now and had them show the audience their show biz smile and walk. That played a lot better than the doing an epic trick with a younger kid. I’m not sure if that’s the route that I want to take, but it’s a step in the right direction!

The other thing that the trick is lacking is music and a punctuation when the card rises out of the deck.

-Louie

Large Size Evaporation!

They’ve been unavailable for awhile, I just finished up a batch of the 16 oz size of Evaporation magic tricks!

This size pops a bit more onstage than the smaller version. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to offer these. They’ve been hard to get since 2020, and whenever I find them, I always buy as many as I can to gimmick!

You can get them at: https://www.magicshow.tips/evaporation-magic-trick-vanishing-liquid/ or your favorite dealer!

-Louie

Hocus Pocus Magic in Fresno!

One of the things I like about the two week gig in Fresno that I’m at right now is that I get to hang out at Hocus Pocus magic shop! It’s fun chatting with Max, Paul and Betty, they’ve got a cool shop!

One of the fun things they recently did was release a limited run of “hocus pocus” square circles.

These look great and work great! It’s a fun idea and they say they’re thinking of making releasing a special hocus pocus magic prop every year. That’s a fun idea!

Of course while I was there I visited some of my magic tricks

I think they have the last two of my Slow Poke coin tricks. I don’t think I can get them made anymore.

If you’re in the Fresno area, shoot them and note and arrange a time stop by!

-Louie

Three Card Prince

There are some tricks that I’ve always wanted to do and Harry Anderson’s Three Card Prince/Monarch is one of them. It probably comes from me getting the book Wise Guy when I was a teenager and just getting serious into magic.

You can watch the routine here:

There were two version of this put out. The Three Card Monarch and The Three Card Prince. The difference was size, the prince was the smaller size, however both haven’t been made in years.

I recently came across a used set…a very used set.

This set was gross, it very discolored from use. I bought it and hoped I could clean it up. I took a Magic Eraser and started to clean them up. Here’s a before and after of the face of one of the cards:

They now look gently used instead of beat to crap! I’m excited to learn the routine and try it out in a show. I don’t know if it will work in the show, but even if I only do it once, it’ll be good to have done it and gotten it out of my system!

-Louie

Larger Size Evaporation Magic Trick Available Again!

I’m excited to say that the old, larger size of the Evaporation trick will be available again soon! The original 16 oz bottles haven’t been available for a long time, but I’ve just found a bunch of them, so I’m making up a batch of about a hundred of them soon!

I should have these bottles gimmicked in the next couple of days and they’ll be available on my website and shipped out to Murphy’s Magic, so available at your favorite dealer soon!

-Louie