Last week I was performing at a fair, and a couple days into the run, I walked to my stage like I do everyday and this was my view from the stage!
The previous days I had rows of chairs, but this day I had a wrestling ring!
If I asked this on a social media magician’s group, people would say “put it in your contract that people are seated in rows” or something like that. That’s easy to say, but in reality, it’s not that simple. I’ve already got a couple of days of work into this gig and a couple more to go. That wrestling ring isn’t going to move for me. All the people who say it violates the contract (if written), what are they doing to do, walk away from the gig. If you do that, they’re not going to just hand you a check; you’re going to have to fight to get paid if you walk away.
What would you do in this situation?
I simply converted my stage show into a hybrid street/close up magic show.
This worked great, and this is why I always think that if you do stage magic, you should be able to do close up magic as well. Sometimes it just works better to do some card tricks!
I’ve done many shows with stages and situations that varied a lot, I can adapt to pretty much any situation.
-Louie
Here’s how I handled another difficult stage.